Unhappily Ever After: What Happened To The Married With Children Spiritual Sequel

[TMC]

http://www.screenrant.com/unhappily-...ory-explained/

Married with Children ran for 11 years and became an iconic sitcom, but the same can't be said for its spiritual sequel series Unhappily Ever After. Starring Ed O'Neill as patriarch Al Bundy, Married with Children focused on a family that all managed to be losers in life in their own ways. Al hated his job and felt stuck in his marriage, Peggy was lazy and unmotivated to do much else but shop and lounge around, Bud was smart but unpopular and socially awkward, and Kelly was attractive but unintelligent and easily manipulated.

Despite these glaring flaws, or arguably because of them, millions of viewers related to The Bundys, seeing Married with Children as an over the top, but oddly more realistic look at an American family. Instead of holding important jobs like doctor, lawyer, scientist, or politician, Al Bundy sold shoes for minimum wage, and the family overall struggled financially on a constant basis. Thankfully they at least seemed to have gotten a good deal on their house before things went downward. None of the Bundys were really remarkable people; they bickered sometimes and often came up short, but endearingly, messing with one Bundy would almost always earn the wrath of every other Bundy.

By the time Married with Children hit its home stretch in the mid-1990s, shows like Roseanne had arrived, and centering a sitcom on ordinary working people was much more common. Not long before Married with Children signed off, one of the series' co-creators brought Unhappily Ever After to The WB. While sometimes called a ripoff, it was more of an extension of Married with Children's themes, spiced up with storylines that got downright bizarre.

In 1994, executives at the WB network approached Married with Children co-creator Ron Leavitt and asked him to create a knockoff of his prior hit. The result–co-created by Leavitt and long-time Married producer Arthur Silver–was Unhappily Ever After, which premiered in early 1995. While its genesis may have been a desire to ripoff Married with Children, at least as far as one can really ripoff their own work, it ended up becoming its own beast, but one that still retained some of the same themes and ideas. Amusingly, Unhappily Ever After leaned into the comparisons, making jokes at its own expense.

Instead of a bickering married couple, the mom and dad of the central Malloy family were a bickering divorced couple. The attractive daughter was now the smart one, and the unlucky with the ladies son was now not too bright. One small addition to the mix was a third child, Ross, played by actor Justin Berfield. The biggest change was that father Jack Malloy lived with a mental health condition and would have hallucinations involving talking to a stuffed rabbit named Mr. Floppy. Unsurprisingly, Unhappily Ever After retained its predecessor's penchant for lowbrow sexual humor and jokes likely to ruffle feathers, albeit never approaching the controversy Married with Children generated.

One thing that separated Unhappily Ever After was just how strange it would get, including at one point killing off mom Jennie Malloy and turning her into a ghost, then having a "network executive" retcon her back to life in a later episode. When the actress did later leave the show, Jennie was casually written out as having run off with a lesbian lover, not at all taking the development seriously. Unhappily earned enough of a fanbase to run for five seasons, signing off in 1999, two years after Married with Children aired its own unplanned series finale. Today, the show is almost impossible to watch. It's never been on a streaming service or been released on home video and also no longer runs in syndication. That literally only leaves shady bootlegs as a possible avenue, which is a shame, as while not a classic, anyone who enjoyed Married with Children would probably also enjoy Unhappily Ever After.

[Christopher]

You can find this show on YouTube. I remember watching this back when The WB started. I liked it as a teen but as an adult, it's not a funny show. I never noticed when I first watched the show how they changed gears to focus solely on Nikki Cox. That was their downfall. Nikki isn't a strong enough actress to carry a show. Her character, that's a rip off of Kelly Bundy, wasn't worth watching. The father and wife are the best part of Unhappily Ever After. If it stayed focused on them, the show probably would have been an icon like Married With Children.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by Christopher

You can find this show on YouTube. I remember watching this back when The WB started. I liked it as a teen but as an adult, it's not a funny show. I never noticed when I first watched the show how they changed gears to focus solely on Nikki Cox. That was their downfall. Nikki isn't a strong enough actress to carry a show. Her character, that's a rip off of Kelly Bundy, wasn't worth watching. The father and wife are the best part of Unhappily Ever After. If it stayed focused on them, the show probably would have been an icon like Married With Children.

Arguably, a relatively similar thing happened years prior with Growing Pains. Kirk Cameron like Nikki Cox on UEA, was the main draw. But he too, probably wasn't charismatic enough to lead a show all by himself.

[Christopher]

Originally Posted by TMC

Arguably, a relatively similar thing happened years prior with Growing Pains. Kirk Cameron like Nikki Cox on UEA, was the main draw. But he too, probably wasn't charismatic enough to lead a show all by himself.

He wasn't. Remember Kirk? It was a short lived sitcom with him and his wife. Same thing with Nikki's sitcom. They don't have the talent to hold a show on their own.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by Christopher

You can find this show on YouTube. I remember watching this back when The WB started. I liked it as a teen but as an adult, it's not a funny show. I never noticed when I first watched the show how they changed gears to focus solely on Nikki Cox. That was their downfall. Nikki isn't a strong enough actress to carry a show. Her character, that's a rip off of Kelly Bundy, wasn't worth watching. The father and wife are the best part of Unhappily Ever After. If it stayed focused on them, the show probably would have been an icon like Married With Children.

I think that the difference between Nikki Cox and Christina Applegate (other than one his redheaded and the other is blonde) is that Christina was actually a terrific comedic actress. This YouTube essay on Married...with Children better explains it (about 32 minutes in). I recall that in the TV Trash review of Unhappily Ever After, it was addressed that the Tiffany Malloy character wasn't likable or funny enough (or at the very least, charming enough) to completely get behind, regardless of how physically hot she may be.

I also think that another factor in the show's downfall if you want to call it that, was when they dropped the separation angle and had Jack move back in the house with his family. The show's entire premise was that Jack's divorce caused him to snap and start talking to Mr. Floppy. So what was the point of Jack going back to his wife?

The writers and producers after that, pretty much dropped little pretense left that it was not a MWC knock-off. The only difference is that Al Bundy didn't regularly interact with a puppet/stuffed animal (the initial point of that was that Jack could have somebody to interact with, since he was by himself most of the time) during his alone-time.