Happily Never After : A Decade Later, ‘Married’ Fans and Fox Still Love the Bundy Family of LosersWho Are ‘in Hate’ With One Another

It started as a nasty joke. “Not the Cosbys” was its original working title--a series designed to spoof that other show’s fuzzy-wuzzy, lovey-dovey, still-hot-for-the-wife version of family life.

Only the joke turned into “Married . . . With Children”--an institution of its own. Beginning its 10th season this weekend, the series has been on the air longer than the happy show that inspired it--or any other comedy now on the air, for that matter.

It’s the Fox network’s Cal Ripken Jr.--there from Day 1, launching the fourth network’s then-crazy idea of competing with the Big Three alongside such long-gone shows as “Beans Baxter” and “Mr. President.” In those early days of struggle, the show basically was Fox--long before the network struck gold with “The Simpsons,” “Melrose Place” and the National Football League.

“It’s sort of amazing,” said Katey Sagal--who stars as Peg Bundy, the flamboyant, do-nothing wife and mother--during a break in rehearsal on the show’s Culver City set. “We’ve been here the longest--before ‘The Simpsons.’ It’s weird, because you hear people say, ‘As long as there is a Fox network, there will have to be “Married . . . With Children.” ’ Who could have dreamed this totally bent little thing could have even been allowed on the air?”

Created by Michael Moye and Ron Leavitt as a reaction against what they saw as the pablum that passed for family comedy back in the Reagan era, the show has from the beginning been nothing more than a family of losers “in hate” with each other. (Moye and Leavitt left the show several years ago.)

Peg and Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill) bandy insults and wish out loud that the other would die or run away with the circus, but, as the audience knows, they are destined to torture each other as husband and wife forever. Their kids--Kelly, the loopy, sexpot daughter (Christina Applegate), and Bud, the geeky, rubber-doll-addicted son (David Faustino), both now in their 20s--torment each other ruthlessly. So do Al and his feminist neighbor Marcy (Amanda Bearse).

But the beauty of the show--if you can call anything about this beautiful--is that everyone gets as good as they give.

“For me the key has always been that the show is funny, and that is all it tries to be,” said Kim Weiskopf, one of the show’s current executive producers.

“And, if you want to look at it from a real ridiculous and broad perspective,” she continued, “there have been three American icons on television, all with the same common thread: Ralph Kramden, Archie Bunker and Al Bundy. All are these poor slobs, blue-collar guys, all married, all with family of sorts. They were all filled with piss and vinegar; they had an ax to grind. But they were Everyman, and there’s a tremendous appeal in that. People root for Al Bundy knowing full well that he’s going to get his ass kicked.”

And there’s S-E-X. Whereas the Huxtables were snuggling up to each other in every “Cosby” episode, Al runs from caressing Peg almost as deftly as he avoids hugging his son, all the while debasing his trampy daughter for being a slut and simultaneously fantasizing about the leggy, silicon-sculpted babes who parade around his shoe store and demented psyche.

“The sexual wrinkle worked,” said O’Neill, who plays the all-suffering patriarch. “We started talking about how sexual bliss was not exactly part of our marriage, and that was almost like a bomb that went off around the country--the fact that a husband and wife might not find each other wildly exciting after a number of years. We not only talked about it, we had fun with it. And I think a lot of people in their living rooms were going, ‘Yeah, that’s how it really is’ or ‘Thank God, someone is worse off than we are.’ ”

The raunchy, vulgar tone of the show raised the ire of a Michigan woman named Terry Rakolta, who in 1989 asked advertisers to boycott the series because it offended her. O’Neill, who never believed “the feminists” would let the show on the air in the first place, thought the sitcom was doomed at that point. But the fury passed, ratings actually improved and, as a joke, the producers have sent a present to Rakolta every Christmas.

And still the “Not Cosby” joke treads on. Richard Gurman, the show’s other executive producer, said that viewers will notice a few small changes this season but nothing that will detract from the Bundys’ usual woefulness.

Peg’s mother will move into the house to aggravate Al (but only as a voice from the other room). Tim Conway will guest-star in several episodes as Peg’s father. Bud will move into the basement to make way for Grandma. An aerobics studio will open next to Al’s shoe store, requiring the producers to hire more gorgeous women to plague Al. And Buck, the family dog, will die after all these years to make way for a new Bundy pet--”something mammalian” but not necessarily all-dog, according to Weiskopf. (Buck, the real-life dog actor, is simply retiring.)

Weiskopf said she believes the show could run forever, if Fox and Columbia, the studio that produces it and has reaped millions on it in syndication in more than 60 countries, want to keep funding it.

“We have tons we could do from a creative standpoint, but it depends on the actors, too, how long they want to keep doing it and whether or not the treasury can mint enough money to pay them,” she said.

Sagal, who has a 1-year-old daughter and is pregnant again, said she loves the regular hours, the money, and dressing up in Peg’s big wig and leopard-spotted polyester stretch pants. She foresees at least another two seasons. Only O’Neill, who once harbored bitterness that the show has never been respected, admits to being bored occasionally. But he isn’t about to quit.

“It’s part of the job, and this is like having a 9-to-5. It’s like I’m not an actor anymore, I’m some guy waiting for a certain number of years to get his gold watch and retire,” O’Neill said. “But, really, if something is so bad or we did it before, you do something about it. You make it better. People stay married forever, they stay in the same job forever if they’re lucky these days. So, it’s like anyone who is bored at work. What do you do? In my case, it’s [saying], ‘How much am I making this week? Well, that’s a lot. OK, I’m not bored.’ ”

* New episodes of “Married . . . With Children” air Sundays at 9 p.m. on Fox (Channel 11); reruns air weeknights at 6 on Channel 11.