In 1989,
Terry Rakolta, from
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, led a boycott
[3] of the show after viewing the episode "
Her Cups Runneth Over".
[4] Offended by the images of an old man wearing a woman's garter and stockings, the scene where Steve touches the pasties of a mannequin dressed in S&M gear, a homosexual man wearing a tiara on his head (and Al's line "...and they wonder why we call them 'queens'"), and a half-nude woman who takes off her bra in front of Al (and is shown with her arms covering her bare chest in the next shot), Rakolta began a letter-writing campaign to advertisers, demanding they boycott the show.
After advertisers began dropping their support for the show and while Rakolta made several appearances on television talk shows demanding the show's cancellation, Fox executives refused to air the episode titled "
I'll See You in Court".[
citation needed] This episode would become known as the "Lost Episode" and was aired on
FX on June 18, 2002, with some parts cut. The episode was packaged with the rest of the third season in the January 2005
DVD release (and in the first volume of the
Married ... With Children Most Outrageous Episode DVD set) with the parts cut from syndication restored.
Ironically, viewers' curiosity over the
boycott and over the show itself led to a drastic ratings boost, which Rakolta has since acknowledged. She has been referenced twice on the show: "Rock and Roll Girl",[
citation needed] when a newscaster mentioned the city Bloomfield Hills, and "No Pot to Pease In",[
citation needed] when a television show was made about the Bundy family and then was cancelled because (according to Marcy) "some woman in
Michigan didn't like it".
The conservative
Parents Television Council named
Married... with Children the worst show of both the 1995–96 and 1996–97 television seasons in its first two years in operation.
[5][6] In 1996, the organization called the show the "crudest comedy on prime time television...peppered with lewd punch lines about sex, masturbation, the gay lifestyle, and the lead character's fondness for pornographic magazines and strip clubs."
And this was back then..just imagine if MWC was on FOX nowadays..People would have a fit