I distinctly remember an episode of the show ‘Married…With Children’ where Al Bundy repeatedly rapes Peggy Bundy. Of course, they didn’t actually show Al’s penis being forced into Peggy’s vagina, but the ‘hints’ surrounding the events were obvious enough that anyone could immediately recognize what was going on.
The setting of the episode in question was on a Labor Day weekend. It was the episode where the ‘big joke’ was that everyone was eating hamburgers that contained the ashes of one of Marcy’s deceased relatives. I don’t recall every detail, as this was an older episode with the original Steve, not Jefferson, playing Marcy’s husband, probably from 1989 or 1990.
But the rape part was rather obvious. In one scene, after Al had had several beers, he is watching Peggy bending over to cleaning a bench, wiggling her butt. He grabs her as she cries and pleads for him to stop, saying ‘Oh no, not again!’ as she is still sore and exhausted from their previous encounters. The audience laughs and cheers as he hauls her off to the bedroom once again.
Aren’t there censors that are supposed to screen out this type of thing from network television? How could such a show have aired without being pulled?? I know for a fact that it wasn’t, as I remember seeing it rebroadcast a few times. Why didn’t this create a storm of controversy???
09/03/89 “HOT OFF THE GRILL” (401)
Michael G. Moye & Ron Leavitt
The Bundys’ fourth season begins with a Labor Day barbecue, a major
turn-on for Al, as is the sight of Peggy laboring mightily to make
everything just right for his creation of “special” Bundy burgers.
Unfortunately, one of the special ingredients turns out to be the
ashes of Marcy’s dead aunt.
*Al is sitting on the beach chair. Peggy is scrubbing the table.
PEGGY I hate you, Al. I really, really hate you. You know, a gentleman would have said,
“Thanks for the good time, babe. Let me clean that bird doody while you rest.”
But not you. You are a pig, Al. And my arms are killing me.
Al is transfixed on Peggy’s gyrating butt again.
AL Scrub harder.
PEGGY Oh, it still won’t come off… Somebody help me.
Al appears behind Peggy.
PEGGY Don’t just sit there, do something.
Al taps Peggy on her shoulder and a horrified look appears on Peg’s face. Al indicates a
‘2nd time’ to Peg, and Peggy clings onto the table as Al drags her away.
I remember that episode made me into a huge David Garrison fan. When Steve found out that Aunt Toodie’s ashes had been used to cook the burgers, and he was horrified, then broke into a huge grin and took a vengeful giant bite of the burger–wow. He’s great on stage, too, caught him at the Williamstown Theater Festival as Carr in Stoppard’s TRAVESTIES in August and he’s even skinnier with silver hair and looks great and—what?
Oh yeah. Nearly ten years as a diehard MWC fan and I have NEVER heard this complaint. Al would never hurt Peggy like that. It was a parody of all those times Peg did the exact same thing to him; hell, in the very first season Peg was trying to drag Al upstairs in EXACTLY the same way, with her yelling, “I want a beautiful expression of our love, dammit!” It’s a rough show sometimes but not that rough. Relax.
I remeber this episode. In the end, when they all find out that the aunts ash’s were in the burgers everyone was eating, they all gagged and spit it out. Except for Al, because he hated her, he smiled and took another big bite of the burger.
The only episode I thought was a mistake was when Al was dreaming he was sleeping with a beautiful blonde, but the model they chose to play this anonymous woman looked rather a lot like Christina Applegate. And the audience thought so too, judging by their reaction.
I watched an interview with one of the creators of the show. He described a meeting with some head honcho at a network and it was so funny! Apparently this mucky-muck was reading the scripts and told the two guys, “Look, you can get away with this, I think, but you are going to have to have something in here so we know that deep down under all this hostility the characters really do love each other.”
He said he and his buddy looked at the guy, then yelled, “You, sir, are the reason television sucks!” and walked right out of the office. Heh. Too cool.
They ended up putting it on Fox of course, which was a winning move for Fox.
Funny, I always had the impression that deep down, the charcters did love each other, or at least there was loyalty. I remember one scene in which the daughter gets her heart broken by some jerk, says “Get him, Daddy”, and Al nods and promptly beats the crap out of the guy.
It was always a relief, though, that the love (or whatever sick variant the Bundys had) was never sappy.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I suppose they didn’t want to be forced to insert any sappy claptrap to offset the definite loathing they had for one another. They were able to keep it as that sick Bundy variant of “love,” which was probably the point he was making.
