Casados con hijos (Argentine TV series)

Casados con hijos is the Argentine remake of American television series "Married... with Children". Originally broadcast from April 12, 2005 to December 28, 2006 on the Telefe channel. It was shot in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The series stars Guillermo Francella, Florencia Peña, Luisana Lopilato, Darío Lopilato, Érica Rivas and Marcelo de Bellis. It also has the participation of the dog Violeta, now deceased, as Fatiga and other invited actors and actresses.
General Information.
In January of 2005 the recordings began and on April 12 it came out on the screen of Telefe with a measurement of 28.9 index points of Television audience in Argentina in its first chapter. However, the audience could not be maintained and the measurements remained at an average of 18 points, having reached a minimum figure of 7.7 points. After having emigrated for different times the audience of the repetitions of the first season managed to surpass the original broadcasts, making it one of the most watched programs of 2005 and 2006. 
The success of the episodes already broadcast forced the television station to carry out a second season. Which premiered on August 14, 2006 at 9:30 p.m. (UTC-3) reaching an average of 33.3 audience index points, being one of the shipments of fiction with the highest audience of that year. The series in total, has 212 episodes having 137 chapters in its first season and 75 chapters in the second.
The success of the series transcended the borders of Argentina, being also broadcast by local channels in Uruguay, where it also managed to be one of the most viewed series in Paraguay, Peru and Romania. In this country, it was broadcast under the name of: "Familia Argento".
The Comedy has become a great classic and a cult series on Argentine television and Telefe repeats it from 2007 to the present broadcasting episodes at random with a moderate number of audience, both in the first afternoon, as in prime time.
Cast.
In "Casados con hijos" the adventures of the Argento Family and the environment that surrounds them take place within the neighborhood of Bajo Flores in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Their neighbors are, a newly married banking couple named Dardo and María Elena Fuseneco.
Protagonists.
He is a very rude and insensitive person, he does not think of anyone but himself. He is very mean and selfish, he does not listen or pay attention to anyone, nor does he sometimes pay attention. He is also vain. He is also very macho and pessimistic, he believes that the woman ruins the man's life by marrying and destroys his life and his dreams forever.
On a dubious date sometime in the 1980s, he meets Mónica Potrelli where they enter into a courtship, and get married, thanks to a joke she made on Pepe that she was pregnant, when he was going to be selected to promote to the First Division of Argentine soccer referring to Racing Club, since, in that instance, Pepe played football in that club, in the lower ranks, a club of which he is a fanatic fan in real life. Also, he tells that he played for the Tristán Suárez Social and Sports Club for more than 9 years. After that he married Moni and had two children named Paola and Alfio from there his life became "hell". Pepe is a passionate Racing fan.
By marrying Moni, Pepe loses all hope of returning to football, which he considers that his wife "screwed up his life forever".
He is a man disgusted with the life that touched him and tired of his family, which causes most of his sorrows. Pepe works as an employee in a shoe store located in local 77 of a gallery with an exaggeratedly low salary, living with his annoying clients.
He is always unlucky, nothing ever goes well. In almost every chapter he always aims to achieve something that favors him like replacing the Chevy with a better car, making money, getting a good deal, winning a game or match, being famous, etc. but it always fails because of the intrusion of the characters either by accident or of their own free will. No matter how he tries and how many times he does it, things always turn out the opposite of how he expects them.
He cares a lot about business and does anything to get it. He always steals objects foreign to his neighbors from Dardo and María Elena because he does not have enough money to buy his own objects due to his low salary, in addition to the fact that his family spends everything daily. There are also times when he does this by borrowing them, then keeping them and never paying them back. His family also steals in the same style as him.
Pepe always seeks to be recognized or honored by his neighbors but unfortunately no one ever manages to recognize him.
She is Pepe's wife and mother of Alfio and Paola. Moni is the representation of a somewhat incompetent, clumsy, extravagant housewife and sexually unsatisfied by her husband. She is always exaggeratedly made up, wears bracelets and necklaces and wears loose, brightly colored clothes. She has tangled and prominent blonde hair.
She is not in charge of cleaning the house or buying food and likes to spend all afternoon and sometimes all day watching soap operas or teleoffer programs sitting on the couch, something that Pepe and María Elena often criticize daily, talking to their mother for phone and drinking mate. She is also a fan of Susana Giménez and the television show "Susana Gimenéz".
Moni is a disaster at cooking, everything she cooks always goes wrong with a terribly ugly taste and smell, which her family criticizes a lot. 
Moni always wants to have sex with her husband, something that Pepe always refuses to do due to the lack of interest and hatred he has in his wife. And if they have sex they only last half a minute to three minutes because Pepe never wants to, nor does he feel like it, that is why Moni is always dissatisfied and constantly asks her husband for sex and even at the most inopportune moments. 
She is the most clumsy member of the Argento Family, she shows to have a lot of tactlessness and very little wisdom towards things both indiscipline, as her grotesque vocabulary, she does not know how to write, say or read most of the words well. Her clumsiness has gotten her or anyone around her into trouble. They usually call her "moron". She is a fan of Britney Spears.
