17 The lost show (Married With Children)
Description
This article is from the Married With Children FAQ, by Dean Adams dadams@netcom.com with numerous contributions by others.
17 The lost show (Married With Children)
Here is a more detailed account of the events around the "missing" third
season episode: "I'LL SEE YOU IN COURT" (#308). [excerpted from Playboy]
This episode is now called "The Lost Show" by the producers, since they
feel they lost control of it, and subsequently it never aired as scheduled.
The reason was the Fox network censors. Producer Moye says they had 15
censor notes on the script, meaning 15 words or lines the censor considered
"too graphic" or "over the edge" or "offensive to certain groups." These
were the things they'd been hearing from the censor all along--at the rate
of two or three a script--but 15 notes was a whole new game.
"We were gonna play ball," says Moye. They made some changes and sent the
script back. The censor was on the phone. They made some more changes,
caught some more flak. "It got to the point where we had given them all
but four notes, which to us was bending double. We were really doing a
contortionist job." Still, the censor wasn't happy. By the end of the
week, they'd made 13 changes and "the integrity of the show was shot to
hell," says Moye.
The Lost Show is about sex. It begins with Peg and neighbor Marcy
discussing ways to spice the Bundy's sex life. How about a change of
venue? Cut to the Hop-On-Inn motel. See Al and Peg lean back in bed.
Know they've done the wild--and as always with the Bundys, brief--thing.
Later, we learn that Al and Peg were video-taped at the motel, as were
Steve and Marcy before them. Cut to the courtroom, where Steve plays
prosecutor in the couples' lawsuit against the Hop-On-Inn.
Unfortunately for the Bundys, Steve screens the video tapes in court.
Steve and Marcy win $10,000 for their multihour performance; Al and Peg's
one-minute boogie is judged inconclusive. Or, as the jury foreman says,
"No sex, no money." The motel's lawyer doubts Peg's claim that in their
one filmed minute, she and Al had sex.
Says Peg: "All right, it may not be sex to you, but it is to me. Just
because you have husbands who can last long enough to time an egg doesn't
mean that what Al does doesn't count... Is a crumb not a banquet for a
starving person?... Is a fig leaf not clothing for the naked?"
Now Peg's off the witness stand. She's being dragged back to her seat, and
she's begging with every step: "You can't do this to Al! He'll lose what
little confidence he has! You were great, baby! Please, oh, please, don't
listen! Don't give up!" The courtroom clears. Al and Peg are alone. He
leads her behind the judge's bench... The hands of the clock spin. Then
we hear voices from behind the bench.
Al: "Now, was that sex, or was that sex?"
Peg: "That was SEX, Al", and she lights a cigarette and exhales
a cloud of smoke...
As this episode ends, the camera slowly pans to show a closed-circuit
TV camera pointed directly behind the judge's bench...
Continue to:
My Books
