June 7, 2025 • 10 mins
🎙️🧸 Baseball cards, Barbie dolls, and Bundy blunders! In this episode of The Rank Podcast, John revisits the classic 1987 sitcom Married... With Children, diving into Season 2, Episode 14: “Guys and Dolls” as part of his ongoing Sitcom Rankings.
When Al and Steve decide to start a baseball card collection, they unwittingly sell Marcy's cherished Barbie doll to fund their new hobby. Chaos ensues as they scramble to retrieve the doll, only to discover the shop they sold it to has been robbed. Their quest leads them through the seedy streets of Chicago, encountering a series of misadventures that parody the gritty detective shows of the era .
John breaks down the episode's blend of satire and slapstick, analyzing how it showcases the show's signature humor and the lengths the characters will go to rectify their mistakes. Is “Guys and Dolls” a standout in the Bundy saga or just another misstep in their misadventures?
E-mail your fan questions, comments and suggestions to TheRankwithJohnandZac@protonmail.com.
Support the show by becoming a patron at Patreon.com/TheRankPodcast.
Visit The Rank's website for up-to-date rankings at TheRankwithJohnandZac.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Not the best way to start out, but it did make me laugh once
when Bud says to Kelly after sheexpresses her worry of their
parents being at parent teacher night.
When are they going to realize that you're stupid and leave you
alone? That's a good line, is it?
(00:33):
Welcome back to another episode of The Rank.
I'm John and today we're going to be doing another episode of
Married with Children. So if you're enjoying these
episodes or if you're just a fanor married with children and you
enjoy consuming content about it, please consider subscribing
and or following like the episodes, comment suggestions,
anger, whatever you know, whatever you want to comment.
Please also consider becoming a Patreon on our
(00:54):
patreonpage@patreon.com/the Rankpodcast.
Now, today we're ranking the 14th episode of the second
season of Married With Children,titled Guys and Dolls, written
by Sandy Sprung and Marcy Bosberg and directed by Linda
Day. So just as a reminder, it's an
old show, so I'm not too concerned about this, but I'm
going to say it anyway. There will be spoilers ahead.
Let's get into it, starting withThe Potent Notables.
(01:16):
And this episode aired on Sunday, January 10th, 1988.
Married With Children went from a 3.9 rating to a 4.3, but
didn't beat its lead in Werewolfwhich had a 4.6 and was a rerun.
I mean, I don't know what was happening there.
I guess people were really digging Werewolf.
Anyway, it got destroyed by everything else in its time
slot, as is typically the case since Fox was a brand new
(01:39):
network. It lost with the CBS Sunday
movie Terrorist on Trial, the United States versus Salim Ajami
which had a 13.3 rating. It also lost to Spencer for Hire
on ABC which had a 15.3 rating and the winner of the night My 2
Dads on NBC which had a 22.9. Now if you're wondering what the
best one on Fox was, it was 21 Jump St.
(02:02):
As also has been the case for a while now.
The next photo, notable the montage of Al and Steve
searching the urban streets and alleys of Chicago for the Barbie
doll, is actually the exact same15 feet repeated little
Hollywood magic there. OK, so looking through this
episode, I came upon the uncredited car stereo thief
(02:23):
whose name was Bullet Valmont. And I mean, how do you not look
up guy named Bullet? Right?
So first thing I noticed was a surprisingly lengthy IMDb bio
page. Now Bullet here named Sean, has
had a bunch of bit roles, including this one, but this was
the sentence that really hooked me Quote.
His best known roles are the baby throwing gang member in
(02:46):
class of Nukem High 2, Subhumanoid Meltdown, and the
alley punk who receives a balloon giraffe from Jim Carrey
in The Mask. The beginning of that sentence
is crazy. He's known for being a baby
throwing gang member in the craziest name movie ever.
And then by the end I was like, oh, that guy.
I know that guy. This is actually pretty
fascinating because this guy whowas who has clearly not made it
(03:09):
as an actor, which is fine and Idon't mean any shade by that,
really figured out a way to makehimself useful to stay in the
industry. He's worked in creature effects
on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files and as a weapons
fabricator on the Scorpion King,Pirates of the Caribbean, The
Matrix Reloaded and Thor. But here's the piece, the
Resistance. He is a self-taught sword fight
(03:30):
choreographer. So this sword fighting began his
three decade long love of all things pirate to the point that
he's created a combat comedy troupe called Imagine Pirates.
Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that he is also
the author of the advice column Wench Whisperer, which I have
not perused, but it sounds just incredible.
(03:52):
All right, so that's it. Those are the potent notables.
Let's go to the episode overview.
So we open the episode with somesibling bicker, which is not
typically my favorite in the show.
The whole Bud hates Kelly, Kellyhates bud thing is just kind of
annoying most of the time. It can be funny at times but
they go back to it a little too much, in my opinion.
Anyway, not the best way to start out, but it did make me
laugh once when Bud says to Kelly after she expresses her
(04:14):
worry of their parents being at parent teacher night.
What, are they going to realize that you're stupid and leave you
alone? That's a good line, is it?
Anyway, so basically, we start out with Kelly worried about
school because she doesn't do well with her grades.
Of course, we see why when she believes Bud when he starts
discussing the plot line of Robinson Caruso to help her with
(04:36):
her book report and he turns it into Gilligan's Island, even
going so far as convincing her to sing the theme song.
And I'm sorry, but really, she wouldn't have recognized that.
She wouldn't have recognized Gilligan's Island theme song.
I feel like teenagers today would still recognize that.
No, no they wouldn't. I'm probably wrong about that
either way. They would have recognized it in
the 80s. But Kelly isn't the one that Al
(04:59):
and Peggy are worried about. It's Bud.
He's always messing with Kelly and apparently did a report on
Brazil where he put a picture ofher in a bikini on a big poster
board, which felt a little bit odd.
So very odd, not going to lie. Also now, if you think this
episode is headed in the direction of more family time
with the kids, you'd be wrong. Essentially Peggy thinks that
Bud has too much free time and convinces Al to figure out a
(05:21):
hobby form which turns into Steve and Al having a hobby
together collecting baseball cards, specifically 9 baseball
cards as they were trying to collect the all time best Cubs
team. Also this got Peggy and Marcy
talking about Barbies and we no longer cared about the kids for
the most part for the rest of this episode.
The turn of this episode is thatin Alan Steve zeal to find the
(05:43):
cards they want they sell an oldBarbie of Marcy's to pay for
one, but this Barbie was one that Marcy was keeping to give
to her future daughter which somehow her husband didn't know.
Anyway, when Marcy discovers it missing, she's consumed with
rage and literally says that she'd kill the guy who did it,
which seems like a lot, but you know, she's angry.
So yes, suddenly we're treated to some campy noir style filming
(06:07):
where Al and Steve go looking for the doll they sold because
they found out that the place they sold it to just happened to
be robbed. So after an incorrect Barbie was
retrieved at first, for which they received a beating from a
biker gang. I would I'm just thinking like
if people are listening and watching this in a vacuum, like
they haven't watched the episode, they're just listening
to me describe it. They're like, what the fuck is
(06:28):
happening in this show? It pretty much when you're
watching it, that's kind of whatyou're thinking.
Anyway, they go back out and getthe right, but they have to give
up all their baseball cards to get it, including whatever money
that Steve has in his pocket, which sounds about right for
these people in this show. And then to close it out with a
nice bookend. Kelly is convinced she's going
to get an A on a book report about Edgar Allan Poe's The
(06:49):
Raven family, which is what Bud has been helping her with, which
is just the Adams fan. She says if she gets an A, can
she get a car? And instead of correcting her,
Al just says of course sweetheart, anything you want.
Which is a cute and funny ending.
Question is, where will it end up in the rank?
Let's go to the rank A rank. The rank is where I rank the
(07:10):
episode based on five category, story, acting, dialogue, episode
coherence, and character relatability.
I rank it on a scale of one to five, one being the worst, five
being the best. And then I add the laugh
counter, which is where I tally the amount of times the episode
made me laugh out loud. So one point per laugh.
That's added to the cumulative ranking and that's how we're
getting our score. So the first category is story,
which I gave a 2 1/2. There's not much of a story
(07:32):
here. It's more like day in the life
type of thing. We start out with Kelly being
worried, then Bud is the one in trouble, so they need to get him
a hobby. That turns into a hobby for Alan
Steve, which then turns into Marcy and Peggy playing with
Barbies. It just basically goes from
thing to thing. It's not like a compact story.
Maybe 2 1/2 is actually too high, but whatever, that's what
I gave it. So let's go to acting, which is
(07:54):
the next category, which I gave a 3 1/2.
