Al Bundy "
Al"
Bundy (
Ed O'Neill), the head of the Bundy family, is doomed to fail in all aspirations because of the "Bundy curse." Once a promising
fullback for fictional Polk High School (his proudest moment in life was scoring four touchdowns in a single game), he was on his way to college on a scholarship until he broke his leg, and ended up as a shoe salesman at "Gary's Shoes" in the "New Market Mall", located in an incorporated area of suburban
Chicago. Shortly thereafter, Al married Margaret "Peg" Wanker on May 10, 1971, after allegedly proposing while inebriated. The two later went on to have two children, Kelly and Bud. In a season five episode that aired in 1990, it is mentioned that Al is 43 years old. Much like the name "Rhoades", the creators chose the surname "Bundy" after professional wrestler
King Kong Bundy (Christopher Alan Pallies, who later guest-starred as one of Peggy's 'Wanker' relatives). Al often spends time attempting to recapture his glory days, but is usually undermined in spectacular fashion by frequent bad luck and poor judgment. He considers his family to be the cause of his failures, and his resentment of them (and aversion to sex with Peg) provides much of the show's humor. Despite his familial disappointments, Al frequently displays begrudging devotion to his wife and children. He is protective of his daughter Kelly and commonly beats up her boyfriends. When he becomes aware that Peg frequented a male
strip club, he threatened one of its strippers, saying that "if my wife loses anything in your pants, so will you." On a semi-regular basis, he is seen bonding with his son, Bud. Despite his attraction to other women, he remains faithful to his family and chooses not to cheat on them, demonstrating his commitment and love for them. He frequently goes to "nudie bars" and strip clubs with his friends, the most prominent of which is called "The Jiggly Room", featured during the series' final four seasons. The only thing that seems to consistently put Al in the mood for sex with his wife is watching her do
manual labor, which very seldom happens. Al is said to have extreme
foot odor, prefers the escapism of television and
bowling over his dysfunctional family, and life of drudgery and starvation (as Peg refuses to cook, she claims that she is allergic to fire, despite the fact that she smokes cigarettes in the early seasons) and is often seen in his trademark
couch potato pose — seated on the sofa with one hand stuck under the waistband of his pants. The foot perspiration is not his only health issue; once, in 1983, he had a bad case of
dandruff. He also has terrible teeth, as noted in the episode "Tooth or Consequences," where his extremely poor dental hygiene leads to a trip to the dentist with typical bad luck results. A running gag in the series is Al's apparent habit of overflowing the toilet when using the bathroom. Another running joke used throughout the series is that being a shoe salesman, Al earns little more than minimum wage. In the episode "How Bleen Was My Kelly", Al uses a desktop computer to find how much money he makes on a daily basis and learns that he makes less than a local paperboy. By using the computer's search engine, Al learns that everyone around the world, from a dirt vendor in
Pakistan to an
Eskimo blubber chewer in
Nome, Alaska, makes more money in one day than Al does by selling women's shoes, except for one person, Peg. When Al returns home, he often tells an anecdote about his work, almost always beginning with the words "A fat woman came into the store today". Al's favorite television series, the fictional Western show "Psycho Dad", was a source of joy and entertainment that Al seemingly, at times, wanted to emulate. He would hum the words to the theme song, and pretend to "shoot" his fictional gun while watching the show. His other joys were Westerns, often
John Wayne films, most notably
Hondo, until Peg's family ruined his recording of the movie by taping over it with a song dedicated to her. He has also referenced
Shane when the clan ruined his enjoyment of that movie. Al also owns a "faithful" 1974
Dodge that invariably had failed brakes, constant breakdowns and numerous other problems associated with its age and mileage. At the time of the fourth season at least, Al was still paying it off, despite it being well over 20 years old. By the eighth season, the Dodge had passed one million miles. Al's Dodge actually appears to be a 1972
Plymouth Duster in one early episode; however, it is only referred to as "The Dodge" and is supposedly constructed of the various parts of other wrecked and mangled Dodges. The producers originally wanted to cast comedian
Sam Kinison as Al Bundy. However, they ultimately chose not to, due to the
profaneness of Kinison's
comedy routines. Kinison would later play Al's
guardian angel in the episode "
It's a Bundyful Life", spoofing
Frank Capra's ''
It's a Wonderful Life''. The producers also considered
Michael Richards for the role. The producers stated in interviews that they were also attempting to determine what a good "mission statement" would be for the show, and ultimately went with the first sound heard on the first episode — that of Al flushing a toilet.
