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I've never met a better candidate for murder than Al Bundy. "Married with Children" played as the bizarro world underside of "All in the Family" without breaking any of the social ground or having any characters that were truly endearing. The series set a record for tasteless sadomasochistic comedy never reach before or since. Al's misogyny exceeded only his pettiness and stupidity. You just know someday, somewhere someone will mistake this for a genuine classic comedy. It will be lumped in with the lead age of comedy where television executives managed to actually defy the laws of physics using alchemy to create gold from lead. The worst sin for this series is that no one thought to shoot it and that we all laughed at the PC challenged Bundy's jokes and quips for so long. The worst part is that the series could be damn funny as well. Why did this series have to be so easy to like with so little talent and taste? Because it reflects the world we live in. If there's a cosmic joker at the controls when humanity's long dead and buried, "Married with Children" will be discovered by an alien civilization and they'll conclude this was the height of our art and culture. Al Bundy would be pleased. ***

Packing the entire 22 episodes of the second season on to a three disc set must have stretched the endurance record for the transfer team for torture. We get a number of classic episodes that can be surprisingly funny at times. The blunt satire and skewering of current media figures touched a nerve in America making us all jump but not enough to grab the remote and flip the station. Surprisingly the series was frequently helmed by women writer/producers which, perhaps, helped to improve the already sharply honed characters and gutbusting lines scattered throughout the scripts. If it's a guilty pleasure, "Married with Children" grew into one that helped spearhead a new movement in comedy as the :anti-family sitcom. "Married" existed at just the right time deflating pompous comedies such as "The Cosby Show". ***

Among the stand out episodes are the witty role reversal episode "Just Married...with Children"; "The Great Escape" where the Bundy home is overrun with termites. Al's too cheap to get a hotel so he has them move into the shoe store where he works. Nothing like tight quarters to bring a comedy to life. "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" parts 1 & 2 works the heady conflict between males and females to extreme as Peg takes her best friend Marcy out for a night on the town. They end up at a male strip joint and Marcy loses her wedding ring in the tights of one of the performers. She must figure out how to get it back without telling her husband Steve. The only problem is that the male stripped has already returned the ring to Steve. Now he must figure out how to get it back to her . ---

Since this was one of Fox's most popular shows during the start up days of the Network, one would expect there to be lots of extras. The market has changed significantly since "Married" first premiered. Comedies such as "Friends", "Fraiser" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" ("Married" without the social anarchy of the Bundy household and missing the misogyny). There's no outtakes or rehearsal footage of note. We do get a basketful of roughly 20 ( I honestly lost count) Easter Eggs. These replace the traditional interviews as they are scattered and hidden throughout the three disc set. Some of the interview snippets with cast and crew are funnier than the episodes discussed while others belong to a parade of talking heads that will be watched all of one time. This approach is a bit more generous than we've seen with some series ("Sanford and Son" and "Goodtimes" both spring to mind) but still cheats the fans.

Yes, the series is inexpensive compared to, say, "Star Trek" or "24", on the other hand those series come packed with extras including in some cases commentary tracks and specially produced featurettes. Considering that we have 22 episodes compressed onto 3 discs ("Kung Fu" offered more in the way of extras on its 15 episode three discs at a similar price plus we got the 90 minute television movie as well). ---

I'll be honest here--I was never a big fan of this series but appreciated the craft of the comic writing. The performances by the series regulars (Ed O'Neill, Christina Applegate, Katey Segal, David Faustino, Amanda Bearse and David Garrison) elevated the most elementary script to new levels. In many respects, "Married with Children" is The Three Stooges of television comedy. The series never got respect but it got laughs. Ultimately, that's what mattered. *** The transfer from Columbia isn't inept just surprisingly poor given the source material and comparable series from other companies. The soft picture, poor resolution and drifting accuracy of the colors make this set a disappointment. The one area where the series could and should have shined was the extras. Here we're saddled with about 20 or so Easter Eggs that provide little more than a diversion the first time around.

Given the popularity of the series in syndication, it would have behooved Columbia to put together an package with extras or, perhaps, a funny featurette or two. It also couldn't have hurt to have cast and crew do a group commentary track on key episodes. Unfortunately, none of the care we've come to expect with DVD sets is evident here. It seems as if Columbia just wanted to dump it on the market to pacify fans of the series. It's a pity as fans would get more value recording the series and transferring it to DVD-R themselves.