3rd post is the new 1st post, I guess.
This post made me look up Top of the Heap. I knew that the show's pilot was aired as a "Married... with Children" spin-off, but until now, I was blissfully unaware that it ever got picked up. Or that it got cancelled after 7 episodes before they rushed into a spin-off. That whole affair just sounds like a trainwreck. Speaking of which...
This all just sounds like a "Me, too!" version of Fuller House before that even comes out (Although it sounds like this was in the works for awhile). However, whereas Full House reruns about 10 times a day on several different channels, I think there are still a few channels that still rerun "Married... with Children," but it's not nearly to the same intensity as Full House, so I don't think as many people remember it so fondly.
The biggest problem I see here, though, is what made the show so appealing in the first place. It was crude, crass, and vulgar; I don't think there were that many other shows that were pushing the boundaries half as far as "Married... with Children" did. It was still good in its own right, but the fact that it aired at a time where we had family-friendly, mechanically-produced shows like Alf, Family Matters, or Full House really helped it stand out. I mean, when it started, Seinfeld wasn't even a thing yet. True, we still have awful, hackneyed sitcoms that don't push the envelope, and in fact, prefer to keep it sealed, but people that want something more subversive can always look elsewhere. We live in a world where Always Sunny is a thing, for example. That show relatively has the same level of shock factor, but with fresh characters, and in a setting outside of the typical suburban nuclear family that the genre clings so strongly to.
The show's other gimmick was that it was so slapstick, it was like a live-action cartoon, in its time. But now people actually make televised cartoons marketed at adults. Like, on the off-chance FOX picks this back up, it'd be on the same channel as Family Guy, which covers everything "Married... with Children" did, and then some
including going on for, like, a decade past its expiration date; Family Guy's already on its way towards its second superfluous decade. And again, we have plenty like Rick & Morty that stretch far beyond the family setting (I mean, Rick & Morty still explores the Smith family, but it feels like it's done as a joke most of the time, like in the Season 2 premiere). Married... with Children 2 would probably just stick to Bud having a low-paying job he hates in suburban Chicago.
As a guy that loved the show as a kid, it's a relic of its time. Frankly, I'd prefer it stayed that way, and that the time, work, effort, and talent going into this go elsewhere.
