The inaugural program broadcast during FOX's primetime debut on April 5th, 1987, Married… With Children became a pillar for the upstart network, running continuously on Sunday nights for a decade. Rising from low-ratings to a respectable 37th place overall during its sixth year, decreasing viewership saw the show unexpectedly canceled after 11 seasons in 1997. When last seen in the “official” series finale, the Bundy family survived a hostage situation spurred on by son Bud's prison pen pal and her charming but clueless boyfriend Lonnie. When the debacle was resolved, daughter Kelly and Lonnie found themselves in love and set to wed. Family patriarch Al, however, began to question Lonnie's integrity and the wedding was called off at the last minute.
Neither Married... With Children's creative team nor cast considered this a true series finale, most learning of the sudden cancellation secondhand after news had already broken. With the show having essentially become a live-action cartoon for most of its run, the recent announcement of an animated return is particularly fitting. More importantly, it gives Married... With Children and its fans a second chance after its undignified original end.
An atypically dysfunctional family sitcom for the era, Married... With Children focused on the trials and tribulations of the Bundys: Long-suffering shoe salesman husband Al (Ed O'Neill), bonbon-chomping wife Peggy (Katey Segal), and their children, the ambitious but bubble-headed Kelly (Dead To Me's Christina Applegate) and clever but luckless Bud (David Faustino). Joining this motley crew were upwardly mobile neighbors Marcy and Steve Rhoades (Amanda Bearse and David Garrison). After the latter departed to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a park ranger, Marcy would marry the artful Jefferson D'Arcy (Ted McGinley), becoming known thereafter as Marcy D'Arcy.
Married... With Children was never meant to accurately reflect the realities of working class America akin to Roseanne Barr's eponymous 1980s sitcom. The series pushed the perceived boundaries of good taste while keeping to a certain reality that nevertheless became increasingly strained over time, such as when the family cooked a single M&M in a frying pan as a meal or Al eagerly called brown tap-water "Bundy Ice Tea." A magnet for controversy, the show became a target for protests and boycotts over its depiction of a less-than-perfect family and subject matter that frequently veered toward risque and misogynistic elements.
While the two-part "The Desperate Half-Hour" and "How To Marry a Moron" were promoted as the end of Married... With Children's 250+ episode run in May 1997, a final installment -- the unremarkable "Chicago Shoe Exchange" -- aired the following month. The cast and crew would later express their frustration with the network's handling of the finale and how the send-off was essentially an afterthought. This would be partly rectified in subsequent years, beginning with a 2003 reunion special reassembling the cast on the original set and later during the FOX 25th Anniversary Special in 2012, an occasion that saw the pilot rebroadcast in prime time, cementing its importance to FOX's original launch.
Looking back at Married... With Children with the hindsight of decades of television, even its most scandalous episode seems comparatively quaint. It does, however, provide a perfect template for an adult animated series in the vein of Seth MacFarlane's various small-screen offerings, making it all the more appropriate longtime Family Guy writer and producer Alex Carter is developing the new incarnation. Whether the new series proves to be a continuation or reboot, in any case it will finally give a measure of closure to an important situation comedy that unequivocally changed the television landscape.