Today, we look at when (or if) you folks believe that Married…with Children “jumped the shark.”
This is “Just Can’t Jump It,” a feature where we examine shows and whether they “jumped the shark.” Jumped the shark (coined by Jon Hein) means that the show had a specific point in time where, in retrospect, you realize that show was going downhill from there (even if, in some rare occasions, the show later course-corrected). Not every show DOES jump the shark. Some shows just remain good all the way through. And some shows are terrible all the way through. What we’re looking for are moments where a show that you otherwise enjoyed hit a point where it took a noticeable nose dive after that time and if so, what moment was that?
Married…with Children was an extremely long-running sitcom about a dysfunctional family in the suburbs of Chicago. It was one of the first successful shows on Fox, and quickly became a hallmark of the channel, running for ELEVEN seasons. The cast is remarkable in that three of the four family members on the show have become highly acclaimed, award-winning actors, and yet the show itself was notable for just how DUMB it was. However, the fact of the matter is that when you’re setting out to do a dumb show, I wouldn’t call if jumping the shark to say that you achieved your goal. Married…with Children was not good television, but nor was it awful. It’s really amazing how long it stayed at a basically decent level of quality. Again, though, having three outstanding actors (Ed O’Neill as Al Bundy, the patriarch of the family, Katey Sagal as Peggy Bundy, Al’s wife and the mother of the two kids, Christina Applegate as Kelly Bundy, the airheaded oldest child and David Faustino as Bud Bundy, who was also on the show) helped a LOT.
So first…DID IT JUMP THE SHARK? I’d say so, yes.
WHEN DID IT JUMP THE SHARK Okay, there are a number of tricky things in this question. First off, again, I get it, the show was never particularly great, so if you wanted to say “Jumped at episode one,” then that’s an option. I’d disagree, but it’s an option. The show was originally a bit more true to life when it started, and the Bundy’s neighbors were Steve and Marcy Rhoades (David Garrison and Amanda Bearse). After four seasons, Garrison left the show and Marcy remarried to Jefferson Darcy (thus making her Marcy D’Arcy), played by Ted McGinley. Some people like to point to that as the shark jumping moment, because that’s about the time the show started getting sillier, but come on, it obviously was not the shark-jumping moment. The show was very well-equipped to become more cartoonish, as the characters all WERE cartoonish, even when they were more down to Earth. So it totally worked. Even if you preferred Garrison to Jefferson, Jefferson was fine (he and Al became best friends, opening up a new dynamic for the show, as Al and Steve tended to be more at odds with each other). A possibility is Season 7, when the Bundys sort of “adopt” Seven, a new cute kid. He was an AWFUL addition, but I think it is safe to say that the show KNEW that and quickly adjusted to the problem, dropping him midway through the seventh season, and the show went back to normal, so I think they averted a shark-jump there. Season 9 saw the addition of Al’s friend and co-worker, Griff (Harold Sylvester), who was an excellent addition to the show, giving Al TWO friends, each with very different personalities.
However, I think Season 10 finally did it, with the family dog, Buck, dying early in the season, Peggy’s mother inexplicably moves in with the Bundys after leaving Peg’s father, and, of course, Peggy missing half the season looking for her dad because of Sagal’s real life pregnancy. Things began to fall apart, and Season 11 was then likely the worst of the series. So I think Season 10 is the shark-jumping moment. Maybe Peggy’s quest to find her dad specifically? It’s honestly surprising how much I almost would say the show never jumped at all.
Let me know what you think in the comments or on social media!
Feel free to e-mail me at brian@poprefs.com for suggestions for shows to do in future installments!
The show was consistently funny even at its low moments
The first time Al said “Let’s rock” and the audience erupted.
I have always been a fan of “MARRIED…WITH CHILDREN” though I do agree it was always deliberately lowbrow (even if I always respected that they didn’t chase trends with “very special episodes” like virtually every sitcom did during the 80s and 90s, even other “white trash” shows like “ROSEANNE”). It also went through phases and got more “cartoony” and over the top as the seasons went along, even if it was always quite exaggerated.
Many fans do claim that the introduction of Jefferson D’Arcy (Ted McGinley) as the replacement for Steve Rhodes (David Garrison) during Season 4 (1989-1990) as a “jumping off point,” especially since McGinley’s career is full of those. But I would disagree and I also am with Brian, saying the show was still funny on its own terms during Jefferson’s tenure. I do have a theory; that Steve Rhodes would have wound up where Jefferson wound up, had Garrison remained. At the end of the third season and beginning in the fourth, Steve Rhodes had been fired as a banker and decided he didn’t like working anymore (or when he did, he pursued a love for animals to get a low wage job at a pet store or to go on endless zoo trips with Peggy and the kids instead of looking for work). I think that was when the show’s producers and writers liked the idea of Marcy having a husband who didn’t work so she could be a parallel to Al (and especially for Al to be a hypocrite and befriend a “freeloading” husband while hating his wife for doing the same thing). Once Garrison left, it was decided to just have D’Arcy come in as a trophy husband (though later episodes revealed that D’Arcy was an ex-CIA agent who’d served time after using his position to run a white collar scheme, which Al, of course, bought into). But I could be wrong.
I agree introducing Seven (during season 7 from 1992-1993) was a desperate attempt to shake things up, but the producers realized it wasn’t working and abandoned him within that season (and mocked themselves with references). Even as the show was almost a live action cartoon by this point, it still was producing some hilarious fare. And I don’t think MWC gets enough credit for correctly predicting the MRA (Men’s Rights Activist) movement with Al’s “NO MA’AM” group in season 8. Most of Al’s friends debuted that season, although there’s been attempts to get Al a “sidekick of color” at the shoe store since Season 8’s “Scared Single,” when they introduced the minor reoccurring character of Aaron Mitchell (Hill Harper). He appeared in 5 episodes as a current version of what Al once was, a guy who was peaking in high school. For whatever reason he left or the show dropped him, and in season 9 they introduced Griff (Harold Sylvester, a somewhat more well known character actor with quite a few film credits before that).
Even as a fan of the show who likes (and owns) the entire run, I do admit that some of the luster was off the series by around season eight or nine. The plots were just getting too cartoony even for the show’s terms. But since I liked Tim Conway as Peggy’s father, especially since that was one of his last reoccurring live action roles in TV. Conway had reoccurring voicework (and would pop up in some films or direct to video features) and turn up in live sitcoms for guest spots, but MWC was the last time he played a reoccurring character in a live sitcom throughout a season.
So, yeah, my long winded way of agreeing with Brian that Season 10, Episode 3, “Requiem For A Briard,” is a good spot for a shark jump. In real life, it was done for a fair reason; to allow the canine actor to retire after 70 dog years. But even in the episode itself, it is pretty bonkers. Buck’s soul goes to Heaven, only God is a cat who decides to zap him into the body of a new dog the Bundys adopt named Lucky. I guess you could say it was a late spoof of “ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN,” but that is being very generous. And while I do like season 11’s “Damn Bundys” (which guest starred Robert Englund as the Devil), I’d agree that even on the show’s terms, most of the episodes of seasons 10-11 kind of glaze over and it’s clear the show was running on fumes. So, yeah, blame it on Lucky.