At times, she is quite awake, in relation to most situations, when she engages in some kind of discussion with her brother, in which, most of the time, she appears as superior to him and with greater life experience, mainly in the sexual realm, however, she is naive on the subject.
In the second season she is not seen much because Luisana Lopilato was recording the telenovela "Alma Pirata". This absence is initially concealed by saying that he went to a models school, but later on, Pepe laughs at that and adds "Está en una escuela de modelos una boludez tengo que decir", "La nena no está, no me la traen nunca" or "Me dicen que hoy viene la nena, pero después nada". She suddenly appears on the endings causing the surprise of the public and her father.
This character is assigned a way of being childish but at the same time shown with great intentions to have a partner, although he cannot achieve it because he is rejected. He is frequently exalted at the appearance somewhere of women acting groggy in the face of this situation.
Many times he tried to get closer to María Elena, failing in the attempt. Despite being rejected by women, "Coqui" had sex with at least two of them, the girlfriend of his cousin Jaime and Barbara Bush, the daughter of the former president of the United States George W. Bush. It is likely that Coqui had more than two sexual intercourse.
She frequently uses neat clothes and very light or very dark colors, sometimes he appears using an extra complement of his clothing such as a hat.
Her particular obsession with Dardo leads her to be constantly after him and she tends to show off her good relationship with him a lot in front of the Argento. She is presumptuous, haughty and tends to highlight the things she has or in which she is superior to other people. She has a very explosive and unstable personality, which is why an attack of hysteria tends to appear from one moment to the next, she goes out of her mind and begins to shout deliberately, showing a homicidal tendency.
María Elena is supposedly a friend of Moni, although she often presumes her marriage and life to her, which often generates discussions between them, Moni often calls her "Yegua".
María Elena hates Pepe with all her soul, she usually has constant fights with him because of their differences. Pepe constantly shows great contempt for her, who usually responds almost always with fine and far-fetched dialogues insulting them, until a burst of hysteria usually occurs.
Her actions and thoughts tend to be feminist and in many cases she tends to demean men, contrary to what Pepe does, who sees women as inferior to men.
Something that should be noted about María Elena is that she presents a fairly important mental disorder, the clear proof of this is that from the seventh chapter of the second season, she had a supposed daughter whom she called "La Nena", this may be interpreted as a form of relief in the face of possible infertility on her part, since despite having a sexually active life with Dardo, they never had children. She is a bit of an alcoholic.
In his past, before meeting María Elena, Dardo used to have relationships with women very deliberately. This affects Dardo's relationship with his wife, so it is also widely spoken by Pepe when the two are together.
Dardo Fuseneco is a neighbor of the Argento family. Together with his wife they moved to the neighboring house a short time ago. This character soon established a friendly relationship with Pepe and always acts as his faithful friend, so much so that he sometimes ignores his wife for paying attention to him or helping his friend. In several episodes, Pepe easily manipulates Dardo by comparing his friendship to that of Lennon-McCartney.
He lives with his wife María Elena in the house next to the Argento family, he has no children and maintains a very good marriage with his wife and they are very emotionally attached. Many times this character is somewhat credulous and naive, almost always being convinced of doing certain things induced by Pepe, who turns out to be somewhat manipulative of his friend. And in the end he ends up getting Dardo in serious trouble when something Pepe plans goes wrong. That is one of the reasons why the relationship between Pepe and Dardo breaks down, although they always end up reconciling.
A detail that is shown in some chapters is that Dardo feels sexual attraction towards Mónica, especially her exuberant bust, but does not dare to do anything because of his friendship with Pepe.
Main Cast.
Fatiga has beige fur and a large build, she usually appears lying somewhere, primarily in the family's favorite old chair, doing nothing.
Fatiga lives up to her name, having in her scenes a completely tired, listless and inattentive attitude, never doing practically anything and remaining lying on armchairs or cushions on the floor most of the time. María Elena hates her because she always defecates in her own garden.
In the chapter "Todos los perros van al cielo" it is discovered that Fatiga's owner is Coqui. 
She was many times a companion of Pepe and Coqui when they conducted dialogues alone in the living room, speaking to her as a friend and reflecting on their life.
On Friday, October 12, 2007, Violeta suffered a serious accident that caused her death. It all happened when her owners decided to leave her in the family home and not take her with them as they used to. Apparently, the lady who performs housework opened to ventilate and it was at that moment that she fled through the window towards her tragic end. "At night she still did not appear and we found her on the side of the Pan-American Highway" lamented Montenegro, who suspects that Fatiga could have confused the car of her owners and thus leave the road.
Episodes.
Last chapter.
Starting the episode, Pepe quickly goes down the stairs when he hears the doorbell. It was his neighbors, the Fusenecos, who emphasize that in Pepe's house the furniture is covered with sheets, typical of removals. So there Moni, Paola and Coqui come down, singing "Presente" by Vox Dei and tell their neighbors that they were going to move to a farm in Santa Fe, Argentina near where Moni's mother lives. In allusion to this, they begin a farewell toast and María Elena is happy. After emphasizing that he did not want to see them anymore, the Argento hugged each other and yelled at him: "Lie!" The Argento made this joke for April Fool's Day, but actually April Fool's Day was a week away and they justified themselves by saying they couldn't wait Dardo is quite happy to realize the joke, while María Elena is scared and faints.
