Married... With Children: The Family Abolition Episode

In this episode, we look at one of the longest running sitcoms in Televisual history (1987-1998), Married... with Children.

Ostensibly a misogynistic pigpen ripe for retroactive cancelation, we  Tossers find the show delightful and read an unabashed radicality into the relentlessly bitter depiction of the horrors of married life .

We bring up the Marxist tradition of family abolition to help think about the show's "study" of a starving lower middle-class family stuck together by  money they don't even have.

Alongside the capitalist reproduction of labor, we think about the reproduction of gender norms. Whether it is the stupidity of the "hot blonde," the goober patheticness of the young man, Al's refusal to have sex with his wife, and Peggy's shameless desire to watch TV all day.

Andy helps us read Peggy's refusal to feed her children, i.e., her refusal to be a good mother, as the most radical political action in the series.

Jake keeps telling us that he identified, identifies, with Bud, and that nobody ever recognizes how violent everyone on the show is to him (Bud that is): mocking his (Bud's) inability to woo ladies.

Jack takes us to  Ed O'Neil's future in Modern Family, helping us think of how different this future is form Ed's young, bitter pre-woke days.

Sagi, our resident scholar on all things Pride, helps us understand the hardboiled confidence that resides beneath all the misfortune.  He also thinks about the show's tone in relation to the new Network Fox, and calls the show prophetic in the wake of a woke era that would never let this show air.

Marx Grudge, Pervs R' Us are the main stars.