Peg Bundy Margaret "
Peg"/"
Peggy"
Bundy,
Wanker (
Katey Sagal), is Al's lazy, self-indulgent wife. She refuses to work, cook, or clean the house (although Peg occasionally displays an ability for domestic aptitude). She cites her laziness as family tradition, getting upset with Kelly when she gets a job. She claims that Wanker women never work, and in old pioneer days, "Wanker women were getting their hair done while Wanker men got theirs scalped." During the day, she likes to watch daytime
talk-shows, sit on the living room couch, and eat copious amounts of ice-cream
BonBons (without ever gaining weight). Peg is a
redhead (brunette in the first two seasons) with a
bouffant hairdo, and she usually wears combinations of modern-day 1980/1990s and dated 1960s-styled fashions with skin tight
Spandex pants and shirts, and
stiletto heels, which make her walk in a unique way. Peg smoked cigarettes in the first four seasons, but then quit. Her favorite TV shows are
Oprah and
Donahue, but she also enjoys watching the
Shop at Home Network. Peg continually squanders what little money Al makes on extravagant spending sprees, including everything from expensive clothes to useless trinkets, and even steals from her children to get extra cash. Peg and Al married in 1971. Late in the first season, she says she married Al on a dare, although this may have been just a sarcastic comment. In the fourth season, it was revealed that she did not actually graduate from high school, failing to meet a half-credit in
home economics. She later returned to school, earning her diploma, but only by stealing Kelly's final exam and tricking her into going to
summer school. Her family, the Wankers, hail from the fictitious rural Wanker County,
Wisconsin, where "as Einstein put it, everyone's relative." At Peg and Al's high school reunion, her rival greeted her with "Peggy... Peggy Wanker... don't bother to thank her." It is never made clear how she managed to go to high school in Chicago with Al when her parents apparently never left Wanker County. Unlike Al, Peg greatly desires marital sex despite constantly complaining about Al's lack of endurance and Al's general antipathy towards sex with her. She does not seem to mind her husband ogling other women, reading
pornographic magazines, or going to strip joints. Her enthusiasm has caused some of the male strip joints she visits to establish the "Bundy rule," where women can no longer go into the back rooms to meet the dancers, nor is the establishment responsible for anything lost down a dancer's costume. During season six, Peg becomes pregnant (Sagal's own pregnancy being written into the show). However, Sagal suffered a
miscarriage, so the writers turned the whole story arc into one of Al's nightmares. Sagal became pregnant twice more during the series' run, but instead of writing those pregnancies into the show, the producers used camera shots from above the stomach or wrote episodes without the character of Peg, explaining her absence by having her set out in search of her missing father (who appeared in a few episodes, played by
Tim Conway), and only occasionally calling home. Despite her continuous put-downs of Al and general indifference towards their family, she demonstrated genuine feelings towards him on at least one occasion when a successful childhood classmate (
Vanna White) comes back to town and reveals she has long harbored feelings for Al, offering Peg $500,000 for one night with him. Though they initially agreed to the offer, Peg ultimately refuses, as she can't bear the thought of Al being with another woman. During a televised cast reunion, Katey Sagal said that she believed Peg "thought [Al] was hot" due to her inability to keep her hands off him. The role was originally offered to
Roseanne Barr, but she turned it down. The producers cast Sagal, who came up with Peg's appearance, wanting to satirize the TV housewives of the 1960s.
Entertainment Weekly listed Sagal's role as Peg for the "Biggest Emmy Snub." In 2009, Peg was included in
Yahoo!'s Top 10 TV Moms from Six Decades of Television for the decade 1987–1997. In May 2012, she was one of the 12 moms chosen by users of
iVillage on their list of "Mommy Dearest: The TV Moms You Love". In one of the episodes, Peg's birthday is mentioned, which is on April 12.
Kelly Bundy Kelly Bundy (
Christina Applegate) is the older child in the Bundy family, born in 1972. "Pumpkin," as Al often calls her, is promiscuous and beautiful, tends to hang out with "
slacker" guys, and exemplifies the stereotypical "
dumb blonde". Al is annoyed by Kelly's
promiscuity and tends to treat her various love interests with a combination of derision and violence; in numerous episodes, he leads them to the front door, feigning friendliness, only to walk them head-first into the wall before tossing them out the door. During the first season, Kelly is portrayed as a rather average and normal teenage girl:
sarcastic and rebellious, but not as dimwitted as she would later be depicted. After the first season, she steadily becomes more dense and provocative, and typically dressed in more skimpy outfits. Despite being generally portrayed as a dullard, the show occasionally hints at Kelly's ironic intrinsic intellectual ability, which only exhibits itself on those rare occasions when she is not preoccupied with her
social status or men. It has been demonstrated that she can absorb a limited amount of information very well, but will forget something that she learned in the past once her limit is reached. Kelly is also known to display excellent hand/eye coordination when playing
pool or performing
archery. She shows some characteristics of an
idiot savant. One episode showed a flashback to when she was a toddler, showing her as a
child prodigy, until a knock to the head caused the change of personality that Kelly would be better known for. Christina Applegate has said that she didn't consider Kelly to be necessarily unintelligent, but rather as someone with an unconventional thought process (i.e. she was capable of learning and intellectually solving problems, but she did so in a manner that deviated from the more common linear logic). Kelly's comedic function tends to include blatant displays of
naivety and ignorance, with the typical response by the family of willfully allowing her to remain ignorant. Bud, in particular, likes to sow misconceptions in her mind. For example, she asks Bud to help her with her book report on
Robinson Crusoe, but ends up reviewing ''
Gilligan's Island'' instead. After graduating high school in 1990, she works as a model and waitress. By the final seasons, Kelly appears to have matured into an independent woman with a more enhanced insight and street smarts. Though she often pokes fun at her younger brother Bud for being underdeveloped and socially awkward, she often schemes with him to achieve whatever goal she has currently set for herself. On at least one occasion, Kelly has also avenged Bud by humiliating a girl who humiliated him. Her favorite comic strip is
Garfield. Her less-than-stellar reading skills led to many comedic situations in which she would read the
Garfield comic aloud, mispronouncing lasagna as "luh-sag-nee." Tina Caspary was originally cast as Kelly, but after the original pilot was filmed, the show's producers felt that she did not quite fit the part, and she was replaced by Applegate. Applegate wrote on
Twitter that she based her character on a girl in the 1988 documentary
The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years.
