Unhappily Ever After

I'll admit, when I first started watching this show in 1995, I thought that this would be the new MWC once the old MWC went off the air. I mean, look at the similarities......the deadbeat, minimum-wage earning father; the wise-cracking, undersexed mother; a son who dreams of scoring but never does, and a totally hot daughter. There's a few differences, however:

1. The hot daughter is smarter than the boys. She's the straight-A student here. Of course, that doesn't stop her from wiggling around in the shortest skirts possible.

2. There's 2 sons. One combines the undersexed part of MWC's "Bud" character and the dumb part of MWC's "Kelly" character, the other is used primarily for comic relief.

3. Mr. Floppy. The talking bunny is Mr. Malloy's alter ego, and only he can talk to him. Of course, his family thinks he's crazy when he spends all that time in the basement.

4. Tiffany, the hot, short-skirted daughter, is a virgin. When I first heard this, I thought it was the biggest contradiction of the show. Here's a girl that looks this good, with all these guys drooling over her, and she's a VIRGIN? Oh please. As we all know, Kelly Bundy of MWC's favorite spot was the back seat of a car. We didn't see it on camera, but she was understood to be very promiscuous.

After the behind-the-scenes people seen who was watching the show, and who on the show they were watching, first the grandma was let go (after the first season!) and then Stephanie Hodge (who played the mother) was booted off the show. "Unhappily" was restructured around Nikki Cox's character, Tiffany. The show then became an exercise in watching Tiffany and her best friend glide across the screen in the shortest, skimpiest dresses allowed on TV-14 television. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this show, and when it went off the air I was pretty disappointed. The reruns are still around, and I really like watching those! I give this show a solid A.

At first glance, this show would appear to be nothing more than a cheap "Married with Children" rip-off, and to be honest, that's not entirely untrue. Yes, the characters and situations are basically the same as "Married": The pathetic working-class Dad; the hormone-enraged loser son; the not-too-bright sexpot daughter; the horrid living conditions...but there are enough differences in this show to make it enjoyable in it's own right. First off, there's Floppy, the stuffed bunny who's the father's imaginary friend (conjured up in the first show to help him overcome a nervous breakdown, I think), played by Bobcat Goldthwait. Since Floppy is only in the father's imagination, of course nobody is aware of his existence but the dad, and the conversations they have about what's going on are some of the funniest in the show. Then there are what could be called, "surface" changes, little things that differentiate it from "Married": There being two sons instead of only one; the daughter being smarter than the boys, them having two sexy female teen leads (the daughter and her rival) instead of just one, and of course, Floppy. This show is obviously derived from Married with Children (and they've acknowledged it at least once with an on-camera Ed O'Neill reference), but it's different enough from the original that it's actually quite funny on it's own --to me, VERY funny. When "Married" was still on the air I watched both of these shows; after "Married" got canceled I looked forward to "Unhappily" even more. Watching this show and comparing it to "Married" can be kind of like when you want a Coke but the machine only has Pepsi, you'll go with the Pepsi because they're essentially the same...and in fact, some days you *want* a different cola drink. If you haven't given this show a chance because it looks like a cheapo knock-off of "Married", you should reconsider. I was saddened when this show got canned, it was one of the few WB programs I actually watched. This show had a lot of the same things that made "Married" such a great show, plus a few surprises. Try to catch the reruns on WB before they pull them off completely.

I loved this show. It was kind of a takeoff of Married with Children, but it struck me as a smarter version of said show. As Al Bundy's life was complicated in a simple way, Jack Malloy's was complicated in a complicated way. Bundy was just a man's idiot living a very cynical life, but Jack was a raging alcoholic suffering from Schizophrenia embodied in a child's toy. The intelligence of the children was reversed (the hot girl was smart and the boy was the stupid one). While the episodes about the kids were semi-funny, Jack was indeed the key character, and when the story revolved around him, the show tended to be hilarious. Sure, Tiffany's competition with her schoolmate came off as funny, especially because she took her world a little too seriously, but finding out that Jack was the founding member of the band that eventually became Aerosmith was hilarious.

This show NEEDS to come out on DVD. It would be the first set I'd buy. Someone petition the WB for episodes!

Frankly Unhappily Ever After can be considered a guilty pleasure. The show esstentially played out on a trashy level (i.e. in terms of its seemingly inane storytelling) and perhaps the acting had a tendecy of being relatively amateurish. Unhappily Ever After tried to coast as far as it could in terms of references to popular culture and to a certain degree the show benefited from it. Perhaps that was the only thing the show had to fall back on but the references managed to come out on a frequent basis and were fairly interesting never the less. Perhaps Unhappily Ever After can considerably be labled as "low-rent satire." You're viewing something that's can be juvenile on a frequent basis but at the same time will make a fun out of numerous things in popular culture.

It's true that the show is an obvious Married With Children ripoff. In fact, in one episode I specifically remember Ed O'Neill's (Al Bundy from Married With Children) name being mentioned. Nevertheless, the show is hilarious. Especially Mr Floppy.