Ten things I know…

I love Married… With Children. Maybe the show doesn’t seem as daring today as it did twenty years ago (good Lord, it’s actually been twenty-one!), but at the time, there was nothing like it on television. In fact, despite dozens of copy-cats and pretenders, there’s never been anything quite like Married… With Children, since. Whatever your opinion on the show, there is no doubt that Married… With Children changed the television landscape forever. Along with its effect on television in general, Married… With Children was also the show that launched the Fox Network. Al, Peggy, Kelly and Bud are the first family of Fox, and the first original show produced by the fledgling network that has come to be a worldwide media powerhouse.

Married… With Children is crass, often tasteless, and frequently politically incorrect, but, damn it, it’s also hilarious. I think the real genius of the show is that it somehow managed to deal with politically incorrect crass tastelessness with intelligence. Yes, I just said Married… With Children is intelligent. A cliched sex joke is never just a cliched sex joke on this show, it always has deeper waters beneath it. This became increasingly true as the show progressed, the characters developed, and the relationships became more complex. Married… With Children is one of few shows that I believe really did get better with time, almost up until the last episode. Sure, there were a few bumps in the road, and the awful stretch of episodes featuring Seven, but the show is as close to perfect as anything else I’ve seen on American television.

I could go on for days about why I believe Married… With Children is so fantastic, and maybe I will in another post at another time, but this article is about Al Bundy, the put-upon patriarch of the Bundy clan. Al, whose time as king of his high school and dreams of football glory dead-ended in a reality of eking out a living by selling shoes to angry, overweight women, while absorbing abuse from his unsympathetic family. Al Bundy, who has dabbled in film making, invention, gambling, merchandising, and more, always to land back at Gary’s Shoes, with the unmistakable Al Bundy grimace on his mug. As I was returning home yesterday from an afternoon of taking pictures at a local state park, my mind took one of those weird, meandering routes that led from f-stop settings on my camera to me having an epiphany about who Al Bundy really is. After two decades of watching Married… With Children, and thinking the show had just about given me everything it could, I suddenly realized something about Al that I had never realized before, something that put much of his behavior into a new light. That revelation, which will be revealed in the next section, led me to write this post.

Here, for you to take as you will, are Ten Things I Know About Al Bundy, which are also