David Faustino is fine for a kid, but he's certainly not
good. The guest star that played the
cop was kind of awful and there's actually a point in it
where you can tell that he forgot his line, but whatever.
Everyone else was good. Ed and Katie are obviously the
best on the show. Christina Applegate was pretty
good in this one too. So let's go to dialogue.
Which I gave a 3.25. Not too many laughs in this one.
(08:17):
I will say I appreciated that they didn't rely as much on the
Peggy and Al hate each other dynamic.
I mean it was still a lot, but not as much as it has been.
I am however getting kind of sick of the sibling rivalry
stuff which I mentioned at the beginning of the episode
overview every once in a while. It's OK, but it feels it was
like this is all Bud and Kelly ever get to do.
So let's go to the next category, which is episode
(08:38):
coherence, which I gave it to. The story started with talking
about the kids grades and schoolwork and ended with it sort of.
So you'd think based on that it would be pretty coherent.
However, the entire middle had nothing to do with that and it
was the absolute flimsiest strand that got us there.
I mean, why even bother with thekids school work stuff?
Why not just make the episode about collecting baseball cards
(08:59):
and whatever? I mean, they did that with the
car with Steve and Al. I don't see why they couldn't do
with baseball cards, but anyway,it was goofy.
There is one other part that I couldn't help but feel was
incoherent with any form of reality, and that's that Kelly
wouldn't recognize the theme songs of Gilligan's Island and
the Adams fan. Even now, since Wednesdays out
on Netflix, people have to know that.
(09:22):
So the next category, last category is character
relatability, which I gave it 3 1/2.
Everyone's decently relatable. The thing I don't get is selling
your spouses stuff without asking.
That seems pretty unrelatable tome.
Everything else, the wanting to get it back, the wanting to
collect cards that your kid doesn't care about, wanting to
play with Barbies, all that stuff works.
I'm not sure that I necessarily buy Al sticking sticking it out
(09:45):
with Steve to find Marcy's Barbie doll, though.
Yeah, that's why it's not higher.
So that's all of the categories.So now we'll go to the laugh
counter. And this episode made me laugh
11 times, which is decent. It's double digits, right?
It's not bad. But this puts the episode total
at a 25.75, which puts it directly into the yogurt here.
(10:06):
Now for the series, the average is now at a 33, which puts it in
the I'd watch it again here. That feels right.
So thanks for listening and or watching.
If you'd like to see a list of our episode series rankings, you
can do that on our website at the rank with John and zach.com.
Remember to subscribe, review and comment.
And please consider supporting us on our Patreon site at
patreon.com/the Rank Podcast andyou'll get exclusive perks.
(10:26):
I'll leave you with this. How did bud get Kelly to sing
the theme song to The Love Boat class?
Because she was doing a book report on Moby Dick.
Whoa, wait a minute. Tastes like goblin piss.
Not the best way to start out, but it did make me laugh once
when Bud says to Kelly after sheexpresses her worry of their
parents being at parent teacher night.
When are they going to realize that you're stupid and leave you
alone? That's a good line, is it?
(00:33):
Welcome back to another episode of The Rank.
I'm John and today we're going to be doing another episode of
Married with Children. So if you're enjoying these
episodes or if you're just a fanor married with children and you
enjoy consuming content about it, please consider subscribing
and or following like the episodes, comment suggestions,
anger, whatever you know, whatever you want to comment.
Please also consider becoming a Patreon on our
(00:54):
patreonpage@patreon.com/the Rankpodcast.
Now, today we're ranking the 14th episode of the second
season of Married With Children,titled Guys and Dolls, written
by Sandy Sprung and Marcy Bosberg and directed by Linda
Day. So just as a reminder, it's an
old show, so I'm not too concerned about this, but I'm
going to say it anyway. There will be spoilers ahead.
Let's get into it, starting withThe Potent Notables.
(01:16):
And this episode aired on Sunday, January 10th, 1988.
Married With Children went from a 3.9 rating to a 4.3, but
didn't beat its lead in Werewolfwhich had a 4.6 and was a rerun.
I mean, I don't know what was happening there.
I guess people were really digging Werewolf.
Anyway, it got destroyed by everything else in its time
slot, as is typically the case since Fox was a brand new
(01:39):
network. It lost with the CBS Sunday
movie Terrorist on Trial, the United States versus Salim Ajami
which had a 13.3 rating. It also lost to Spencer for Hire
on ABC which had a 15.3 rating and the winner of the night My 2
Dads on NBC which had a 22.9. Now if you're wondering what the
best one on Fox was, it was 21 Jump St.
