What episode ended up being too raunchy even for Married…With Children? And
how did producers deceive the cast? This is the show's dark underbelly.
In the Season 6 premiere, "She's Having My Baby," Peg Bundy reveals she's pregnant,
much to the horror of her husband Al. But fans were surprised when the show pulled a Dallas at
the end of the season — it was all a dream and Peg wasn't actually expecting a child.
While it seemed like only a plotline in the show, it was actually a dark secret.
With her then-boyfriend Jack White, Katey Sagal, who played Peg, became pregnant before the sixth
season of Married…With Children began shooting. But she tragically suffered a stillbirth in 1991,
and the writers changed Peg's pregnancy storyline. According to the Los Angeles Times,
Sagal was absent from several episodes to deal with the devastating loss. She revealed
to Buffalo News that the loss happened almost 8 months into her pregnancy. She reflected:
"It was a girl. We would watch and talk to her."
After watching the episode "Al Bundy, Shoe Dick," in which Peg's pregnancy was revealed
to be a dream, Sagal said she found the whole experience to be rather unsettling.
"Peg, tell them it wasn't a dream!" "Uh, honey, I'm gonna go get you those aspirin."
She wrote in her memoir, Grace Notes:
"It was just Al's 'scary dream.' The perfect way to handle it given the irreverent nature
of our show. Of course, just because Peg was never seen losing the baby
didn't mean my stillbirth wasn't public knowledge."
She shared that she was harassed by lurking paparazzi following the harrowing loss.
The Married... With Children audience was infamous for cheering and leering every time an attractive
woman came on set. At times, the audience members were so boisterous that filming had to be
paused until the hollering subsided. The writers certainly didn't help matters; David Faustino, who
played Bud Bundy, offered some revealing details about the people who were writing the show.
Speaking with HipHopDX, Faustino said writers Ron Leavitt and Michael Moye quote,
"were two of the biggest horndogs of all time." He added:
"They had porn stars on the show. Teri Weigel,
she would come through all the time and she would be flashing everybody."
Faustino recalled an instance where Weigel put his head underneath her top, exposing the then
15-year-old to her bare chest. Although he laughed off the experience as fulfilling his teen fantasy,
he later admitted that it was a wildly inappropriate act. And while Faustino felt
the pressure to live out a boyhood fantasy, Christina Applegate, who played Kelly Bundy,
was a mere 15 years old when Married… With Children began. She was highly sexualized
from the outset of the show, with frequent shots of her bending over in tight clothing.
According to Entertainment Weekly,
Married... With Children undeniably drew in a certain male demographic, stating:
"'Married hooks the testosterone crowd for several reasons:
Its humor is locker-room, aggressive, insult driven. On every episode,
you'll see at least one gratuitous cleavage shot or exposed navel."
Over the decades since its premiere, the hit series has been frequently called out as rampantly
sexist. Dallas Observer argued that the sitcom is unmatched in its objectification of women
and appeal to the male gaze. But it's not just critics who think the show demeaned women.
In a Build Series interview, Katey Sagal critiqued the show for its misogyny. The star stated that:
"Women were portrayed, like, completely exploited on that show. That was part of Al Bundy's thing.
He liked hot women and they showed them all the time."
When fans would confront her about taking on a role in a sitcom that many viewed as chauvinistic,
Sagal explained that it was her job to interpret the role from a woman's perspective.
In doing so, she argued she was subverting its inherent sexism.
"It's not necessarily my belief system.
And my belief system has nothing to do with being an actor."
Although she acknowledged that the show was ultimately a satire,
she nonetheless believed it to be extremely exploitative.
When speaking with the Los Angeles Times in 1989,
Ed O'Neill, who played Al, addressed the sexism controversy. He argued that Al
Bundy was not a person that fans should look up to and aspire to be. He said:
"The last thing I think Al should be is a role model. [...] These characters are
just supposed to make people laugh, not teach or enlighten anyone."
In 1997, Married... With Children ended after 11 years on the air.
But it seems as though the show's stars were the last to find out.
Ed O'Neill recounted on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that after he went back home to Youngstown, Ohio,
a newlywed couple at the bed and breakfast where he was staying told him that Married...
