Married with Children: The Complete Eleventh Season is flat-out hilarious, as usual, but I honestly didn't find it quite as entertaining as some of the past seasons of Bundy family entertainment. In fact, this season seemed to focus much more on the head of the household, Al Bundy (Ed O'Neil), and everything from his constant verbal abuse to the obese women that grace his presence at work to the constant degradation of his red-headed wife, Peg (Katey Sagal). In fact, Al's co-worker Griff (Harold Sylvester) spends a fair amount of time on-screen in The Complete Eleventh Season as well.
Siblings Kelly (Christina Applegate) and Bud (David Faustino) certainly do share some screen time as well. Kelly Bundy is still as dumb as a box of rocks and falls for the biggest losers that Chicago has to offer while whoring around, at least until joining a convent. Okay, okay... I know that's a long shot, but in order to get an acting part as a nun, Kelly is forced to sign away her promiscuous life. Her brother/agent Bud tries to keep her in line, but we all know that bad habits (no pun intended) are hard to break.
Bud, of course, is also up to his hijinks of wanting to mate every hot chick that breathes, and ends up going to any lengths to do so. In fact, he even ends up dating his father's much older boss, Gary (Janet Carroll) -- yes, that's a woman's name in the show. Way back in the first episode, Bud even attempts to fake a tornado because his girlfriend gets horny over the dangers that storms signify... but in typical corny Bundy fashion, a real tornado comes and keeps everyone trapped in the basement, including neighbors, Jefferson and Marcy D'Arcy (Ted McGinley and Amanda Bearse). It seems that the anxiety of the situation turns both Peg and Marcy into passion-filled sex machines, much to the dismay of the husbands.
In another episode, Peg wonders why Al has to spend so much time at the Jiggly Room, a local strip club that the No Ma'am-ers frequent. When Al and the boys are offered the chance to judge a contest, Peg jumps at the chance of entering herself as a gypsy with a veil. "Jasmine," as she's called, intrigues Al to the point of infatuation, driving him over the edge of actually wanting to sleep with Peggy, showing that his wife is the hottest woman in the world for him.
Some other notable episodes had Jefferson shooting the breeze with Fidel Castro, Marcy having it out for her look-a-like cousin (Amanda Bearse in a dual role), and Peg and Kelly enter a music contest as "The Jugs," earning a chance to tour with Tammy Wynette. Of course, Al attempts to show that he's all man when he leaves the family and gets his own bachelor pad in a special three-part episode. Al and the boys do also find themselves in the Jiggly Room on more than one occasion throughout Married with Children, but none more important than when they find Kelly's fiancé with girls crawling all over him. In typical Whoa Bundy comedy, instead of kicking the boy's butt, Al and the rest of the family try to use the fiancé's wealthy family as their meal ticket out of the middle-class.
Married with Children: The Complete Eleventh Season is a great way to top off and finalize the series. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments that carry the hilarity throughout these final 24 episodes. With that said, however, I do have to admit that the series lost a bit of its flair over the years, so this final season wasn't as entertaining as some of the previous. Another worthy mention is that the DVD set really doesn't contain any special features to speak of, which is a big disappointment to not get any behind the scenes insights. Still, there is no reason to overlook Married with Children: The Complete Eleventh Season either to fulfill your collection or as a weekly rental because there is plenty of funny to go around.