(02:02):
As also has been the case for a while now.
The next photo, notable the montage of Al and Steve
searching the urban streets and alleys of Chicago for the Barbie
doll, is actually the exact same15 feet repeated little
Hollywood magic there. OK, so looking through this
episode, I came upon the uncredited car stereo thief
(02:23):
whose name was Bullet Valmont. And I mean, how do you not look
up guy named Bullet? Right?
So first thing I noticed was a surprisingly lengthy IMDb bio
page. Now Bullet here named Sean, has
had a bunch of bit roles, including this one, but this was
the sentence that really hooked me Quote.
His best known roles are the baby throwing gang member in
(02:46):
class of Nukem High 2, Subhumanoid Meltdown, and the
alley punk who receives a balloon giraffe from Jim Carrey
in The Mask. The beginning of that sentence
is crazy. He's known for being a baby
throwing gang member in the craziest name movie ever.
And then by the end I was like, oh, that guy.
I know that guy. This is actually pretty
fascinating because this guy whowas who has clearly not made it
(03:09):
as an actor, which is fine and Idon't mean any shade by that,
really figured out a way to makehimself useful to stay in the
industry. He's worked in creature effects
on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files and as a weapons
fabricator on the Scorpion King,Pirates of the Caribbean, The
Matrix Reloaded and Thor. But here's the piece, the
Resistance. He is a self-taught sword fight
(03:30):
choreographer. So this sword fighting began his
three decade long love of all things pirate to the point that
he's created a combat comedy troupe called Imagine Pirates.
Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that he is also
the author of the advice column Wench Whisperer, which I have
not perused, but it sounds just incredible.
(03:52):
All right, so that's it. Those are the potent notables.
Let's go to the episode overview.
So we open the episode with somesibling bicker, which is not
typically my favorite in the show.
The whole Bud hates Kelly, Kellyhates bud thing is just kind of
annoying most of the time. It can be funny at times but
they go back to it a little too much, in my opinion.
Anyway, not the best way to start out, but it did make me
laugh once when Bud says to Kelly after she expresses her
(04:14):
worry of their parents being at parent teacher night.
What, are they going to realize that you're stupid and leave you
alone? That's a good line, is it?
Anyway, so basically, we start out with Kelly worried about
school because she doesn't do well with her grades.
Of course, we see why when she believes Bud when he starts
discussing the plot line of Robinson Caruso to help her with
(04:36):
her book report and he turns it into Gilligan's Island, even
going so far as convincing her to sing the theme song.
And I'm sorry, but really, she wouldn't have recognized that.
She wouldn't have recognized Gilligan's Island theme song.
I feel like teenagers today would still recognize that.
No, no they wouldn't. I'm probably wrong about that
either way. They would have recognized it in
the 80s. But Kelly isn't the one that Al
(04:59):
and Peggy are worried about. It's Bud.
He's always messing with Kelly and apparently did a report on
Brazil where he put a picture ofher in a bikini on a big poster
board, which felt a little bit odd.
So very odd, not going to lie. Also now, if you think this
episode is headed in the direction of more family time
with the kids, you'd be wrong. Essentially Peggy thinks that
Bud has too much free time and convinces Al to figure out a
(05:21):
hobby form which turns into Steve and Al having a hobby
together collecting baseball cards, specifically 9 baseball
cards as they were trying to collect the all time best Cubs
team. Also this got Peggy and Marcy
talking about Barbies and we no longer cared about the kids for
the most part for the rest of this episode.
The turn of this episode is thatin Alan Steve zeal to find the
(05:43):
cards they want they sell an oldBarbie of Marcy's to pay for
one, but this Barbie was one that Marcy was keeping to give
to her future daughter which somehow her husband didn't know.
Anyway, when Marcy discovers it missing, she's consumed with
rage and literally says that she'd kill the guy who did it,
which seems like a lot, but you know, she's angry.
So yes, suddenly we're treated to some campy noir style filming
(06:07):
where Al and Steve go looking for the doll they sold because
they found out that the place they sold it to just happened to
be robbed. So after an incorrect Barbie was
retrieved at first, for which they received a beating from a
biker gang. I would I'm just thinking like
if people are listening and watching this in a vacuum, like
they haven't watched the episode, they're just listening
to me describe it. They're like, what the fuck is
(06:28):
happening in this show? It pretty much when you're
watching it, that's kind of whatyou're thinking.