With Children had been canceled, much to his surprise. He said that he joked with the couple:
"I'd rather hear it from you!"
And he wasn't the only cast member who was surprised to
find out about the sitcom's cancellation.
Christina Applegate said during an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live that she discovered
the show was canceled from a friend who had been listening to the radio. She disclosed:
"And then someone I knew had heard it on
'Kevin & Bean' and then called me to tell me that the show was canceled."
Not only did O'Neill and Applegate find out that the show had been axed from secondary sources,
but all the stars were reportedly cheated in a big way.
Although the actors were earning sizable paychecks while the series was on the air,
payments ran dry after it was canceled, with David Faustino admitting to Access that he
wasn't seeing a dime from Married... With Children reruns. He explained that since the
show was under a cable contract, the cast wasn't entitled to receive residuals. Faustino added:
"We got really screwed over. [...] Married With...
Children has made over a billion dollars, and we didn't really get a piece of that."
The feud between lowly shoe salesman Al Bundy and his super successful
yuppie neighbor Marcy resulted in many of Married... With Children's best one liners.
But it appears that Ed O'Neill and Marcy actor Amanda Bearse didn't get along at
all. And the two apparently engaged in a real feud toward the end of the series.
During a Q&A at Raleigh Supercon, Bearse was asked about her relationship with O'Neill,
and she replied:
"I follow the Thumper rule: if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all.
He was not happy towards the end of the series and so, that affected everything."
She noted that by the finale, she was directing most of the episodes,
which apparently displeased O'Neill.
Explaining that the pair initially got along really well, O'Neill revealed in an interview
that their relationship soured by the end of the show. He attributed this to her transforming from,
quote, "feminine and cute" to increasingly masculine as the series went on. He claimed:
"As she became more masculine, she became a little more snarky."
O'Neill also revealed that he and David Faustino didn't get invited to Bearse's
wedding. Bearse told the pair that they weren't invited because they
would ruin the ceremony by laughing at two women getting married in tuxedos.
Unlike most sitcoms that aired during the '80s and '90s,
Married... With Children was frequently met with controversy.
According to The New York Times, a woman named Terry Rakolta campaigned to boycott the show,
and she successfully got a number of advertisers to pull their ads from Fox. As Rakolta explained:
”I care that there are advertisers out there paying the freight for this. They're taking
my dollars and putting them into soft-core pornography.”
And the controversy didn't end there. The Season 3 episode "I'll See You in Court" ended up being cut
as it was deemed too sexually provocative. The plot centered around Al and Peg heading to a motel
and, unbeknownst to them, making a sex tape due to hidden cameras in the room.
It wasn't until 2004 that fans could finally watch the lost episode when it was released on DVD.
Despite Rakolta's efforts to have Married... With Children axed, the controversy ultimately
aided the show's ratings. Katey Sagal explained on the podcast WTF with Marc
Maron that they thanked Rakolta for inadvertently boosting the sitcom's popularity. She joked:
"We sent her flowers every year. She tried to get us off the air and all
it did was get us on the front of The New York Times. And it doubled our audience."
Peg Bundy was the sassy antidote to every housewife stereotype on TV:
Loud, brash, and unapologetically lascivious. But Katy Sagal, who superbly personified Peg, also had
an unconventional life. According to her memoir Grace Notes, the actor had struggled with drug use
since she was young, which began after a family doctor gave her diet pills when she was just 14.
Sagal recalled to ABC News that it was multiple family tragedies that worsened her addiction.
When she was 21, her mom died of a heart attack and a few years later,
her father was tragically killed in a helicopter accident while he was filming a TV series.
"He was…he died on a television set. He was actually killed in a helicopter accident."
She revealed:
"My way of dealing [with] things in the moment was to very much check out,
was to kind of anesthetize myself, numb myself."
Sagal tried to hide her drug addiction but her burgeoning acting career also motivated
her to get sober. One day, she met a woman on a TV set who was going through a similar
experience and her advice helped to completely transform Sagal's life.
Sagal discovered that sobriety was a pathway entirely within her grasp.
She revealed to Bustle that within just two months of getting sober, she landed her role on
Married...With Children. And the show aided her recovery from addiction. Sagal stated:
"I stayed sober, and watched all the people around me, and I learned how to do what I do now."