How does a family sitcom manage to portray innocent subjects like camping trips,
parental advice, and even the film "It's A Wonderful Life" in a way that
wouldn't fly today? "Married… With Children" has plenty of examples.
It seems as though men in the '80s thought the only places that sold bras were sex shops, because
in Season 3, Episode 6, "Her Cups Runneth Over," the scene is written like a teenager's sexual
fantasy. Al freaks out when tasked with buying a bra for his wife. Eager for the experience,
his friend Steve joins, and of course, every woman in the place is a scantily clad Playboy Bunny
type. Seeing that the show is a raunchy comedy aimed towards men, the overall fantasy element
could make sense in that context. The blatant objectification of women, however, is surprising.
When Al is asked for his wife's cup size,
he holds his hands millimeters from a woman's breasts for comparison, and she doesn't seem
to think it's inappropriate. The camera then looks the saleswoman up and down as Al says,
"Let's see the Japanese build a better one of those."
Moments later, Al catches Steve poking at a mannequin's breasts,
and Steve responds with a line that certainly wouldn't fly today:
"Aw, come on, Al. She was asking for it. You see how she's dressed."
It's not just that Al Bundy doesn't find overweight women attractive — he
openly shames and ridicules them. Bundy's fat shaming one-liners became a staple of the show,
but we're surprised the tasteless gag kept running deep into its final season. In Season 11,
Episode 9, "Crimes Against Obesity," years of insensitive jokes that Bundy hurled at the shoe
store's female customers come to a head as an army of his past targets march through his door,
tie him to a chair, and put him on trial for, you guessed it — crimes against obesity. Al's
zingers are obviously problematic, but the fact that the show doesn't take the
opportunity to have the character see the error of his ways really doubles down on the
hurtful message that would not fly in a 2020 landscape. After the judge yells for order,
the women instinctively yell fast food orders like "Big Mac" and "Filet-O-Fish." Later, Peg
testifies that her obese mother ate her Aunt Edna because she was standing too close to some pies.
By Season 7, "Married... With Children" was delving deeper into the '90s — a decade that
was starting to become known for its more progressive views, at least compared to the
notoriously conservative 1980s. In Season 7, Episode 23, Peg, who doesn't even have a job,
gets fired up over undocumented people taking all the jobs. She tells Al,
"Why, every day, more illegal immigrants — some of whom speak English —
are out there flooding the job market."
She then continues by delivering an unflattering, stereotypical impersonation.
Later in the episode, Al's new boss introduces him to
his Indian coworkers. After that, Al tells them,
"I was selling shoes when you guys were just a gleam in a New York taxicab driver's eyes."
The AV Club reported of Al Bundy,
"He was more openly bigoted than Archie Bunker and more skeptical
of the people around him than George Jefferson."
What should have been Season 3's 10th episode, "I'll See You in Court," freaked out the Fox
Network's standards and practices department so badly that it ended up being pulled from
the air altogether. Commonly referred to as "the lost episode," it wound up
airing on FX in 2002 — the timing of which makes a little more sense given
the popularity of nonconsensual sex tape-related humor during that era.
One of the questionable scenes begins with Peg and Al visiting a seedy motel to spice up their
love life. The couple stumbles upon a sex tape of their neighbors Marcy and Steve, and after having
sex themselves, they realize that the motel has hidden cameras set up to secretly film people
engaging in intercourse. When the Bundys sue the motel, the court rules against them after judging
that their tape was only a few seconds long and could not technically be considered sex.
Since this scene takes place during Season 9, Episode 10,
by this point fans had almost a decade of experience with the show's flip-flopping
between surprising sensitivity and rigid views on anything that strayed from heteronormative
behavior. The aforementioned bra shopping scene includes a huge laugh at the idea of
men being married to each other. And while a gay man tries on a tiara, Al remarks,
"And they wonder why we call them queens."
As archaic as these jokes seem today, some may find them pretty tame compared to the
show's treatment of a post-op trans woman. The main plot of the episode
"Dud Bowl" is a reunion of Al's high school football team. When Al's old quarterback,
Thad, arrives at the door in a dress, the football team looks horrified and
the crowd erupts in laughter. Peg is happy to see Thad, but Al blurts out,
"Thad, you look… like a freakin' woman!"
Thinking that Thad is pulling a prank, Al needs proof that Thad has transitioned,
and—in an utterly shocking move by any standard—actually reaches down and pulls up
Thad's dress in front of the entire football team. What would now be widely considered humiliating,
demeaning, and illegal, is laughed off by Thad and buttoned with Al's joke,
"We all get tired of our cars too, but we don't rip the doors off."
Not only is this scene deeply offensive, but it ends with a clumsy, confusing metaphor.
The stigma surrounding breastfeeding in public was alive and well at Gary's
Shoes. And the scene in question ironically opens as Al and Griff
are about to expose themselves for a measuring contest in an open,
well-lit store. But then a customer walks in to interrupt, because clearly full-frontal male
nudity wasn't going to take place on network television. Then a woman with a baby walks in,
and when she starts breastfeeding, Al tells her to shut it off. Griff follows by telling her,
"Ooze on down the road."
