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Al Bundy is a fictional character from the U.S. television series Married... with Children. He was played by Ed O'Neill.^[1]

Character history[link]

Al is a simple man, and forever regretful of the turns his life has taken since the end of high school, when marriage and a broken leg prevented him from playing college football. The character was so popular that it has left O'Neill somewhat typecast since the series ended production.^{[citation needed]}

Al Bundy is married to Peggy. He mistakenly asked her to marry him after he got drunk. He has two children: Kelly, a promiscuous dumb blonde, and Bud, an intelligent but perpetually horny and unpopular schemer named after a brand of beer. Al lives in Chicago and is the proud owner of a Dodge Dart (although the model shown on-screen is always a Plymouth Duster, it is referred to throughout the series as a Dodge Dart). He works as a shoe salesman at the fictional Gary's Shoes and Accessories for Today's Woman in the fictional New Market Mall. Al hates his job, loses it several times throughout the series, yet always ends up coming back to it. There is a running joke throughout the show that Al makes minimum-wage. However, in one episode, Al is offered early retirement and given a year's pay: $12,000. In "My Mom, The Mom", Al states that he earns a 10% commission on each sale. The family also brought in income through game-shows, theft, various absurd schemes and mooching off of the Rhoades and D'Arcy's wealth throughout the series.

Throughout the series, Al is continually saddled with massive debts caused by everything from the various disasters he becomes involved in to his wife's extravagant spending habits. However, he never appears to miss a mortgage payment or file for bankruptcy. The "Bundy Will", passed down from generation to generation as a punishment, indebted the "benefactor" with these debts that Al Bundy has incurred.

In flashbacks, it is revealed that Al's mother may have been an alcoholic. While pondering his shortcomings over a toothpaste sandwich, he relives a moment where his mother tells him he can become anything while audibly saying "Yeah right, Mom, try saying that when you're sober!". In another similar situation, he asks her if she wants her Bloody Mary. In one flashback episode Al was revealed as having a overdue Library Book for 30 years; being Al he tries to get out of paying a $2,163.20 Library fine by tricking the Librarian {an old enemy of his} that he had returned it years before-only to have his trick revealed on closed-circuit TV on Chicago Television!

Most of the show's running gags concern Al. Aside from his bad luck, Al also maintains a "do-it-yourself" attitude whenever something in the house needs repair; combined with his creativity, poor judgement, and lack of skill, this usually produces absurd results, and often in physical injury to Al. Al is also frequently described as being careless about hygiene: he is often told he smells bad, and whenever he goes to a public restroom, he overflows the toilet. He is often seen leaving restrooms, even public ones, with a newspaper tucked under his arm, to the sound of a toilet flushing. A running gag is that Al showers or even brushes his teeth as rarely as he has sex, which is extremely infrequent, as he continually rejects Peggy's advances.

Al is not very well liked by his neighborhood. In "Route 666" Marcy D'Arcy said that when they thought Al had died, they all started dancing and singing "Ding Dong, the shoe man's dead" and called it a "cruel, cruel hoax" when they learned it was a false alarm — as usual, Al had survived his latest misadventure. Other people pay little to no attention to him and, as a result, his name often ends up misspelled on paychecks, parking spots, etc. (e.g., "Bumby", "Boondy" or "Birdy").

Despite being a somewhat phlegmatic and slow person, Bundy has a sarcastic and cynical sense of humor; he also has a definite love for his family, though that can still be traded for a fair amount of money. On the rare occasions when he enjoys luxury and money, Al indeed expresses love for his family. An example can be seen in one episode where Peggy and Al receive free first-class plane tickets to New York City from Marcy and are seen sipping champagne and singing "I Got You, Babe" together. In another episode, Al's Dodge turns up missing and he wants it back to recover an item in the trunk. The item turns out to be a family photo of Al, Peg, Kelly and Bud together. This suggests that his distaste for them is spawned merely by his blaming them for his poor quality of life.

Al dislikes fat women (repeatedly insulting them to their faces with one-liners, a trait he has shown since he was a child), his job, the prospect of having sex with his wife, his feminist neighbor Marcy D'Arcy, and the French. He loves nudie magazines, free beer, bowling and "nudie" bars, and often cherishes the glory moment of his past: scoring four touchdowns "in a single game" while playing for the fictional Polk High School Panthers in the 1966 city championship game versus fictional Andrew Johnson High School, including the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds against his old nemesis, “Spare Tire” Dixon (played by Bubba Smith in episode "All-Nite Security Dude"). Another episode "Damn Bundys" featured Al selling his soul to the devil (played by Robert Englund) in order to lead the Chicago Bears to the Super Bowl as the oldest rookie in NFL history; Al scores the touchdown and ends up in hell with his family and neighbors for 200 years. (In real life, O'Neill tried out for the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969, the first season of Hall of Famers Chuck Noll and "Mean Joe" Greene, but was cut in training camp, leading to O'Neill re-enrolling at Youngstown State University and starting his acting career there).^[2] In the season 8 episode "Dud Bowl II", a scoreboard at Polk High's football stadium was to be dedicated to Al, but Marcy had it arranged for it to instead be named after Terry Bradshaw (who says later in the episode that he never played football while attending Polk High) out of malice; but after hearing from Kelly how much it would mean to her father if the scoreboard honored him, Bradshaw decides to let the scoreboard to be named after Al. Al did not know this and arranged to have Jefferson and Bud blow up the scoreboard, he found out at the dedication and rushed to prevent the marching band's cymbalist from crashing his cymbals (Al was unsuccessful and the cymbals were crashed into his head, injuring him); Jefferson and Bud blew up the scoreboard on that cue. In one nightmare episode Al is accidentally poisoned and hovers between life and death-with the grim Reaper being played by his wife. In a reincarnation episode the Bundy's dog dies and comes back as a puppy to live with the Bundies.

