Some people would rather talk poorly about Married…With Children since during its run, the show was one of the more raunchy and cartoon-like programs on the air, and the show didn’t pull any punches when it came to certain topics since it was all about hitting the soft spots and making certain that it wasn’t really a priority to pay attention the feelings of the audience. It was about comedy and that was pretty much it. There might have been a bit of sentiment here and there that people appreciated, but otherwise, it was a show that at one time had to wonder if it was going to get canceled since people were up in arms about the content. More than anything though, the characters made this show, and their attitudes and manner of behavior made the show. But, like every show, there were those characters that didn’t make a lot of sense and weren’t all that liked by the fans. The character that gets this distinction on this show was Seven, the young kid played by Shane Sweet that was dumped on the Bundy’s by Peggy’s cousin Zemus and his wife Ida Mae.
There have been a lot of characters forced into shows in the past, but this was one that just didn’t fit no matter how much the writers tried to make it happen. It wasn’t exactly sympathy for Al or the other kids, Kelly and Bundy, that made this such a tough sell, it’s just that Seven didn’t feel like he belonged on the show at all, since the cast was pretty well set by season 7 and an add-on that didn’t really bring much to the overall story of the Bundy’s wasn’t welcomed by the fans. On top of that, the show managed to get rid of him just by letting go of the actor in the hope that people would forget about him. There were even off-color jokes made about this in the episodes to come since Seven ceased to be a viable character after a while.
Shane Sweet has continued to work in the business, and he’s been around ever since the early 90s, though a lot of the work that he’s done has been largely forgotten at this point. Without trying to be mean about it, his career has kind of gone the same way the character of Seven did, it’s become obscure and kind of easy to look at and wonder why he’s still there. But while he was playing the part of Seven he was kind of a pain in the backside since as a character he was an entitled little snot whose attitude wasn’t made any better by the fact that Peggy Bundy took an instant liking to him and treated him better than her own kids, which wasn’t too hard. To be fair, none of the Bundy’s were great people, but at the same time, Seven was just kind of rotten through and through. From the conniving smile to the manner in which he reveled at the trouble he caused and the disruption he caused in Kelly and Bud’s lives. The kid was a menace that kind of needed to go.
Shane Sweet isn’t even mentioned that much apart from being one of the worst casting decisions for the show, and it’s fair to say that he kind of sits at the top of the list since everyone else adapted nicely and didn’t have a lot of trouble making their characters believable. They even made the characters likable, even though it sounds as though behind the scenes that Ed O’Neill and Amanda Bearse, aka Marcy. Seven was still the worst character to come along, and this is on a show that had some truly despicable characters make their way across the screen at times. The difference between those characters and Seven is that they were still liked in their roles, while Seven was kind of like the irritating houseguest that wouldn’t go away. There weren’t a lot of fans asking when Seven would be back when he was finally taken off the show. In fact, it’s safer to think that there might have been fans asking if he was coming back just so they weren’t surprised by his return.
It sounds a little cruel to say these kinds of things about an actor who was a kid when he starred on the show, but to be certain, not a lot of fans of MWC would go out of their way to state that they adored Seven. His brief time on the show wasn’t met with a lot of enthusiasm and to be certain, people weren’t sorry to see him go. Any character that could make Peggy or Marcy look useful was what you might call a reverse miracle. The show was better before and after Seven.
