Best Comedy TV (Part 3)

Married… With Children
This show was never supposed to be popular, with its unrelievedly hostile approach to the subject matter.  And yet it was, enormously so, perhaps as an antidote to all the saccharine TV families that had gone before, with their wise mothers, irascible yet good-natured fathers and spunky but lovable children.  Instead, we got Ed Neil’s snarling loser father, Al Bundy, his slatternly non-housewife partner Peg (Katey Sagal), with snarky sex-starved son Bud (David Faustino) and the slutty daughter Kelly (Christine Applegate).  When I first watched this show, I spent much of the time helpless with open-jawed laughter, and it became one of the very few TV shows I looked forward to each week.  And while I loved the buxom Peg, I have to admit that young Kelly Bundy turned me into a Dirty Old Man every time she flounced onto the screen.  I don’t think that I’m alone in this, either.

7 comments

  1. I think it became OK to perv on Christina Applegate in season 3, after she became 18. My wife disagrees.

    It’s the only sitcom for which I have the entire series on DVD. Once in a while I play a few episodes and laugh like an idiot.

  2. Applegate was a luscious young lass and I don’t think you are a dirty old man if you appreciate everything about her nubile, sexy character on the show. To me it was kind of like one of those really big BMW motorcycles, at the time the show was on TV I was in my late 40’s early 50’s and while I like looking at racy things like Christina and BMWs there was no way I really wanted to get on one and ride it.

    1. Oh dear, I hope you’re wrong, because year before last, at age 64, I finally broke down and bought an absurdly big, powerful Honda crotch rocket.

      The wife gritted her teeth and absorbed the blow, but a 16 year old blonde…. No, no, no, not even I am that stupid.

  3. Good for you Fred Z, I have some friends in their 60’s who, like you know what they are doing with a motorcycle, just not me since it has been about 55 years since I was on one.

  4. One of my favorites. The irreverent humor was right up my alley.

    And Ms Applegate? Suffices to say, she stoked my young imagination.

  5. My favorite too – and I still watch re-runs occasionally. Some of the stuff on political correctness is more relevant now than it was 25 years ago.

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