At night, Pepe organized a "picada" for his neighbors, who went to the Argento's. At one point, Dardo's cell rings, he was the manager of the bank where he and his wife work, and he informs them that they were raffled to go to work at a bank branch in Paris, France. When Dardo communicates to the Argentos, they do not believe him, and refer to an alleged revenge for the joke they made him, but Dardo forgets his cell phone at the Argento house and receives a call from his Manager that Pepe answers, confirming the time of the trip.
The next day, between tears and goodbyes, Pepe and Moni say goodbye to them, while Coqui and Paola accompany them to the Ministro Pistarini International Airport. After saying goodbye, the new neighbors enter the house, who happen to be Pablo Echarri, along with Mariela Fernández. There is an introductory dialogue equal to that of the first chapter of the series, in which the Argento and the Fuseneco were introduced, so it denotes that the new neighbors are the same as the previous ones.
Comparison between the first and second seasons.
At the end of the recording of the first season, the episodes were not reaching the expected ratings. In reruns, the series became famous and acclaimed by the public. This is why after almost a year of repetitions in most cases seen for the first time by the public, it was necessary to start a second season. The set of the series had been disassembled and removed from the place, since other series were recorded there. The setting for the set had to be reassembled and the cast had to be reunited.
When the series began, it had many characteristics that when filming the second part began, they were modified to correct certain aspects, renew the content, adapt to the situation and redefine objectives.
Regarding the decoration, the tone of the colors used has been modified mainly, for example, it has gone from using a somewhat opaque color to a lighter color that gives much more depth to the stage in the main room.
The appearance in the second season of the scenarios is more tidy and is totally defined as a wealthy middle class house, establishing a great difference between what is seen and what is said, also what was improved was the production of the program, In the first season you could see even the microphones on top, something that did not happen in the second season.
In the way of being the characters, the character of Pepe has changed greatly in the first season, it was noted that they discriminated and degraded women a lot, mainly their wife-mother, and used bad words very frequently. In another aspect that the character of Pepe changed was that in the first season he frequently had an aspect that approached a person of lower middle class.
Another aspect that, although it went unnoticed by many, was important. In the first season, almost all the chapters respected the original script of the American series "Married... with Children" while in the second season there were several changes, even mixing content from several original episodes in one, or reconstructing the scripts to achieve a story more adapted to the local humor.
In the second season this was modified by making Pepe not so aggressive towards women and not insulting so much. In the second season the appearance in terms of clothing mainly changed to appear as a middle class person.
Moni in the second season, along with the change in Pepe's personality, he began to impose himself a little more.
On the other hand, the character of Dardo changed in a certain way, since in the first season he gave the appearance of being a very serious man, in the second season he became more comic and liberated. This is due to a readaptation that had to be made of this character due to a change of actors in the original American series who played the same role.
María Elena presents new crazy things in her mind, among them "La Nena" her new imaginary daughter, in addition to her haircut, which in the first season was shorter "casquito" and in the second it is a little longer.
A modification that was not significant but that marked a change between the two seasons is the introduction. In the first season this was a sequence of introducing characters through their appearance in cartoon form, a classic form used in American sitcom. This presentation was made by the studio "Boogieman Media". In the second season the presentation of characters has been made by making a sequence of parts of chapters that present them.
Theatrical Version.
Return to the theater.
Towards the end of 2018, Guillermo Francella and Marcelo de Bellis stated that they were projecting the return of the series in a theatrical version around 2019. Due to work commitments by Florencia Peña, the project did not materialize. On August 2, 2019, it was confirmed that the members of the series signed a contract for the return of "Casados con hijos".
On December 1, 2019 Florencia Peña announced on the Susana Giménez program that the entire cast would be out, except for the dog Violeta who played Fatiga, who years ago suffered an accident and died.
While, at the beginning of 2020, Érica Rivas did not appear as part of the cast, which caused some viewers to start demanding that they return their entrance money. In this context, Érica Rivas explained: “... Siempre expresé preocupación y compromiso, no solo por mi personaje, sino por el mensaje general y las ideas que se exponen a través de los chistes. Hoy cambió el paradigma y hay cosas de las que ya no nos podemos reír”. Perhaps alluding to certain macho content in the series. She also clarified that it was not she who disclosed this information to the press and also demanded an explanation from the production companies in charge of the project, RGB Entertainment, Gustavo Yankelevich and Telefe, who pointed out that there was no signed contract and that the separation was due to "artistic disagreement". Finally in April 2020, the absence of the actress in the play was confirmed.
The play was to premiere on June 12, 2020 and continue through July and August, but in view of the theatrical events due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina, it was postponed to start January 2021, but because COVID-19 pandemic persists on October 15, 2020 the production company made the decision to definitively cancel the play.