There's more to it than that, it was itself a fairly new concept, a family sitcom that was actually dysfunctional. Before that they had the Patridges or the Cosby's and sure once in a while one of the children would get into trouble of some kind, but they were always this perfect happy family, hugging, smiling, eating dinner together and so forth. The Bundys where the exact opposite, and were first in that, Al was a complete loser who made almost nothing selling women's shoes, his wife never did anything ever aside from waste money, the son was a sexual deviant always trying to get some and the daughter was a slut. Before "Married..." sitcom families were perfect beyond any sense of realism, "Married..." became the opposite extreme and portrayed the average family and totally exaggerating how bad it is. It basically allowed for the creation of sitcoms that be somewhere in between (although the funnier ones were always closer to "Married..."). It was alot more influential than most people realize.