Ten Things You Should Know About
Al Bundy

• 10: Al Bundy is not dumb.
  Despite the constant denigration of Al’s mental faculties by other characters on the show, Al Bundy is not actually a stupid man. Yes, Al makes a lot of poor decisions and he isn’t necessarily up on all the latest political intrigues, but it isn’t from a lack from intelligence. Al’s world has shrunk to where it really only encompasses his day-to-day struggle to get by, and he simply doesn’t have the time or inclination to read word-a-day calenders. Another part of Al’s personality which also gets him into a lot of trouble and sometimes makes him look a bit dim, will put in an appearance later in this list. Al is a bright man with a lot of potential which has been mostly flushed down the toilet his life has become.
• 9: Al Bundy is living in the wrong era.
  Many of the things that make Al poorly suited to life in modern(ish) America would have made him a king in some other periods of history. Al is uncouth and violent, not the least bit afraid of confrontation. Al is also a problem-solver, and, although his solutions often fail, it is often due to #8. Al is ready, willing, and able to protect what little he has, and, in another time, Al’s alpha-male behavior would have been an asset. Unfortunately for Al Bundy, his act-first mentality , his penchant for saying what he really thinks, and his lack of respect for consequences, all work against him in the world he’s forced to live in.
• 8: Al Bundy is cursed.
  If ever there was a man who truly is being singled out for abuse by the Universe, it’s Al Bundy. Even when Al gets it right, makes all the right decisions, and seems to be on his way to success, there is invariably some last-minute intervention by fate. Fate, for Al Bundy, is a malevolent force, an enemy soldier that constantly has his boot on Al’s neck. Al struggles on, anyway, against overwhelming odds and the irresistible power of a universe that wants only to see him fail. In one episode, we find that Al is literally cursed, going to back to the Old Country, where a Bundy antecedent angered a local witch and doomed male Bundys in perpetuity.
• 7: Al Bundy loves his family.
  Amazingly, there can be no doubt about this if you’ve watched enough of the show. Despite the constant friction between Al and his wife and children, Bundy again and again shows that he won’t tolerate poor treatment of his family members. Although Al often handles his children’s complaints and personal issues in a perfunctory manner, if they are persistent enough or if the issue is important enough, Al can be relied on to do his thick-skulled best to make things right. When Al bounces one of Kelly’s dates from his house, or takes Bud to the nudie bar for the boy’s birthday, we can see that Al does, in fact, love his children. Likewise, the extreme lengths that Al occasionally goes to to give Peg a special anniversary or birthday, show how he truly feels about her. Finally, although Al has had several opportunities to leave his wife and family for women and circumstances of varying attractiveness, he always refuses and comes home in the end. In one of my favorite scenes, Al says to Peggy and the kids, “It would be like losing one of you guys, or, Peg, it would be like trading you in on a brand new blond with shiny, new, smooth, factory-warranted hooters. Aw, sure, the first few rides would nice and everything, but, in the long run, and this, Peg, is what depresses me every day, I realize that… you’re the one I want.”
• 6: Nobody could have done Al Bundy better than Ed O’Neill.
  Yes, there are literally billions of people on this planet, and that was true in 1987, too. I still feel confident in saying that none of the billions of other people on the planet could have played Al Bundy as well as Ed O’Neill. The facial expressions, the increasingly slumped posture, the anguished cries, everything Ed O’Neill did in his creation and execution of Al Bundy was absolutely perfect. Ed O’Neill, in fact, was drafted and later cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers, which was the genesis of the recurring football glory angle on the show. I don’t think there is anything that Ed O’Neill, or anyone else, could have done to make Al Bundy more perfect, more fitting to his circumstances. There are only a handful of television characters that, in my opinion, absolutely could not have been played by anyone else. Among them are Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers, Dick Solomon from Third Rock from the Sun, and Edmund Blackadder from the Blackadder series of television shows. That’s pretty illustrious company, and Al Bundy deserves his spot among them.
• 5: Al Bundy’s family loves him.
  Although his family is rude, disrespectful, and unhelpful, they love their daddy. This is shown less often than Al’s affection for them, but it is there. Witness the episode where Bud and Kelly nearly kill themselves trying to surprise Al with the gift of a jukebox. Any single episode of Married… With Children is likely to give the impression of a horrible family without any true love or affection between the members, but those of us who have watched more closely know different. In the worst instances, where Peg and Bud and Kelly seem willing to let something awful happen to Al, it never comes to pass and there is always a feeling of doubt, that, at the last second, the family almost certainly would have come to his rescue.
• 4: Al Bundy, and by extension, Ed O’Neill, made that show.
  Although the show could have been amusing without Al, it could never have been the brilliant farce that it is without Al. Many shows have characters that come and go, sometimes even a main character. Occasionally those shows survive, sometimes they limp along for a while before dying off, and sometimes they even thrive. Al Bundy, however, is absolutely essential to Married… With Children. Not only the character of Al Bundy, but Al Bundy as executed by Ed O,Neill. There could be no Married… With Children without Al, and no Al without Ed O’Neill. Although Kelly and Bud and Peg are important to the show, it is conceivable that they could have been recast, replaced or even eliminated without destroying the show, but losing Al would have been unrecoverable.
• 3: Al Bundy’s life is a cautionary tale.
  Time and again, Al is seen to brood over the decisions that shaped his life. Al was a popular jock at his high school, a leader, successful with women, admired by his peers, and generally expected to go on to greater things. If you watch carefully, you can occasionally find a legitimate nugget of wisdom as Al reflects on the mistakes he’s made and how popularity in school translates into real life.
• 2: Al Bundy, in many ways, is a good man.
  Al has had multiple opportunities to cheat on his wife, but he has not. Al has had multiple opportunities to escape his family, and potentially to live a more glamorous and exciting life, but he has remained at home. Although Al tries to get over on the odd insurance company, he is mostly an honest man, passing up, among other opportunities, the chance to walk out of a bank vault with cash and bonds, and a shot at scamming a new car from a car wash. Despite their abuse, lack of contribution, and lack of respect, Al continues to provide for his family, and to include them in his rare successes.
• 1: Al Bundy is an optimist!
  This is the revelation that led to the writing of this blog entry. Despite a lifetime of losing, forty-odd years of being spit on by fate and chance, constant beatings at the hands of the universe, and the never-ending misery of his life, Al Bundy continues to believe something better is coming. When Al and Kelly made their masterpiece film, Sheos, Al was convinced the film would change his life. When Al designed the shoe lights, he was certain that this was the invention that would make him rich, that the people of the world were just dying to have headlights on their footwear. Al believes he can fight city hall and win, because he still believes in his power as an individual. Time and again, Al is convinced that this time, despite decades of disappointment, this time, he is going to come out on top. Much like a puppy, Al always seems to expect the best. Even when Al says he is expecting the worst, it can often be seen that he is just trying to buffer himself against disappointment, that he really believes things are going to go his way this time. Al’s spirit is indomitable; sometimes it goes into hiding, but it never goes away and always just around the corner is another chance for Al to change his life, and he always takes that chance because he always believes he can win.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 4:44 pm and is filed under TTIK About.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.