I want to get excited for this. Married With Children remains my favorite show of all time, but my excitement for this is going to be gauged by how much of the original cast will be involved, and how often. I've read this is gonna be a Bud-centric spin off, but you can't fly the Married With Children banner and not have Ed O'Neill, Katey Segal, and Christina Applegate involved in some form or fashion.

Remember how well Archie Bunker's Place did with all the elements that made All in the Family great, stripped away. You say, "what the hell am I talking about?". Exactly.

If it's only Bud, I don't want it. They can change the focus, but you can't have Bud without Al, Peg, or Kelly. If the focus is Bud trying to live a life, maybe having an ex-wife, kids, etc. all the while he's still dealing with old issues of his life, I could see that working. However, Married...With Children isn't Frasier, and Bud Bundy certainly isn't Frasier Crane. People know Bud as a smarmy, unsavory, greasy person; his father's son. Building a show around Bud having a wholly different life in a manner that doesn't fit a Bundy wouldn't work. I remember a quote from the E Hollywood Story about MWC that said something along the lines of "Your week could have absolutely sucked, but you could rest assured that Al Bundy's was still a little bit worse." So, If they keep those ties tight, I just might work.

Now, obviously Ed O'Neil is on MF now, and is probably contractually (and maybe even physically, he's in his 60s now), prevented from doing a full two sitcom workload. However, I think that, if they could, the best situation would be to have MWC alums serve in that weird "Marcia Wallace on The Simpsons category," where they're not really guest stars but at the same time they're not really series regulars.

That, I think, could actually float the show and allow them to develop the main character a bit more. The first few episodes could highly tie into MWC, then maybe one episode with no guest stars, then maybe scale back and have John Garrison or someone for an episode, then back to having Peg and Al visit, maybe have Kelly stay with Bud for a few episodes then she can leave, all the while developing the character of "Bud Bundy the adult."

Really, I could imagine something along the lines of Bud going on one of his father's one man crusade, getting a pot-hole fixed or something, and coming into conflict with City Council Woman D'Arcy, and then roping Al into some sort of scheme that exacerbates the problem.

I hope it works, and if it means we get to see more Al Bundy on TV....