The Season 9 episode, "Business Sucks," aired in 1994, and as USA Today reported, it would take
almost 25 years for public breastfeeding to be declared legal in all 50 states.
When Season 5, Episode 2 aired in 1990, the then-unknown Pamela Anderson had only shown
up in a few bit parts on television. She was still about a year away from booking a
recurring role on "Home Improvement" and two years from her breakout role on "Baywatch."
In the episode, Al and Kelly Bundy pretend to be sick to avoid visiting Peggy's mom.
Al could not be more thrilled to enjoy some alone time, but
Kelly spoils his staycation by actually getting sick and becoming very needy.
The numerous moments that the show couldn't get away with today kick off when Al watches an
episode of a show called "Psycho Dad." From there, he fantasizes about — and even mimes — shooting
Peg in the head for not cooking. In a dream, he and a beautiful woman, played by Anderson,
begin fooling around while he gropes his pillow in reality. Seeking comfort, a very
ill Kelly interrupts the fantasy by jumping on her father. While his daughter is lying on his chest,
Al asks himself what the Psycho Dad would do and then continues making out with his pillow.
We're not surprised that Al Bundy and his strip club-frequenting buddies started a men's rights
activist group, but we do wonder how all that unapologetic sexism got on television. NO MA'AM,
the National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood,
was founded by Bundy in Season 8 after women's bowling night replaced men's
bowling night and their local strip club started hosting women's poetry night.
At one point, NO MA'AM takes over a beloved female-driven talk show to give their demands,
"You gals want a ladies night? Try having it in the kitchen, cooking for a man."
The men continue by making several more demands,
including some related to activities in the bedroom.
In retaliation, Amanda Bearse's character, Marcy D'Arcy, starts F.A.N.G — Feminists
Against Neanderthal Guys. This becomes one of the show's best ongoing feuds,
partially because, much like their characters, Bearse and O'Neill had issues getting along.
Off-screen, things got tense after O'Neill wasn't invited to Bearse's wedding. He asked
her to explain, and she told him she didn't think he'd take it seriously.
In a chat with the Archive of American Television, he recalled asking Bearse,
"What is funny about two women in tuxedos walking down the church aisle?"
O'Neill went on to share that Bearse was probably not wrong for excluding
him because ultimately he had thought it was funny.
During the fourth season of "Married... With Children," which aired between 1989 and 1990,
Sam Kinison was one of the biggest comedians in America. Producers thought his loud,
abrasive style was perfect for the show, so he was given a guest appearance in the
season's two-part Christmas special, "It's a Bundyful Life." In the two-part episode,
he played Al's guardian angel sent to show him a world where he doesn't exist.
This spicy parody of "It's A Wonderful Life" has Al and Kinison walking around Al's much
classier and happier family in an alternate reality. After stating that he's depressed,
Kinison takes advantage of an unsuspecting Peg by grabbing her butt. Al doesn't protest the action
in any way or remind Kinison about consent laws. After committing this sexual assault,
Kinison delves into a rant about his ex-wife before disappearing.
The show and the hysterically cheering audience may have thought this was acceptable at the time,
but what kind of message did this send to young men? Not that they would stumble upon
a woman existing in an alternate reality, but this highest form of objectification
sends the unacceptable signal that an unsuspecting woman's body is free game.
In Season 3, Episode 4, "The Camping Show," the Bundys go camping with Steve and Marcy,
and things take an unexpected turn when Peg, Marcy, and Kelly's menstrual cycles line up.
As reported by Indiewire, the episode, originally titled "A Period Piece," went unaired for a month
while producers and network executives discussed the finer points of handling the sensitive topic.
It might not seem like a taboo subject by today's standards, but in the late '80s, this
was uncharted territory. Co-creator Michael Moye admitted to The Archive of American Television,
"I did not know — and neither did Al — that when young women are together for extended
periods of time, after a while, their cycles sync up. I had no idea of this."
Moye went on to explain that the episode was permitted to air because two female
staff members confirmed that this was common knowledge among female viewers. The show could
have been praised for tackling the subject, but since male creators and writers took the baton,
we see nagging, man-hating grouches whose "condition" attracts wild animals.
We've focused pretty heavily on Al Bundy's faults, but make no mistake,
Peg can be quite deplorable herself. To give the show some originality credit,
most sitcoms of the era portrayed the husband as a complete slob and the wife
as a straight-laced moral compass who keeps their series grounded in reality.
To feed into the show's overall misogynistic stereotypes, Peg is portrayed as a lazy
housewife who'd rather watch TV and shop than keep house and care for the children.
No episode encapsulates this better than Season 4's "Raingirl." In the episode,
Peg has a shameful woman-to-woman talk with her daughter Kelly, telling her,
"When your husband comes home, reeking of beer, wanting some loving,
you'll follow that fat rump upstairs, because you'll know that no matter how
disgusting the next three minutes will be, it still beats the hell out of work."
Airing in the late '80s, this episode carries the inappropriate message that if a woman traps
herself in a loveless marriage, she never has to work an unpleasant job ever again.