First Impressions 11: America's Dad Ed O'Neill (Married with Children & Modern Family)

[Music] today I want to talk about a man a father he's been a professional football player a substitute social studies teacher a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and an actor in theater film and television he's been nominated for multiple Golden Globes multiple Prime Time mimies multiple Critics Choice Award and he has won multiple Screen Actor Guild Awards on stage he's portrayed Linny and Of Mice and Men and Stanley Kowalski and a street car Named Desire in film he's been in both of the Wayne's World movies The Bone Collector Wreck-It Ralph Blue Chips Dutch Finding Dory preon Tain The Spanish Prisoner just the name a few and in the realm he's most known for television he's appeared in Miami Vice Moonlighting John from Cincinnati The French Connection TV series as Popeye Doyle Dragnet westwing and of course most famously as Al Bundy and Jay pritchet In Married with Children and Modern Family respectively of course I'm speaking about America's dad Ed O'Neal First Impressions this is the segment where Dell pollen reviews the first episode of a TV show one contemporary one classic and then comes back and reports to you if it's any good or not welcome back to the show D James could to be back all right so I like the theme for today's show because most of these have themes uh the two shows we're doing this week is married with Children and Modern Family so this would be the Ed O'Neal episode I believe is is that the connecting thread that is or as I call him America's dad I mean I grew up with a guy and I I guess he's still there for me and every night when I go to bed and I need him well hang on when I was growing up or when we were growing up I thought Bill Cosby was America's dad whatever happened to that guy is he still out there doing comedies P's probably no yeah I'm sure it's perfectly fine him and OJ are probably hanging out all right so tell me about the first episode with married with family I think I've seen this yeah so mared with children um actually you probably didn't see the original pilot because it had two different actors playing the kids originally so they scrapped it but you can't go watch it on YouTube if I did not see that I did not see that don't worry it's it's weird to just watch two exact episodes of something with different actors the actual one aired in 1987 H ran through 1997 so it was 11 seasons and it was paired with the Simpsons most of the time it was the longest running thing that fox ever had for Live Action and it was basically Al Bundy a local shoe salesman in Chicago his wife Peggy Bundy and his two kids bud and Kelly and I'm sure most people that are our age knew Kelly Bundy from having a large crush and her she was played by Christina Applegate I didn't notice that I know this this episode is very simple it's just Al and his home life everybody taking a crap on him it's the whole show is just insults between family members and Al insulting his customers um at work and that's really all all this episode is there's no real plot to speak of kind of a boring episode there's like two jokes in it and the show would go on to almost become a live-action cartoon uh very Sil like later on he gets hit in the head with bowling balls and falls off roof gets struck by lightning but this is a very downar realistic show at least it starts that way uh and it's just mean-spirited which is all right I but I liked what it grew into it this first episode is very very plain though I thought uh Married with Children was very suspicious because the guy that works at a shoe store in the mall can afford a three-bedroom house in Chicago that doesn't seem very realistic well you got to remember this was uh back when there was a middle class so what is that I exact was that like elves or unicorns or something and I noticed between the shows is yeah you'll see that the in the second one that they're definitely more upper class but this was solidly a middle class family where a guy could you know could work an 8-hour day job and afford a decent house in the suburbs come home and cuss his kids yeah I also thought it was very suspicious how unbelievably gorgeous his wife is compared to him like it's not believable that those two people would be a couple well have you ever seen Kevin James I mean isn't that like all TV schlub dads have somehow this ridiculously hot wife at home Homer has Marge you know I it's got it's a TV Trope one of these days I'll I'll do a whole thing on it I mean it's yeah it's ridiculous you know and the weird thing is when I was a kid I didn't understand Peggy's always you know bugging him to get in the bedroom and have a little action and he just keeps pushing her off and off now I'm an adult I'm like what what is wrong with him got great a decent house you know a little bit of obnoxious kids but a great house you know a decent stable job and a wife that wants to be with him physically all the time like he had it a lot better so the other Ed O'Neal show is Modern Family I must confess I've never seen one episode of this is it any good you know what I got to say it it is really good especially in you I have head Cannon where this is just the same character aged up even though they have different names so Modern Family ran from 2009 to 2020 and it had same thing 11 Seasons very popular um the differences instead of focusing on one family this show focuses on three different types of families there's the dunes which are your classic nuclear family father uh mother and two and a half kids there's um the wife's brother Mitchell and is gay boyfriend Cameron who have an adopted Korean daughter and then both of their fathers is played by Ed O'Neal who plays J pritet the patriarch of the family and he's married to uh his new wife is a Colombian lady who has a son from a previous relationship and it's all the Dynamics about how you can have different types of families and sometimes there's similarities and sometimes there's vast differences between those this is definitely a stronger pilot it really just is there to introduce the three different families and their Dynamic but the main plot line is that Cam and or bringing back Lily their adopted daughter from Korea by the end of the episode they have to introduce him to their slightly you know Antiquated uh you know Ed O'Neal's character Jay Bridget and the entire rest of the family but this is definitely a stronger pilot much funnier jokes the whole time um everybody's called out here's my next question I've never seen Modern Family should I is it worth watching you know what I I think so it's not the best or most original sitcom ever but it is a it's a solid sitcom I'd give it an eight out of 10 for sure there's definitely things I like better W that's a huge that's a high score yeah it's in the same way that mared with children broke ground originally caused a lot of controversy like The Simpsons this mildly did that but not really but it's it's funny you you will laugh every episode for sure there's a couple of great GAA even in the pilot all right tell them about the your your podcast you got going on the side well tomorrow if you check in it's called TV Showcase showcase is one word you can find us on YouTube and any of your podcast uh things but essentially it's all the shows that we do here with First Impressions and then my old show pilot pass we're doing seasons 1 and two are getting uploaded now season 3 is going to be starting next month and tomorrow the classic episode of mared with children that we did back in 2020 will be going up so if you want more in-depth look into it my partner back then Matthew pisana and I did Married with Children back then so it's TV Showcase on all the podcast apps and YouTube please uh check us out and download us and subscribe okay well this has been First Impressions with the great Dell Po and thank you very much Dell we'll do it again next than you all right everybody thank you for listening to another episode of First Impressions uh I want to say if you do like the show please make sure to follow or subscribe on whatever podcast app you listen to us on uh also make sure if you can to jump over to our patreon page uh that's just patreon.com tvsh showcase and if you could donate one3 $5 that really goes a long way to helping us out and the biggest thing you can do of course is recommend the podcast to other friends family co-workers get it out there people thanks again see you next week [Music]