Ron Leavitt
Every sitcom in the 1980s handed out lessons like candy. Married… with Children handed out nothing but truth. Michael Moye and Ron Leavitt built a show where nobody evolved, nobody apologized, and nobody became a better person next week, and that’s exactly why audiences fell in love with the Bundys.
The craziest ideas on our show didn’t come from some Hollywood formula. They came from a room full of fearless writers who Bundy-fied everything they’d ever lived through.
Kelly’s date abandons her on a dark road for refusing him, and calls her a tramp on his way out. Walking home she meets other girls left there for the same reason. Al and Peg try to save their marriage by talking, and Bud gets a date with a girl who has measles.
Al watches Shenandoah, declares a mandatory Bundy Sunday Funday, and the car runs out of gas on the way. The family then runs up twelve dollars of unpaid snacks, and Al has to work the debt off pumping gas in somebody else’s coveralls. The Swedish Bikini Team turn up, collect Bud and drive away.
Al takes a night job cleaning a private investigator’s office and, when a client walks in, declines to correct her. The episode’s ending reveals that the entire opening stretch of season six was Al’s dream — the series’ largest single retcon.
Marcy and Jefferson announce that they are expecting, and Al is delighted at Jefferson’s misfortune right up until Peg tells him the Bundys are expecting too. Al’s hair starts falling out. Part one of the season 6 premiere, and the most-watched episode the series ever aired.
Kelly becomes the Weenie Tot spokesmodel and the family receives a year’s supply, which turns out to include a winning fifty thousand dollar sweepstakes card. The catch is that employees and their families are ineligible. So Al and Peg draft Marcy and Jefferson into claiming it for them.
Al cannot stop thinking about a song he heard on the radio and can hum but not name, and nobody will help him. Meanwhile Kelly brings home a new boyfriend, Vinnie Verducci, along with his father Charlie. This is the episode that introduced Matt LeBlanc to the series.
Al has a breakdown at the shoe store after sixteen straight hours of a midnight madness sale, and takes up gardening to calm down. A rabbit starts eating his carrots. The response escalates to flooding the burrow with a hose, which floods the street and the house next door as well.
The season opens with the Bundys trapped in a traffic jam on the way back from a trip, going nowhere for the entire episode. Kelly has her diploma, Bud is a senior, and Marcy has her bank manager job back by a method she describes in detail. Almost all of it happens in one stationary car.