Married With Children: Poppy's By the Tree (Air Date: Sept. 27, 1987)

“WOOOOOOOOOOO! YEAH AL!” 

Given the many dysfunctional family sitcoms that have saturated the market in the last few decades, it’s easy to forget just how innovative Married…With Children truly was.  It came out in the era of Family Ties, The Cosby Show, and Growing Pains; television shows with practically perfect families.  Married...With Children not only feature an extremely dysfunctional family unit, but it was airing on an upstart network, FOX, to boot.  It was a show that was reviled by the critics, and the source of much controversy, but was loved by the middle class. It was also a show that was watched by a fairly wide demographic; it appealed to both adults and children (despite its often lewd content).  I’m probably one of many Generation Xers that grew up watching the Bundys; the first episode aired when I was seven years-old and it was, finally, cancelled shortly after I turned eighteen. 

While the Bundys were an extremely dysfunctional family, they were far more relatable than most television families.  In other sitcoms the parents often held high paying jobs and were well liked by the community, in Married…With Children, Al worked as a shoe salesman and was reviled by the neighbors.  Married…With Children was one of the few sitcoms I remember where money was an issue; because of Al’s low paying job the family would often have to cut corners, or resort to devious means to get what they wanted.  They were a truly unique bunch: Every time Al, the patriarch of the group, walked through the front door he looked like a man who had just been sentenced to life imprisonment; Peg was a stay at home mom who didn’t cook, clean, and spent her day watching television and eating bonbons; Kelly, their oldest child, was a ditzy peroxide blonde who was barely literate but extremely popular with the boys; and Bud, their pint sized son, was easily the smartest of the group but was often a slave to his starved libido.  Bud and Kelly usually had to fend for themselves, because their parents were fairly indifferent towards them.  Married….With Children greatly benefited from its likable cast who some how managed to make these truly repugnant characters endearing. 

The only “close” friends Al and Peg had were the Rhoades, the newly wed couple next door, who were new to the neighborhood and thus blindly walked into a friendship with the Bundys. In most TV sitcoms, the family had a fairly positive influence on the people around them, while in Married…With Children, the Bundys are often a negative influence and tend to bring out the worst in the people around them.  I prefer the earlier seasons with Steve, rather than the Jefferson D’Arcy era, because there is far more interesting dynamic between Al Bundy and Steve Rhoades.  When we first meet Jefferson he is already a scoundrel, hence Al’s influence on him is fairly minimal.  When we first meet Steve, he is truly in love with his new bride, Marcy, and has a promising career as a banker.  His future is limitless. Yet, as the seasons progress, Al’s bad influence begins to rub off on Steve and by season four he is a total dead beat. He loses his job at the bank and his marriage with Marcy has soured to the point where he ends up leaving her.  I also think Marcy was better served in these early seasons; like Steve, she has a promising future on the horizon. However, despite her success, she is filled with insecurities; due to a fairly traumatic childhood.  She was often the voice of reason; when Al and Peg come up with a scheme to make money, she often, and correctly, points out the sheer stupidity of it. Unfortunately, once the show entered its later seasons, Marcy was reduced to a stereotypical feminist – angry to the core and extremely vindictive – a far cry from her yuppie origins. 

I was initially going to do a general overview of the entire series, but decided to focus one of my two part episode, “Poppy’s By the Tree” to illustrate just how unique, and subversive, Married…With Children truly was.   

“Poppy’s By the Tree” is essentially a parody of the two part “vacation” episode that was common among sitcoms at the time. In these episodes, the families would take a trip to an exotic location (usually Hawaii). It was essentially an excuse for the cast and crew to go on all expensed paid trip to Hawaii (on whatever exotic destination the writers came up with).  In “Poppy’s By the Tree,” Al takes him family to a complete dive in Florida called Dumpwater which is known for two things; this rundown motel called Poppy’s By the Tree and an ax wielding serial killer that kills obnoxious tourists every five years.  In a normal sitcom we would be treated to all the beautiful scenery, but in Married…With Children we are forced to endure some of the cheapest and ugliest sets in television history. In fact, there is no effort by the director to hide the cheap production value as the sets are extremely (one might say overly) lit.  This directorial decision, by Linda Day, effectively portrays the Hell on Earth that the script was going for. 

The trope that is common in the “vacation” episode is that one of boys will fall in love with a mysterious island girl; Step By Step is probably the most glaring example of this.  The oldest son is instantly smitten by a beautiful Hawaiian girl who constantly disappears; making him doubt this sanity. Of course, she proves to be real and by episode’s end they are given a brief romantic moment.  Bud does meet a girl in Dumpwater, but she’s hardly an exotic beauty. She’s a fairly sweet girl who is dumb as a box of rocks; Bud manages to impress her by telling her all sorts of lies about himself (like that’s he’s a millionaire).   Of course, any potential romance quickly evaporates once Al and Peg arrive on the scene and proceed to embarrass Bud.  Peg asks Bud if he has taken his Milk of Magnesia. 

In one of the script’s funnier concepts, the locals don’t do anything to help the Bundys, instead they start a betting pool over what time the bodies will be discovered.  There’s really no reason for them to get involved since the serial killer only targets obnoxious tourists.  The Bundys don’t exactly ingratiate themselves with the locals, either: Al figures that since it’s his vacation he has every right to be loud and obnoxious. He is treated like dirt for most of the year and now he is given the opportunity to return the favor. 

“Poppy’s By the Tree” is also a send up of Slasher movies that plagued the cinemas throughout the eighties.  The episodes opens on a flashback to 1967; the scene is shot in black and white, and scratches have been digitally added to the picture to give it the look of cheap 60s horror movie. An elderly couple is lying on a bed and the wife keeps complaining about what a disgrace the motel they’re staying at is. Suddenly, the door to their room opens and they are promptly murdered by an ax wielding psycho. Like most horror movies of the time, the murder is shot from the point of view of the killer. 

This scene recalls the opening to the first Friday the 13^th, where two horny camp counselors are murdered by an unseen assailant.  It’s revealed later on that the killer’s motive for killing tourist is because they drove his mother to an early death; this is similar to how Pamela Voorhees blames camp counselors for the death of her son.  In Friday the 13^th, Pamela Voorhees comes to a gruesome end, while in “Poppy’s By the Tree,” the killer, while thwarted by Al, gets away with his crimes. It turns out that he is a local celebrity, “the man who met Andy Griffith.” Dumpwater cannot afford to lose their only tourist attraction, so the Bundys make a quick retreat before they fall victim to mob violence.  

Married…With Children resonated with audiences because it spoke many truths about the human condition. Television shows like Leave it To Beaver, Full House, Step By Step, represented what we should strive to be a humans, while Married…With Children represented what we wanted to say, or do, in our actual lives but could never get away it. It was, oddly enough, a form of wish fulfillment. 

Credits
Cast:  Ed O’ Neill (Al Bundy), Katey Sagal (Peg Bundy), Christina Applegate (Kelly Bundy), David Faustino (Bud Bundy), David Garrison (Steve Rhoades), Amanda Bearse (Marcy Rhoades), Gary Grubbs (Delbert), Richard Paul (The Sheriff), Charlie Dell (Roy), Ian Patrick Williams (Beany), Becky  Phelps (Gloria), Kim Morgan Greene (Becky), Vic Polizos (The Killer), Dan Gauthier (Kelly’s Boyfriend), Sandy Sprung (Dottie), Bill Marcus (Harold).

Director: Linda Day
Writers: Michael G. Moye, Ron Leavitt.
Running Time: 45 min (two episodes)