List of Runnings Gags on Married... with Children

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The following is a list of running jokes and symbols in the sitcom Married... with Children.

[edit] Recurring Concepts

• NO MA'AM – An acronym for the National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood. This is the middle aged men's club that meets in Al's garage to discuss matters of serious importance to men such as beer and girls. In 1995, "Reverend Al" turned it into a church so they won't have to pay beer taxes.
• Polk High – The high school that Al and Peg Bundy went to where (as Al always loved to rejoice about) he scored four touchdowns in one football game. Kelly and Bud also attended Polk High. In 1995 the football field was named "Al Bundy Field" in his honor, although the scoreboard commemorating this was immediately destroyed. Al's jersey playing for the team was #33, and the team colors were blue and white.
• Jiggly Room/Nudie Bar – This is a strip club run by Iqbal, where members of NO MA'AM go to unwind and spend any money that their wives have not already spent. Al uses a dollar tied on a string to save money, and takes Bud there for his 18th birthday.
• Big Uns – This is a girlie magazine that Al and his friends read. It is also used before having sex with the wives, presumably as an aphrodisiac due to them finding their wives repulsive.
• Girlie Girl Beer – Official beer of NO MA'AM. After the beer's normal mascot has been replaced with Yoko Ono, NO MA'AM declares it no longer their official beer. However, they then spend all night getting drunk testing out alternate beers. Thus, come morning, they forgot they hated the beer, and declare it their official beer once again.
• Psycho Dad – Al's favorite TV show until Marcy's women's group lead to it being canceled. It was a Western about a psychotic cowboy who had similar values to Al and his NO MA'AM friends.
• Marcy the Chicken – Al's favorite insult for Marcy, calling her a chicken in some manner. This is due to the fact that, when Marcy yells, she frequently puts her hands on her hips, bends over and bobs her head like the animal in question.
• Weenie Tots – Al's favorite fast-dissolving miniature corndog-like snack, with many disclaimers on the package including "This Is Not Food" and "No Nutritional Value", and all of those involved in the manufacturing process seem to be missing a hand.
• The Mighty Dodge – The Bundy family car, a 1971 Plymouth Duster which was erroneously (or comically) called a Dodge. It dates back to Al's high school days and has logged over a million miles of travel, for which Dodge was going to present Al a brand new Dodge Viper. Before Dodge could record the odometer turning over Al fell a sleep behind the wheel and the car moved enough to turn over the odometer. Its old, brown, rustic color makes it instantly recognizable as the Bundys' car, though after a car wash in episode 0917, it turns out that under all that dirt, it was really red. Despite its poor condition (e.g. constant engine troubles), Al has been shown to be very reluctant to part with it. "I drive a Dodge!" is, paradoxically, one of Al's mantras. Ironically, both the Dodge Dart and the Plymouth Duster (Al's car is Dodge in name but Plymouth in the body shown on-camera) are renowned for their reliability and durability. As a lightweight economy car of its day, it was a natural but undeserved target of mockery. The Dodge twin of the 1971 Duster was the 1971 Dodge Demon, which had a far more aggressive grille and name. Both the Duster and the Demon were Plymouth Valiant derivatives, and both were offered with engines which ranged from mild (Slant-6) to outrageously wild (Chrysler 340) with big-blocks easily installed.
• Gary's Shoes and Accessories For Today's Woman – The shoe store where Al has been working since high school. He was planning on working there only for a brief summer period during high school until Peg's pregnancy with Kelly changed all that. Al is often shown being rude to customers in the store, and placing his head in his hands all day long if there are no customers, reflecting on his miserable life. When he finds it too humiliating to sell women's shoes, he starts to only order men's, thinking Gary wouldn't mind. He gets into a lot of trouble as it turns out Gary is really a woman. The occasional attractive women who make purchases at the store are some of the few rays of light in Al's life, but such customers are few and far between.
• Shoe Salesman – A running gag that all Bundy men have sold shoes. Even in the past (see Bundy Curse), Al's ancestor sells horse shoes. When Bud sees the ghosts of several dead Bundys in a castle, one asks if he wants to buy any shoes. It is also implied that Al's father sold shoes as well, continuing the tradition.
• The toilet flush – One of Al's favorite activities is to sit in the bathroom for a long time. Whenever there is a sound of the toilet flushing in the Bundy house, viewers know that Al is coming out of the bathroom with a newspaper under his arm. He loves the toilet so much that in A Dump of My Own he buys his very own Ferguson toilet, just like the one his father had. Al hates the "low flow" toilets of today that continuously stop up. After having built his own restroom and garage apartment, he has to tear it down again after the pregnant women take it over.
• Isis – Bud's blow-up doll and the object of several jokes.
• Troy's – A male strip club in the early seasons in which Marcy drops her wedding ring down "Zorro's" pants
• The Fox Viewing Position – Whenever the Bundys viewed a program on the Fox television network, they would pull out the indoor antenna and cable, and point them at different directions to get a decent-to-clear picture of the program. This could be viewed as a slight rib at WFLD-TV, the Fox-owned station in Chicago, which operates on UHF Channel 32.
• Dummy off the Roof – Many times during the show's run, Al and other characters would be on the roof of the house working on some kind of "project". Some type of stupidity would cause one of them, usually Al to fall off the roof. This was done with a blood curddling scream and a terribly dressed dummy which could be seen crashing to the ground from the glass sliding doors in the back of the living room.