Bud Bundy Budrick "Bud" Franklin Bundy (
David Faustino) is the second child, born on January 22, 1974. In the original pilot, his name was going to be Ben. In the first season, Bud is said to be in fifth grade, making him 10 or 11, but in subsequent seasons, he was aged to be within one year of Kelly, graduating high school in 1991. He was named for
Budweiser beer. Upon the series premiere, Bud was generally depicted as a brat and
antagonist, who especially enjoyed annoying his sister to the point of her extreme frustration. In subsequent seasons, he morphed into an unpopular, socially inept outcast, prone to self-serving schemes — many of which tended to involve attempts to impress girls. Bud regularly tries to boast himself to be attractive, sexy, and smooth, but is frequently rejected and/or caught in humiliating scenarios. In the fourth season, it is mentioned that he is still a virgin. Later in the series, having lost his
virginity, he still remains generally unlucky in his pursuit of the opposite sex, despite the occasional
one-night stand; one of which was with his cousin's fiancée, Janie, played by
Joey Lauren Adams. During his teenage years, Bud develops a fleeting crush on the Bundys' next door neighbor Marcy Rhoades, towards whom he makes several unsuccessful come-on attempts. Later, he develops a crush on Marcy's young niece, whom he sleeps with in one episode. He has a May–December fling with Al's (female) boss Gary, in which Gary treats Bud like wealthy men tend to treat their young, nubile, and unintelligent
gold-digging dates. To the surprise of both Gary and his family, Bud isn't interested in being a "kept man" and breaks up with Gary over her disrespect for him. He tries to attract girls with the help of various
alter egos, including street rapper "Grandmaster B" — a persona often ridiculed by his family, who call him everything from "Bell-Ringer B" to "Bed-Wetter B". Another alter-ego is "Cool Bud," Bud's sexual, suave side, with whom he eventually "merges", prompting him to become more "cool". Like his parents and sister, Bud is a surprisingly adept fighter, exhibiting a talent for generally besting an adversary, no matter their size, and has no qualms about using chairs or tables to even the odds. Of the Bundys, Bud seems to be the most self-conscious and easily embarrassed of them; he often pretends not to know his family, even scheming against them on occasion. Throughout the series, Bud shares an adversarial sibling rivalry with Kelly, with both regularly mocking, insulting and taunting the other. Often, however, they will collaborate in schemes that are mutually beneficial, and will come to the other's defense when an outside entity threatens one of them. Toward the end of the series, Bud becomes Kelly's agent. Bud is the most academically able member of his family, as he maintains a high grade point average throughout elementary, middle, and high school, consistently makes the honor roll, then attends
college later in the series. He earns a
scholarship, which the family accidentally spends when his deposited scholarship check turns up in Al's bank account instead. Upon hearing this, a furious Bud then forces himself to earn his
bachelor's degree in
psychology by working as a
therapist.
Hunter Carson was originally cast as Bud, but after the original pilot was filmed, the show's producers felt that he did not quite fit the part, and so he was replaced by Faustino. Buck went to animal heaven, and was reincarnated as Lucky, an
American Cocker Spaniel (having met God in heaven, who turned out to be a cat). In later seasons, Buck/Lucky would occasionally serve as the narrator in the second half of a two-part episode, recapping the events of the first part. Buck's last episode, 10.03, "Requiem for a Dead Briard" - originally broadcast on October 1, 1995 - ends with the following message on the screen: "Dedicated to Buck the Dog who with this episode begins a well earned retirement and hopefully a nice gig at stud. We'll miss you, Buddy, lift a leg. - The Producers." Retired at the age of twelve-and-a-half, Michael died shortly afterward, on May 28, 1996, at the age of thirteen.
Lucky A character whose voice-overs were performed by staff member
Kim Weiskopf,
Lucky is the reincarnation of Buck, who was punished in the afterlife for being a bad dog his entire life by being forced to spend another lifetime as the Bundys' family dog. Miraculously appearing out of thin air in the Bundys' living room shortly after Buck's death, the family is happy to have a new family pet, although Lucky is horrified that he has to spend yet another lifetime with the terrible family. Lucky is a
Cocker Spaniel. Unlike his last incarnation Buck who was
heterosexual, Lucky himself is
gay having on two occasions been attracted to males: once to an
English Bulldog that wore a leather jacket and spikes that he met at a park, and also to Jefferson when he was in a wool sheep costume. Lucky also dismissed a female dog when he was set up on a date with her. ==Recurring characters==