Married... with Children/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Every single line spoken, every thing done in this show is a Crowning Moment of Funny. But, as for starting:


  • Let's start off with an all-time classic (from Season 4's "Tooth and Consequences"):

Steve: Doesn't anybody know this is against the law?
Al: So's dressing up a chicken and calling it your wife.
Marcy: I am not a chicken! Why does he keep calling me a chicken?! (says this while bobbing her head up and down with her hands on her hips)

Steve: Now, Marcy, don't get your feathers ruffled...

Al: Well, the body's dead...perhaps the head can live on, unattached...

  • Al and his buddies trying and failing to rewire the Bundy house in the episode "User Friendly".
  • Steve's vain efforts to create a 99-cent coin.
  • The entire episode of "Bud Hits The Books", starting with Bud being caught having A Date with Rosie Palms in the library...
  • Pretty much any scene involving Bud getting caught with his rubber blow-up dolls.
    • For example, when Marcy's pretty niece, Amber appears at his window:

Amber: Psst! Psst!
Bud: (reaches under his bed) Damn leaky rubber woman...

  • In one episode, Bud was asked to entertain the sister of Kelly's Latin Lover boyfriend, and Bud reluctantly agrees, because if he does, Kelly will convince her beautiful friend Fawn to sleep with him. Shortly afterward, said Latin Lover arrives, and it turns out that A) his sister is beautiful too, and B) she's joining a convent the next day. Cue her and Bud having a marathon sex session that hits high levels of hilarity in the background. However, the truly funny moment came at the end of the episode, where Bud is utterly spent, kisses the sister goodbye, and declares that he has absolutely nothing left. He then says that he can die a happy man and wishes that God would "Take me now!" At which point Fawn shows up, says that's her job, and drags the horrified, exhausted Bud down to the basement, with him screaming the whole way. Too much of a good thing, indeed.
  • Peg fixes Al some "Tang" (read: a glass of something orange that's spewing smoke all around the table):

Al: ...
Peggy: Al...we thought you might be thirsty...so I made you some Tang.
Al: ...Tang don't smoke.

Kelly: Oh! This is new and improved "Smoking Tang!"

Peg What's that toilet have that I don't?
Al: A job.

  • The D'Arcys agree to feed Lucky while the Bundys are on vacation. They decide to role-play as Al and Peggy. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Officer Dan makes one of the all-time greatest one-liners in TV history in the episode where during the 1994 MLB strike, Al and the other members of NO MA'AM break into Wrigley Field just so they could play baseball. They wind up getting arrested, and are informed that that night's meal was ribs, just as their wives come to post bail. So Al tells Officer Dan that he killed a whole bunch of people and then ate them.

Officer Dan: "Then you've already had your ribs."

Woman: I was a size six before aerobics class. All that jumping must have expanded my foot.
Al: Then I see you must have fallen on your butt a time or two.
Woman: How dare you say that to my face?!
Al: Well I'd say it behind your back but my car only has half a tank of gas!

"T'was the night before Christmas, all through the house,
No food was a-stirring, not even a mouse,
Stockings were hung 'round daddy's neck like a tie,
Along with a note that said "Presents or DIE"!
Children were plotting all night in their beds,
While his wife's constant whining were splitting his head,
But daddy had money this year in the bank,
Then they closed up early, now daddy is in the tank,
And all of the sudden Santa appeared
A sneer in his face, booze in his beard,
"Santa," I asked as he laughed merrily,
"You do so much for others, do something for me"?
"Bundy," he said, "You only sell shoes,
Your son is a sneak thief, your daughter's a flooze,"

"Ho, ho," Santa says, "Should I mention your wife?

Her hair's like an A-Bomb, her nails' like a knife"

Then he climbs up the chimney, that fat piece of dung,

He mooned me two times, he stuck out his tongue,

And I heard him exclaim, as he broke wind with glee,

"You're Married... with Children, you'll never be free".

    • Now does anyone want to hear about the red-haired grinch who stole Al's life?
  • Speaking of Looney Tunes, "Wabbit Season," where Al pulls out all the stops to get rid of a rabbit from his garden - essentially becoming Elmer Fudd before blowing up the house.
    • Kelly adds to the Looney Tunes based humor of this episode by having her warn Al about how the dangers of sticking a gun down a rabbit hole.
    • Earlier in the episode: Old McBundy had a farm.
  • "The Worst Noel" has Al and Peg channel-surfing, seeing such moments as:

Peg: How can you hate It's a Wonderful Life?
Al: Because it's a horrible life! You wanna know why they never made a sequel? Cause that guy killed himself and this time he took that angel Clarence with him.

"Let's get this over with once and for all. I may have to earn a pathetic living by donning the cap of The Beaver and appearing at supermarkets... but at least my father doesn't sell women's shoes."