He is a fan of oldies music, and a fan of westerns. His favorite movie in particular is Hondo (which he missed once in the episode "Assault and Batteries", after having been knocked unconscious when a cash register he threw at an automatic door in frustration over being locked in a store bounced off the door and hit him in the head), and his favorite sitcom is the fictional Psycho Dad (he led an unsuccessful protest to have the show put back on the air after it was canceled due to its violent content, leading Al and his NO MA'AM organization members to go to Washington, D.C.). Politically, Al can be classified as apolitical, but later in an homage to his time as Al Bundy, Ed O'Neill reprised the role of Al showing his support for the then-candidate, Barack Obama's tax plan. The plan was said to give "Al the Shoe Salesman" a $1,000 federal tax break. Bundy's favorite magazine is Big'uns,, though an early episode used an issue of Playboy instead. He enjoys watching sports and adult movies on television, with his right hand tucked into his waistband (he switches to his left hand on Sundays). Though he almost always resists Peggy's frequent amorous advances, he is shown to have a particular fondness for her breasts, which she refers to as "the guys."

Al's talents include bowling (he is an extremely gifted bowler), barbecueing (while wearing an apron that says "Kiss the Cook, Kill the Wife"), and getting into and winning fistfights. He can survive incredible injuries ranging from falling off his roof while installing a satellite dish, getting shocked by that same dish, and being pulverized by a massive woman wrestler (Big Bad Mama from Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) in Las Vegas, to jumping from an airplane without a parachute, and surviving a huge explosion when he accidentally detonates dynamite in his own yard trying to kill a rabbit who has been eating his vegetable garden. Al also has an encyclopedic knowledge of sports trivia, which usually demonstrates how he has little interest in anything else. He does however serve his country by joining the U.S. National Guard in which Al receives the 'Bronze Dumpster' for service during a garbage strike.

In season 8, Bundy and his friends found NO MA'AM, the "National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood". Its "political goals" are to fight the increasing power of women all over society, but the organization tends to just be a social club for several neighborhood men to bond: consume beer, indulge in pornography, bowl, visit strip clubs, watch sports, etc. However, there have been instances of actual "political activities" such as kidnapping Jerry Springer; countering a breast-feeding sit-in organized by Marcy with a Beer Belly dance-off; causing a riot over a proposed beer tax; going to Washington to appeal to Congress when Psycho Dad is canceled; and even forming a short lived misogynistic religion, whose chief theology is blaming all the world's problems on Eve, not unlike Christianity, making it mostly a sect, rather a proper religion. Al shows great leadership skills, being the lead organizer/instigator of many of NO MA'AM's activism and authoritatively breaking NO MA'AM members' squabbles with "Focus gentlemen, focus!"

Since there was no final-episode special to provide an epilogue, it is unknown what would happen to Al in the end. However, his guardian angel (Sam Kinison in the 1989 episode "It's a Bundyful Life, Part 2") mentions that at age 60 his stomach gets so ulcer-ridden that he dies from all the stress of living his life. {A 1990 episode revealed Al is 43-making his vital dates 1947-2007} According to his family funeral plans in the episode "Death of a Shoe Salesmen", he would be buried next to his favorite television actor Fuzzy McGee. When his wife Peggy dies, due to a loophole in his original burial plans, she will be stacked face-down on top of him, much to his dismay. In the episode "I Who Have Nothing," ^[3] according to his will, he'd be buried with all his prized football possessions, leaving just his worthless Joe Nuxhall baseball card to his only-begotten son Bud. To the rest of his family he'd leave a picture of him, posing in his jersey with his football, that would read "To My Beloved family, have a nice life!". The final episode he appeared in was "How to Marry a Moron part 2".