[edit] Frequent Bundy Sayings

• Bundy Motto/Credo– Essentially, an ever-changing slogan that tries to describe Al's philosophy on certain subjects or situations. "We ain't got it." Also, as Al told to Bud: "Lie when your wife is waking. Lie when your belly's aching. Lie when you know she's faking. Lie, sell shoes, and lie." Alternative version: "Hooters, hooters, yum, yum, yum. Hooters, hooters, on a girl that's dumb" (sometimes the last line is "gonna get me some").
• Whoa Bundy! – Family cheer, used whenever the Bundy family was about to embark on a venture together, often a scheme against the D'Arcys or other groups. Led by Al with "Can I get a Whoa Bundy?", it involves all of the Bundys placing their hands on top of one another in a circle and raising them into the air, yelling "Whooooa Bundy!"
• Thank Your Father, Kids – Sarcastic line said by Peggy to her children after Al royally screws something up. The kids' response is an equally sarcastic "Thanks, Dad". Interestingly, it was used previously (and sincerely) by Beverly D'Angelo's "Ellen Griswold" character in National Lampoon's European Vacation. On rare occasions, Peggy and the kids themselves sincerely mean it.
• A fat woman walked into the shoe store today... – The occasional humorous anecdote regarding the rude, overweight female customers that Al has to deal with on a regular basis. The line is usually followed by the woman trying on a pair of shoes and storming out at Al's insults (A fat woman stampeded into the shoe store today, wanted something to make her look good. I suggested a paper bag). On occasion other characters say the line to symbolize their becoming like Al (Kelly: A fat woman beached herself at the park today..)
• "Let's rock" – Along with the above line, debatably Al's catchphrase. Usually followed by audience applause and said with Al's chin held high and a sadistic grin, the line indicates Al plans to succeed or take someone on in a fight. After saying the line, Al usually does accomplish what it was he was trying to do. It's also said by Kelly once.
• Oh Peg...! – Al's most common response to Peg's requests (usually about having sex more than once a year)
• I'm going to Disneyland!
• "...At The Nudie Bar" Poems – Al's poetic tributes to the strip joint ("Where a buck's enough to see her stuff - at the nudie bar, where the breasts may be fake but man do they shake - at the nudie bar, where you swear like a sailor and wish you could nail her - at the nudie bar, where the beer's a plenty and the girls are all twenty - at the nudie bar.")
• Four Touchdowns In One Game – (presumably) Al's biggest accomplishment, from his days of playing football at Polk High School.

[edit] The Bundy Curse

There are multiple Bundy Curses:

• The most mentioned curse is that every male Bundy is cursed to eventually fail. Only one male Bundy, Al's uncle, was successful throughout his life and even left behind a fortune; he was also the one male Bundy who never married.
• Another curse begins when a Bundy forefather (played by Ed O'Neill), working as a blacksmith (selling mainly horse shoes) in Lower Uncton, England, insults a witch; she curses Lower Uncton with eternal darkness until the last male Bundy dies, and curses the Bundys to have smelly feet. The Bundys eventually leave Lower Uncton; the townspeople search for male Bundys for centuries and kill them in hopes of destroying the curse, eventually encountering Al's family, where Al and Bud are the last two left. However, in a jousting match against a descendant of the witch, Igor of Lower Uncton, Al defeats the opposing knight, and the curse is lifted without his death.
• It is also the Bundy lot to be cursed with terrible foot odor; Al refers to this as "the other Bundy curse". Al's foot odor has been revealed to kill small animals and plants, and cause activation of the oxygen masks during an airplane flight. However, several women during the course of the series (Al's old high school sweethearts) find his scent irresistible. In one episode, space aliens steal Al's used socks for fuel to prevent a giant asteroid from destroying the Earth.
• Whenever a Bundy receives good luck and admits to it, he receives an equal amount of bad luck. For instance, in one episode, Bud is moving out (to a college fraternity house), Kelly is moving out as well, Al hits every green light, the oldies station plays all his all-time favorites, and all the women in the shoe store are attractive. Jefferson takes advantage of this streak of luck by getting Al to win a big poker game, with all of Al's winnings from previous poker games and all of the players' cars at stake. Al wins, and he finally breaks down and admits he has good luck; he is promptly arrested because the cars he won were all stolen. Furthermore, while performing the motorcycle stunt that would make her career, Kelly is blinded by a camera (Peg's camera, as a matter of fact) and crashes into a frat house, causing it to catch fire and forcing all the members to move out. However, it is (at the time of the poker game) unknown what house was destroyed (to which Al remarks "Oh I'm sure"). Thus, Bud moves back in, Kelly loses her job and must refrain from moving out herself, and the family is back where it started.
• When Al tries to break the Bolarama bowling record, he succeeds at 257; minutes later Peggy is about to get a perfect score and Al tells the kids about the Bundy curse; "it's what separates us from the normal losers"; after Kelly asks why Peggy isn't clued in about the curse Al replies, "because she is a Bundy by marriage, she's part of the curse." This is followed by a very unenthused "Whoa, Bundy"