Bundy Family' s neighbors

Marcy D'Arcy

Marcy D'Arcy (Marcy Rhoades from Episodes 0101-0512, played by Amanda Bearse) is Peggy's best friend, Al's nemesis, and the family's next-door neighbor. Though she considers herself to be better than the Bundy family, Marcy often sinks to their level. She originally worked as a loan officer at the city bank (in a higher position than her husband Steve), and then as the manager of the Kyoto National Bank since the second season. But for a brief time, she was demoted to drive-up window teller as punishment for approving a loan Al could not repay. She wins back her old job after frugging on her boss's desk for 20 minutes, clad only in a slip, while the other drive-up window tellers toss quarters at her.

Initially, Marcy was a sweet, wholesome newlywed, but years of living next to the Bundys apparently warped her into a character almost as outrageous as the Bundys. She contemptuously bickers with Al, and revels at his misery. Marcy seems to have a disturbing dark side and enjoys sharing her past memories with Peg, but often tends to get lost in them. At various points in the series she is identified as Republican who looks down on the lower class Bundy clan, but at other times she is portrayed as a man-hating radical feminist and environmentalist. Al's most frequent targets are Marcy's tiny chest and her chickenlike stance when annoyed.

One of the running gags in the series has Marcy often mistaken for a young boy; when she reminisces about her first training bra, Al asks "How old were you then - twenty-five?!". Her cousin Mandy (also played by real-life lesbian Bearse) is a lesbian. Despite wanting to appear prudish, Marcy is shown to be a very sexual person, and it is revealed to have a rather sordid sexual history, such as the "Little Bo Peep and the Cop" game.

Although Marcy and Al are usually adversaries, they often unite in common causes such as when Steve loses his job and later when Jefferson comes into the series. Their teamwork is attributable to the fact that they are both breadwinners, giving them occasional moments of mutual understanding.

Steve Rhoades

Steven "Steve" Bartholomew Rhoades (David Garrison) is Marcy's first husband. He is a banker who seems unfazed by his lower position than Marcy at the city bank. (When Marcy moves up to a high position at another bank, he gets her former job). Steve initially condescends to the Bundys but eventually becomes more like them, and generally turns to Al for male bonding. Marcy was initially attracted to him because of his self-centered materialism.

Steve seemed to be a fairly demure and buttoned-down character, compared to his wife and the Bundys, although he did show a dark side. As a banker, Steve took sadistic pleasure in humiliating people who bullied him in high school by making his former tormentors (many of whom were stuck in poor, dead-end jobs similar to Al's) grovel for bank loans, which he flatly refused. Steve also got his job as Dean of Bud's college by blackmailing the man who employed him as a chauffeur.

Steve was written out of the show in the middle of the fourth season; Garrison had decided he no longer wanted to be tied down to a weekly television series, preferring to avoid being typecast in one role, and to devote more time to his first love: stage acting. He reached an agreement with FOX to buy out the remainder of his contract. In the final episode shot (though confusingly, not the final episode aired) in which he was a regular character, Steve is disenchanted with his and Marcy's yuppie lifestyle and is increasingly interested in becoming an outdoorsman (a real-life interest of Garrison's). He then disappears, with the explanation that he left Marcy to become a forest ranger at Yosemite National Park. Prior to disappearing, his last job was as a "pooper scooper" at an exotic pet shop. In later seasons, Garrison would reprise the Steve Rhoades character on four occasions, returning to guest star in individual episodes (with Steve having pursued other careers in the meantime), as he eventually returns to professional life to become the Dean of Bud's college. This episode was to be the pilot of a spin-off series that never happened.

Jefferson D'Arcy

Jefferson Milhouse D'Arcy (Ted McGinley) is Marcy's second husband (age unknown but younger than Steve Rhoades), a prettyboy who marries her for money. Self-centered and lazy, he is a male equivalent of Peggy. Marcy met Jefferson (a bartender) at his workplace after a bankers' convention, where she got drunk and found herself married to him the next morning; she was horrified to find out that her name was now Marcy D'Arcy. He is the closest friend of Al and often angers Marcy when bonding with him; unlike Steve Rhoades, who was more of a foil or straight man to Al, Jefferson tends to be very encouraging and attuned to Al's behavior. Marcy constantly bosses around Jefferson to keep him in check. However, behind her back, Jefferson often insults Marcy and ignores her orders. When Marcy's favorite squirrel Zippy dies, Jefferson tells her that he would give it a proper burial, only to punt it out of his sight when Marcy turns around.

Jefferson is a member of "NO MA'AM" along with Al, wearing the trademark T-shirt, but he always keeps a clean "YES MA'AM" T-shirt on underneath, which he quickly reveals if Marcy is about to bust one of NO MA'AM's activities. He seems very afraid of provoking his wife's anger, and his fear is justified-in one episode after he angered Marcy, she kicked him in the behind so hard he had to go to the hospital to get her boot removed from his nether regions.

Marcy constantly hounds Jefferson to get a job. However, on the rare occasions when he actually gets one (working at the shoe store, being cast as an actor in a commercial, working as an aerobics instructor) he usually ends up working with beautiful women, which prompts a jealous Marcy to make him quit and return to his de facto job as her gigolo. This tendency runs in the D'Arcy family, as Jefferson's father also worked as a gigolo and his mother worked as an exotic dancer before she was eaten by her snake at an airport.

He is easily the most financially scheming character of the show -- even more than the Bundys. Often, when Al stumbles into a unique lucrative opportunity, Jefferson typically persuades Al to take advantage of it. When Al was robbed in his shoe store, Jefferson convinced him to sue the mall while feigning psychological trauma. When Al discovered hidden shoes that he stocked away in the 1970s, Jefferson convinced him to use the shoes as a new gimmick for the store by taking advantage of the old trend's popularity. When discovering Al's boss Gary was using illegal sweatshops to manufacture the shoes, Jefferson assists Al in a search for incriminating evidence. When Bud was involved in a romantic relationship with the (surprising to the characters, female) Gary (played by Janet Carroll), Jefferson convinced Al to permit the relationship so Al can milk Gary out for her money through his son. After discovering that they were in possession of private pictures of Shannon Tweed in sexually provocative manners, Jefferson convinced Al to sell it to the media. During a rare time in which Al is struck with good luck, Jefferson persuades him into a high-stakes poker game with a group of criminals. Jefferson also convinced Al to go home to have sex with his wife so Al could win a radio contest cash prize.

Ted McGinley had appeared previously as Peggy's husband, Mr. Norman Jablonski, in the second part of "It's a Bundyful Life", where Al's guardian angel (Sam Kinison) shows Al what his family would have become if he was never born. The episode lightly parodies Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.

Amber

Amber (Juliet Tablak) is Marcy's niece. Amber's mother sent her to Marcy to get her out of her bad L.A. neighborhood. Bud keeps on trying to bed her, but succeeds only once (0904) — and that may have been a dream, as his fantasies about her became a central issue in the later episode 0923. After season nine, Amber disappears without explanation. Like most females on the sitcom, she is typically repulsed by his objectifying views of females. However, she does appear to demonstrate an attraction to Bud (remarking to Kelly in private that she thinks he is cute), and freely kisses him as a way of saying goodbye.