Anyway, they go back out and getthe right, but they have to give
up all their baseball cards to get it, including whatever money
that Steve has in his pocket, which sounds about right for
these people in this show. And then to close it out with a
nice bookend. Kelly is convinced she's going
to get an A on a book report about Edgar Allan Poe's The
(06:49):
Raven family, which is what Bud has been helping her with, which
is just the Adams fan. She says if she gets an A, can
she get a car? And instead of correcting her,
Al just says of course sweetheart, anything you want.
Which is a cute and funny ending.
Question is, where will it end up in the rank?
Let's go to the rank A rank. The rank is where I rank the
(07:10):
episode based on five category, story, acting, dialogue, episode
coherence, and character relatability.
I rank it on a scale of one to five, one being the worst, five
being the best. And then I add the laugh
counter, which is where I tally the amount of times the episode
made me laugh out loud. So one point per laugh.
That's added to the cumulative ranking and that's how we're
getting our score. So the first category is story,
which I gave a 2 1/2. There's not much of a story
(07:32):
here. It's more like day in the life
type of thing. We start out with Kelly being
worried, then Bud is the one in trouble, so they need to get him
a hobby. That turns into a hobby for Alan
Steve, which then turns into Marcy and Peggy playing with
Barbies. It just basically goes from
thing to thing. It's not like a compact story.
Maybe 2 1/2 is actually too high, but whatever, that's what
I gave it. So let's go to acting, which is
(07:54):
the next category, which I gave a 3 1/2.
David Faustino is fine for a kid, but he's certainly not
good. The guest star that played the
cop was kind of awful and there's actually a point in it
where you can tell that he forgot his line, but whatever.
Everyone else was good. Ed and Katie are obviously the
best on the show. Christina Applegate was pretty
good in this one too. So let's go to dialogue.
Which I gave a 3.25. Not too many laughs in this one.
(08:17):
I will say I appreciated that they didn't rely as much on the
Peggy and Al hate each other dynamic.
I mean it was still a lot, but not as much as it has been.
I am however getting kind of sick of the sibling rivalry
stuff which I mentioned at the beginning of the episode
overview every once in a while. It's OK, but it feels it was
like this is all Bud and Kelly ever get to do.
So let's go to the next category, which is episode
(08:38):
coherence, which I gave it to. The story started with talking
about the kids grades and schoolwork and ended with it sort of.
So you'd think based on that it would be pretty coherent.
However, the entire middle had nothing to do with that and it
was the absolute flimsiest strand that got us there.
I mean, why even bother with thekids school work stuff?
Why not just make the episode about collecting baseball cards
(08:59):
and whatever? I mean, they did that with the
car with Steve and Al. I don't see why they couldn't do
with baseball cards, but anyway,it was goofy.
There is one other part that I couldn't help but feel was
incoherent with any form of reality, and that's that Kelly
wouldn't recognize the theme songs of Gilligan's Island and
the Adams fan. Even now, since Wednesdays out
on Netflix, people have to know that.
(09:22):
So the next category, last category is character
relatability, which I gave it 3 1/2.
Everyone's decently relatable. The thing I don't get is selling
your spouses stuff without asking.
That seems pretty unrelatable tome.
Everything else, the wanting to get it back, the wanting to
collect cards that your kid doesn't care about, wanting to
play with Barbies, all that stuff works.
I'm not sure that I necessarily buy Al sticking sticking it out
(09:45):
with Steve to find Marcy's Barbie doll, though.
Yeah, that's why it's not higher.
So that's all of the categories.So now we'll go to the laugh
counter. And this episode made me laugh
11 times, which is decent. It's double digits, right?
It's not bad. But this puts the episode total
at a 25.75, which puts it directly into the yogurt here.
(10:06):
Now for the series, the average is now at a 33, which puts it in
the I'd watch it again here. That feels right.
So thanks for listening and or watching.
If you'd like to see a list of our episode series rankings, you
can do that on our website at the rank with John and zach.com.
Remember to subscribe, review and comment.
And please consider supporting us on our Patreon site at
patreon.com/the Rank Podcast andyou'll get exclusive perks.
(10:26):
I'll leave you with this. How did bud get Kelly to sing
the theme song to The Love Boat class?
Because she was doing a book report on Moby Dick.
Whoa, wait a minute. Tastes like goblin piss.
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