Here’s some bad news, for the stars of the show, at least. Sometimes before the last season, news broke that Fox network had canceled the show and wouldn’t be renewing it after 1997. What was even more shocking is that the stars themselves weren’t informed about the cancellation properly. In fact, Ed O’Neill and Christina Applegate learned that they won’t be playing their characters anymore from a couple that O’Neill went on the vacation as he did and from one of Applegate’s friends respectively. Ouch.
For Married… with Children, all the bad publicity was one of the main reasons why it became madly successful. During the show’s 3rd season, family values activist Terry Rakolta was one of the many people who wrote to the show’s sponsors and asked them to withdraw their support in order to help stop it from airing. Needless to say, it didn’t work and all the media attention made the show even more famous.
One of the longest-running gags in the show was the misspelling of Al’s last name. He was Al Bundy, Al Bumby, and even Al Birdy.
Married… with Children went on to become one of the best American sitcoms in the history of television, running for 11 years with over 250 episodes. It even featured a long list of very talented actors and actresses who would later become huge award-winning Hollywood stars. And yet, the show only got several nominations (at the Golden Globes and Primetime Emmy Awards) and never bagged an actual award.
Ed O’Neill was already pretty well known by the time he starred as Al Bundy on Married… with Children in 1987. He started acting on television in 1970 when he was cast as one of the extras on All My Children in 1970. Thanks to those two hit TV sitcoms, he built a good foundation for his acting career and is now a member of the lead cast on America’s best sitcom, Modern Family.