  • Al paying the bills.
  • Al rappin'.
  • Toothpaste Sandwich. Made even funnier by someone in the audience saying "Don't do it Al".
  • Young Mr. Bundy As hilarious as old Bundy.
  • Al's greatest life achievement, four touchdowns in one game when he was in High School.
  • Marcy is asking for it.
    • Pretty much every time Marcy is insulted, and not only by Al.
    • Every time Al calls her "chicken".
  • When Al and Jefferson decide to get "Three Stooges" videotapes, they both spend about two minutes doing every common slapstick routine the Stooges did.
  • One episode centres around Bud dating a teacher and one of his fellow students. He suffers an epic Humiliation Conga in the final five minutes:
    • He learns that the teacher ran off with a football player, the only guy who could ever satisfy her;
    • The female student dumps him, not wanting anything to do with him if he can't satisfy an older woman;
    • Al barges into the classroom with the police while it's being taught by a new elderly teacher. Al then vocally recounts everything that Bud did with the previous teacher, making it look as if he was having an affair with the eighty-something year-old substitute, before he has the substitute arrested;
    • Bud is so mortified that he wets himself;
    • Al talks to Bud directly, saying that he did it because he loved him. He then leaves, but not before reminding Bud that Peggy is out of tampons;
    • Mindful of the fact that his entire class has seen everything that's happened so far, Bud goes up in front of the class to try to deny that Al is actually his father. No one believes him, and the situation is so humiliating Bud thinks that it must all be a dream. He decides that he must not be embarrassed enough to wake up, and so he drops his pants as a means of embarrassing himself enough to do so. Unfortunately, that's when Bud realized that he'd forgotten to wear underwear to school...
  • In what turned out to be the very last scene of the very last episode (given that it was aired out of production order), Al and Griff are both at the shoe store reading magazines while on their break. A customer comes in and asks for the shoes she ordered. Al snaps his fingers, and the shoe store's latest hire comes out of the stock room - Mr. Zippy, a chimp that Al and Griff acquired during their trading frenzy earlier in the episode. Mr. Zippy is dressed exactly like Al, and he hands the woman her shoes before hopping up into the chair next to Al. They look at each other, and then put their hands down their pants at the same time. The resemblance between them is uncanny.
  • Al Bundy is a poet. He is better than Shakespeare. This are some of his poems:
    • "I care, by Al Bundy."

"When hooters jiggle around, and I find nickels on the ground, I care,

When a Mustang engine purrs, and the bathroom is not hers, I care,

When a pitcher's on the mound, and the wife is underground, I care,

But when I've been playing this for days, I'll kill anyone who stays I SWEAR"!

(Peggy's lines): "And If you really wanna scare, check out his underwear, If you dare".

"I've seen her from the front, I've seen her from the back.
I've seen her in a chair, I've seen her in a sack.
I've seen her stand, I've seen her crouch.
I've seen her on her stupid couch.
I do not like her in the mall, I do not like her in the hall.
I do not like her in my life, I do not like my big red wife"!

  • In the episode where Marcy's ex-husband Steve returns, Al casually forgets to tell him she's remarried. So, he enters her house and climbs into bed, finding Jefferson and Marcy. Hilarity Ensues, as it cuts to the Bundys watching from their house with binoculars and popcorn. Peg happily comments on the carnage and misery Al has caused, and that she loves him. The two actually kiss for a few seconds, both of their own free will.
  • Al, Peg and the D'Arcys are gathering toys for a toy drive, and Marcy sees something unpleasant:

Marcy: What's Mr. Potato Head doing here?
Al: (Pointing to Jefferson) I don't know, you married him!
Marcy: Not that Mr. Potato Head! The one that's actually worth something!

  • And then there was the time Marcy suspected Jefferson of cheating on her with the bride of Al's Cousin Jimmy:

Jefferson: Look, I'm innocent, Marcy. Think rationally. If I wanted a young, pretty, sexy girl, I never would've married you!
Al: Yeah, why go out for a succulent steak when you've got a dried-up strip of beef jerky at home?

Who's that riding in the sleigh?
Who's that firing along the way?
Who's got the most popped on Christmas Day?
Psy-cho Dad, Psycho Dad, Psycho Dad.

    • "This is the one where you get to know how he got the eight reindeer heads on the walls of his cabin."
  • "Peggy Turns 300"

Al: Hey Peg, you're looking great! [admiring Peg's dress she's wearing for her birthday] You're gonna knock them dead at the bowling alley!
Peg: The bowling alley? You're taking me bowling on my birthday?
Al: It's your birthday? Hey kids, tonight mommy rides in the front seat.

    • Kelly takes pictures while holding the camera backwards, blinding herself.

Peg: Al, I just struck four strikes in a row!
Al [concentrating on his game] Shut up, Peg.

    • Peg made Al miss a pin.

Al: [picks up a ball] What did you want, Peg!?
Peg: Well, I wanted to wish you good luck.
Al: Away, woman!

    • "Our children were killed in an avalanche."
  • In the episode "The House That Peg Lost", Kelly throws a slumber party, inviting some of her friends. Bud comes down stairs to try and seduce them. One of Kelly's friends prank him by getting him to kiss Buck. For revenge, Bud decides to read off some of the messages Kelly got from boys who want to go out with her. Turns out two of the guys are boyfriends of her friends. He reads off another name, asking whose boyfriend he is, and two other girls both say "Mine!" at the same time before giving each other the Death Glare. Soon, all the girls begin to fight each other, except for one, who nonchalantly sits down and begins filing her nails.
  • (From Season 1's "Nightmare on Al's Street"):

Steve: Al, I'm horny. What are you gonna do about it?

  • The assembled cast are all ragging on Al after his latest disaster, and Kelly chips in calling him a "bombastic simpleton." Everyone breaks off and stares at her, and she hastily adds "And a bad bad daddy!"
  • The plot for "Im-Po-Dent" involved Marcy believing Steve has a low sex drive somewhat due to crashing her car. After Marcy tells Al, Steve enters.

Al: Hey, Steve, what's up?

  • The closing credits of "Movie Show" where they rat on various names in the credits, especially the end, where they boo the Columbia logo.
  • In the second part of the Spring Break episode, the scenes where "thanks to the technology of Sony Pictures Television" (AKA a hand moving a car on a map of the U.S.), we see Marcy driving Bud and friends driving to Florida.
  • In the episode "Oldies But Young 'Uns," after Al hums to Peg a few notes to a song from his youth that he can't remember, Peg says "Clip your nose hairs, Al. When you were humming, it looked like a squid was trying to reach out and grab the kids."