Tuning Into the Mixed Messages Children Get

Bud Bundy: “Hey, Dad.”

Al Bundy: “Go away.”

--From “Married . . . With Children”

It’s our nature to chemo-shoot one cancer at a time. Thus, with a laser beam of criticism now being aimed at TV violence, scant attention is being directed at other kinds of programming that potentially can harm kids and distort their perceptions. For example:

Parents, do you know where your children are at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m.?

Bad-case scenario: They’re in front of a television set watching reruns of “Married . . . With Children,” the half-hour sitcom whose first-run episodes Fox has the good sense to withhold on Sundays until 9 p.m. in eastern and western time zones, but whose syndicated oldies are available weeknights in Los Angeles at kid-prime 6 and 7 on KTTV-TV Channel 11. In some other cities, they even air in the afternoon.

At its best, “Married . . . With Children” is one of the funniest, cleverest, tartest comedies on TV, and even when below form can be a real cliche-crashing kick. Its cast is a grand howl, its humor refreshingly nasty, biting and irreverent.

It’s tailored to older minds, though, not the milk-and-cookie set.

Because the Fox prime-time schedule ends at 10 p.m., “Married . . . With Children” is excusable at 9 p.m., although 9:30 would be even better.

But imagine little kiddies in the late afternoon or early evening, wide-eyed in front of reruns of a series that spews raunchy sex jokes and exhibits attitudes about families that are as cynical and pessimistic as “Father Knows Best” was corny, saccharine and hopelessly out of touch.

They are doing just that, and by the millions. The A.C. Nielsen Co. says that “Married . . . With Children” reruns are not only the most afternoon/early-evening fare nationally with kids ages 12 to 17, but also ranks 10th among children 2 to 11. Yes, 2 to 11.

“Married . . . With Children” as toddler television? Even station managers must be bright enough to perceive the danger of that.

Traditionally, they slough off the responsibility on parents, as if the United States were a familial Camelot in which parents or other accountable parties were always present in the home to guide or dictate what young children watch on television.

The fact is, parents frequently are not, and in the best interests of children, the stations that acquire these syndicated programs and broadcast them for profit on public airwaves should address that reality and not cower behind their own “Father Knows Best” family fantasy.

*

On “Married . . . With Children,” no one knows anything, and the show’s whooping studio audiences--sounding like people who even “Arsenio” wouldn’t let in--definitely like it that way.

The Bundy household is inhabited entirely by lazies. Al (Ed O’Neill) is a shoe salesman, Peg (Katey Sagal) is a--her word--”housewife.” They have two kids: the airheaded, promiscuous, futureless Kelly (Christina Applegate) and the manipulative Bud (David Faustino), who’s prepping for a career in extortion.

Throughout its six years, the show’s comedic meat and potatoes have been sex--primarily Peg’s appetite and Al’s distaste for it--and family dysfunction.

On a recent rerun, Kelly chastised herself for continuing to sneak boys into the house rather than being more open: “I’m not 12 anymore.”

In the same episode, Peg asked Al if he thought she was getting old. “How would I know?” he replied. “I never look at you.”

Later, when Kelly decided to move out and live with her boyfriend, Peg turned to Al: “Our baby’s gone. Hold me.” He replied: “I didn’t hold you when I conceived her. Why should I start now?”

On another rerun, Peg joked about the sexy Kelly making a career of being the “other woman.” Kelly then revealed her techniques for seducing other girls’ boyfriends. In this episode, which made a farce of philandering, Peg suspected Al of playing around, so Kelly and Bud suggested men she should sleep with, leading to the inevitable jokes about Al’s anatomy. Meanwhile, when Peg confronted Al with her suspicions about him stepping out on her, he put her at ease: “Why go out for milk when you got a cow at home?”

Another rerun found Peg peeved that Al gave her only a postcard on their 20th wedding anniversary (for their 15th, he gave her motor oil), demanding also that he make love to her. “I wanna be held, I wanna be caressed, I wanna be romanced.” Terrified at the prospect of intimacy with his wife, Al became suicidal and attempted to inhale gas fumes from his neighbor’s car.

And on another rerun, Peg boxed herself into getting a job outside the house to pay for a VCR she wanted, even though she loathed working--”That’s why I got married.” With Peg at work, cooking for the kids fell to Al. He toasted marshmallows.

Snide put-downs are the favored discourse of Al and Peg, a distinctive homemaker who neither tends her home nor her kids, to say nothing of her husband.

On a rerun that found Al trying to fix the rooftop TV antenna in a driving rain, Peg and her kids laughed at his futile SOS calls as he fell off his ladder, landing with a crash.

You’ll find some similarities here with ABC’s “Roseanne” and especially with Fox’s “The Simpsons,” two other prime-time series that pan for comedy in the mainstream of blue-collar America.

*

Yet even though the Conners of “Roseanne” often argue and sling wisecracks, the quality that sees them through hard times is the very family bond missing in “Married . . . With Children.” And although Al Bundy is Homer Simpson with a larger brain, Homer at least is capable of occasional contriteness over his parental indifference, and Marge Simpson is a devoted, if not altogether successful mother.

It’s clear that co-creators Ron Leavitt and Michael Moye cooked up “Married . . . With Children” as an adult-oriented antidote to the formulaic, sanitized sitcom families that have infected television practically since its inception. And amen for both their effort and their results.

“We always hated the typical family on television,” Leavitt has said. Hence, it’s not the American family but the traditional TV family that “Married . . . With Children” seeks to demolish through humor. But to some, that’s a rather fine distinction. And though it may be oxymoronic to mention subtlety in connection with “Married . . . With Children,” the above nuance is surely lost on the youngest of the young crowd watching these reruns.

Instead, what they’re likely seeing and hearing is that marriage and family are for the garbage heap, and the loveless Bundys are powerless to make a difference.

Despite the shrewd one-liners, it’s a message of hopelessness that’s unsuitable for malleable young minds.