As a start-up network, Fox's weak prime-time lineup didn't help boost the show's ratings. Fox didn't have the affiliate base of the three major networks and many viewers had to watch the upstart network on UHF channels, rather than on cable.
After acting in two short-lived series (“Heart of the City” and “Washington”), Christina believed that “Married” would be her third program that never made it past the first season.
“I think we were all a little bit surprised,” she told the website www.ign.com in 2001. “We went into it thinking it would be 13 weeks and it was a new network being run by really young guys. I don't think anybody thought it was going to last 11 years so we were all surprised by that.”
Classic TV Beauties 1980s Countdown
CHRISTINA APPLEGATE as Kelly Bundy in "Married...With Children"
Kelly was the ditzy, slutty blonde who dressed like a hooker and shopped as often as she breathed. The first teenage overt sex symbol on TV, Kelly matured from a high school girl to a twenty-something woman, but she always remained a bimbo.
Kelly was never without a date, and always had males lusting after her. Brother Bud (David Faustino) once called her a “limited edition, condom-packin' Barbie.”
“One thing that I kept in mind while playing Kelly is that people would call her a slut, but her behavior didn't live up to that,” Christina told www.ew.com in 2010. “We didn't think of her as promiscuous. She was just called those things, We wanted to keep her likable, innocent and relatable.”
Christina, who was 16 when Kelly debuted on the screen in 1987 and 27 when the series ended, added comedy to the character; Kelly often delivered snappy putdowns aimed at Bud or her father Al (Ed O'Neill).
Several of her infamous one-liners included:
“This is what I spent all those years learning my ABDs for?”
“I didn't come all this way to spend my vacation in a one-whore town.”
“They say all blondes are dumb. But that's just a stereo system.”
“The prostitution rests.”
Time magazine named “Married...with Children” one of “The 100 Best TV Shows of All Time,” saying the series “was dedicated to the classical ideal that unhappy families were more interesting than happy ones...and a lot funnier.
“The Bundys were really a twisted mirror of TV's instant gratification culture, an illustration of deadly sins – lust, sloth, greed – suitable for a medieval morality play.”
“Married...with Children,” the first prime-time series to air on the Fox network, centered around a dysfunctional family living in Chicago. Although it attained cult status and is still seen in reruns today, “Married” was never a ratings success. In its 11 seasons, the show's highest rating was No. 29 (1991-92) and it cracked the top 50 only five times. “Married” was nominated for seven Golden Globe awards, but never won.
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While Kelly Bundy was often attired in skimpy tops and mini skirts, Christina said her every-day wardrobe was much more modest.
“I would walk off the set and put on my big sweat pants and my big sweatshirt and my hair would be a mess and that's how I walked around. That's how I hid...I'm sort of a modest girl.”
After the series ended in 1987, Christina said she was swamped with offers of similar Kelly Bundy-type roles.
She said casting agents and producers “got very caught up in the part I was playing and there's nothing more boring than that, to just do that character all the time...the last thing I'd want to do is wear a mini skirt for the entire summer.”
Born in Hollywood to a record-producer father and actress-singer mother, Christina first appeared on the screen in “Days of Our Lives” at age 3 months. She quit school at 17 to pursue an acting career. Before “Married,” Christina guest-starred in episodes of “Charles in Charge,” “Family Ties,” and “Still the Beaver.”
“After “Married...with Children,” Christina starred in “Jesse,” playing a single mother raising a young son in Buffalo, a waitress working in her father's bar. Christina won a People's Choice Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe fo Lead Actress in a Comedy. The show had outstanding ratings – No. 4 in 1999, No. 12 in 2000 – but was inexplicably canceled.
Christina appeared in two episodes of “Friends” as Amy Green, Rachel's younger sister, earning her an Emmy in 2004 for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
Christina's most memorable film role was as Will Ferrell's love interest in 2004's “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” a parody of local TV news and the 1970s lifestyle. Christina, as Veronica Corningstone, disrupted the previously all-male “news team” with her unbridled ambition.
Christina returned to TV in 2007 in “Samantha Who?” the highest-rated sitcom for the first six episodes of the season.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 and she was pronounced
cancer free after a double mastectomy. She returned to work on
“Samantha Who?” but the show was canceled the following season after
ratings dipped.
Six years after it left the air, the “Married...with Children” reunited. Christina recalled the experience in an interview with www.filmmonthly.com
"It was really nice to see everybody. I mean those people raised me and it
was just it was nice to give our audience you know the people their still
our audience,” she said.
“I think that's the thing this question comes up as much as it does is that
here's a show that's still on four times a day and known internationally
whatever, but here when you turn on the television it's on every single day
four times a day. And so you're constantly reminded and those of you who
may not of seen anything else that I've ever done that's all you know. So,
that's cool and I can't, you know, fight that."