Reception[link]

Al Bundy had a mostly positive reception.^[4][5] Al and Peg were named the 59th best TV characters by Bravo.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Al Bundy Blog - latest Married… with Children news
• The Bundy Principle - media notes inspired by Al
• A tribute to Al's Ferguson
• Al Bundy at the Internet Movie Database

Ed O'Neill
Ed O'Neill in 2010
Born	Edward Phillip O'Neill, Jr. (1946-04-12) April 12, 1946 (age 66) Youngstown, Ohio, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1970–present
Spouse	Catherine Rusoff (1986–present)

Edward Phillip "Ed" O'Neill, Jr. (born April 12, 1946) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as the main character, Al Bundy, on the Fox TV Network sitcom Married... with Children, for which he was nominated for two Golden Globes.^[1] He can currently be seen on the award-winning ABC sitcom Modern Family in the role of Jay Pritchett, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award and won 2 Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Early life[link]

O'Neill was born into an Irish Catholic family in Youngstown, Ohio.^[2][3] His mother, Ruth Ann (née Quinlan), was a homemaker and social worker, and his father, Edward Phillip O'Neill, Sr., was a steel mill worker and truck driver.^[4] O'Neill attended Ursuline High School and won a football scholarship to Ohio University, where he majored in history.^[5] O'Neill left Ohio after his sophomore year: he spent more time playing sports and partying than studying^[5] and also feuded with his coach. He transferred to Youngstown State University, where he was a defensive lineman.^[4] O'Neill was signed by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969, but was cut in training camp.^[3][4] Later, on Married... with Children, O'Neill played a former high-school football star who had failed to make it big and constantly reminisced about his "glory days" at Polk High ("I once scored four touchdowns in a single game"). As part of this theme, former Pittsburgh Steelers great and hall of fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw also made two guest appearances on the show. O'Neill was also a social studies teacher at Ursuline High School, before becoming an actor.^[4]

Career[link]

O'Neill reenrolled at YSU after being cut by the Steelers and was one of the first students at the school's then new theatre program. He played Lenny in a stage production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1985, O'Neill appeared in a Red Lobster commercial eating fish and made a brief guest appearance in The Equalizer. In 1986, he was cast as the character of NYPD Police Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle for the planned television series Popeye Doyle. The Popeye Doyle character originally appeared in the motion picture The French Connection (played by Gene Hackman). The two-hour made-for-television movie/pilot was filmed and shown on network television. O'Neill received good reviews for his performance, and the pilot received good ratings, but the series was not picked up for production.

O'Neill is primarily known for playing the lead role of Al Bundy in Married... with Children, a long-running American sitcom about a dysfunctional family living in Chicago.^[4] It was the first primetime television series to air on the Fox Network as a midseason replacement, debuting on April 5, 1987 and concluding June 9, 1997.

During and following the success of Married... with Children, O'Neill appeared in several movies, including The Bone Collector, Little Giants, and Dutch. He also had small parts in Wayne's World and Wayne's World 2, and appeared as Relish the Troll King in The 10th Kingdom. O'Neill made a brief appearance on the comedy variety show In Living Color, playing the "Dirty Dozens" champion who defeats the challenger, played by Jamie Foxx. He also made a cameo on the sitcom 8 Simple Rules where he was the ex-boyfriend of Cate S. Hennessy (played by Katey Sagal, who portrayed O'Neill's TV wife Peg Bundy on Married with Children). He also appeared in the movie The Adventures of Ford Fairlane with Andrew Dice Clay and in Cruising with Al Pacino. During the mid 1990s, he had a long string of appearances in commercials for 1-800-COLLECT.

Law & Order franchise creator Dick Wolf cast O'Neill as Sgt. Joe Friday in his 2003 remake of Jack Webb's classic TV crime series Dragnet. The series was canceled by ABC in its second season. O'Neill went on to appear as Governor Eric Baker (D-PA), a recurring character on NBC's The West Wing. Baker, a strong candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, assumed the office of the Vice President under Matt Santos at the end of the series.

O'Neill also played Bill on HBO's television series John From Cincinnati.

In 2008, O'Neill appeared in an advertisement for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama as "Al the Shoesalesman".^[6]

In January 2009, O'Neill reunited with David Faustino (Bud Bundy from Married with Children) for two episodes of Faustino's show Star-ving.^[7] O'Neill also appeared with the entire cast of Married with Children again when they were honored at the 7th Annual TV Land Award show in 2009, presented by Dr. Phil.

Since 2009, O'Neill has played the role of Jay Pritchett on the ABC sitcom Modern Family, a role that earned him an Emmy award nomination in 2011.^[8][9][10]

Personal life[link]

O'Neill has been married since 1986 to actress Catherine Rusoff, who appeared in two episodes of Married... with Children. In 1989, the couple separated but reconciled in 1993. They have two daughters, Claire in 1996 and Sophia in 1999.

After being introduced to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu by his friend writer/director John Milius, O'Neill has trained in the martial art for 17 years under the mentoring of Rorion Gracie. In December 2007, O'Neill received his black belt.^[11][12]

Awards[link]

O'Neill received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on August 30th 2011.^[13][14]

Filmography[link]

Awards and nominations[link]

See also[link]

• List of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ed O'Neill at the Internet Movie Database