One episode of season three in 1989, entitled “I’ll See You in Court,” was refused to be broadcast by Fox because it had racy content. Even by Married With Children standards! At the time, Terry Rakolta (Mitt Romney’s sister), who was a Michigan housewife, was attacking the show. She even paid for advertisements telling people not to support the show. The first damage she did was a letter writing campaign that disabled the show’s funding and postponed the banned episode forever.
The producers of the sitcom definitely fought back. Some parts of the episode were changed and, in 2002, the episode was finally released on FX, and the wait was finally over. In case you were wondering, the episode featured a model whom Al Bundy was eyeing.
Mixing Plots
Ed O’Neill appeared in the 1991 movie, Dutch . A typical comedy-drama film about a working class man who volunteered to drive his girlfriend’s teenage son from his school to his mom’s house, with the intention of getting to know him. The trip led to some mishaps, but later on to bonding, and of course, the two became close.
The movie was pointed out twice on the sitcom Married With Children . It was certainly intentional, in order to promote the movie. One time was when Al was on an airplane, and another when he and his wife Peggy rented a movie to watch together at home.
Many Emmy Nominations
Married With Children was nominated for an Emmy award, not just once, but seven times. Unfortunately, they never actually took an award home to Jeopardy Lane! It was hard to believe, because the show was very successful. The same goes for Baywatch . These two are the only shows that never won the award despite the fact that they were running for so long.
As a very successful show, Married With Children really deserved an Emmy award. It can be hard to understand why it didn’t take one home, because many people loved the show, and it was consistently popular over its ten year run. It might be because of the controversies? We’ll probably never know for sure.
The Fake Dodge
Much like Visa being displayed as Vista, some of the lesser known facts of the show are just unbelievable. The sitcom had a number of uncanny objects and artifacts which just did not match up to reality. One example of this is that the Bundys' ‘mighty Dodge’ was not actually a Dodge.
If you look carefully, it’s actually a vinyl top, 1972 Plymouth Duster. On the show, it was always referred to as a Dodge, even though it was a Plymouth. The two cars belong to the same company and, to be fair, they do look pretty much the same, but it still made for a bit of confusion among car-loving fans of the show. Again, we wonder whether it was done on purpose or just an honest mistake.
Ed O'Neil's Real-Life Muse
No matter how talented the actors are, they need inspiration, so they may portray their roles with excellence and as realistically as possible. If you want to create a character and make it your own, the easiest place to search for a good background story is within your family.
This is what Ed O’Neill did to practice and research for his role as Al Bundy. His best inspiration was his very own family. His role model was his Uncle Joe, who had very similar characteristics to Al Bundy. This close family connection helped him interpret the role of Al as naturally and effortlessly as he did.