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)

Mr.Boogedy (1986)

Cinema history is filled with movies that slipped through the cracks and are condemned to live out their existence to absolute obscurity, whether they deserve it or not. This is the unfortunate fate that has befallen the 1986, made for television Disney movie, Mr. Boogedy. It has never been given a proper DVD release and the only prints that you can find online are VHS quality, or worse.  It’s a fairly forgotten movie now, but it was a big enough deal in 1986 to warrant its own sequel, Bride of Boogedy.  The movie was a huge staple in my childhood; my dad recorded it off of television when it premiered in April of 1986, and my sister and I watched it repeatedly to the point of wearing out the VHS.

The premise is fairly straight forward: Carlton Davis, a novelty salesman (he specializes in gag gifts), moves his family to a small town in New England, the aptly named Lucifer Falls, to open a Gag City store and finds out that his house his haunted by ghosts. There is a scene early on that perfectly encapsulates the tone of the movie:  Jennifer Davis, the oldest of the three siblings, discovers green slimy footprints running up the wall of a room. The dad goes into investigate, peels the footprints off the wall, sticks them all over himself and jokes, “Honey, look! The Boogedy man has walked all over me.”  It is established that Davises are family of practical jokers, so he naturally assumes this is a prank. The movie has a few eerie moments in it, but in the end it is all about the humor.  

 Jennifer is the only sane one in the group, but her pleas fall onto deaf ears. There's a nice piece of characterization going on here; Jennifer is a teenager and is not at all amused by these pranks. She wants to go out and have fun, and is slightly resentful that her parents have chosen to move to "the middle of nowhere," because there is nothing to do. Her relationship with her brothers, Corwin and Aurie,  is  antagonistic at times, because they are "just kids" in her eyes, plus they are constantly ganging up to play tricks on her. When Jennifer attempts to tell her parents about her encounter with Mr. Boogedy, the two boys start taunting her. However, the two boys eventually realize Jennifer is telling the truth and the three of them team up to find a way to stop Mr.Boogedy.  There is a fascinating role reversal going on in Mr. Boogedy; the children act like grown ups, while the parents act like children.  

 

Mr. Boogedy is an interesting villain: He is the ghost of a grumpy pilgrim named William Hanover, who fell in love with the prettiest woman in town, Marion, but she did not reciprocate his feelings. He later sold his to The Devil for a cloak that would give him magical powers and then kidnapped Marion’s son Jonathan, who had a cold. However, while attempting to cast his first spell, he blew up his own house (located on the same spot as the Davis house) and killed Marion, Jonathan, and himself in the process. It is revealed that the ghost of Jonathan is trapped in the Davis house along with Mr. Boogedy; while the ghost of Marion cannot enter the house because Hanover has forbidden it.  The interesting thing about Mr. Boogedy’s haunting of the Davis family is that it is more mischievous in nature than malevolent: a toaster starts to dance around on the kitchen counter; a prop mummy comes to life and starts dancing, while a piano plays wildly in the background; and he zaps a prop vacuum cleaner to life and it chases after the youngest son, Aurie.  He doesn’t want to kill the family; he just wants them to go away. He is the supernatural equivalent to a grumpy old farmer who fills his shotgun up with rock salt to chase away all the no good teenagers trespassing on his property.  He just wants to be left alone. 

There are a lot of interesting directorial decisions by Oz Scott.  The flashback involving William Hanover and Marian is done in a minimalistic fashion.  The buildings and trees are cardboard cutouts, while The Devil is played by a man in the kind of costume you might find on clearance at Wal-Mart.  However, this scene works greatly to the movies benefit as it has a storybook-like feel to it. It is an effective piece of exposition – the audience is given all the information it needs to know.  It doesn’t resort of elaborate camera set ups, or over the top special effects, and gives the actors (especially Howard Witt as Hanover) room to perform.  

Scott also does a nice job of building up to Mr. Boogedy’s final appearance; he is first represented as an eerie green light. When Jennifer goes to investigate the light, we are only shown her reaction to Mr.Boogedy; the fact that she faints clues us in to the grotesque nature of his appearance. She describes his face as looking like “a grilled cheese sandwich” and later on calls him “hamburger face.”

The movie effectively uses sound to suggest a supernatural presence; characters constantly hear a child sneezing (this turns out to be Jonathan) and a maniacal laugh is often heard at the end of scenes.  Mr.Boogedy himself looks like Freddy Krueger’s long lost brother; his face is horribly burned and he is constantly laughing. Hey, the make up may look silly now, but it scared the hell out of me as a kid. 

The acting has often been described as “awful,” but I disagree – the broad, slight campy performances are appropriate for this material. The last thing we need is a scene of Carleton internalizing his most inner thoughts; this is a family comedy not a Tennessee Williams drama. Richard Masur steals the show as the dad without a serious bone in his body. I also like Mimi Kennedy’s portrayal as the mother, Eloise; she gives a fairly eccentric performance (her laugh sounds like a braying donkey) without robbing the character of her humanity. Indeed, Eloise turns out to be a compassionate person, especially when confronted with the ghost of Marion. The children are likeable enough (David Faustino and Benji Gregory would go onto star in Married With Children and ALF, while Kristy Swanson was the original Buffy, the Vampire Slayer), and John Astin is fun as the oddball historian, Neil Witherspoon.  The only really cringe worthy performance comes from Jamie McEnnan as Jonathan, but he has about two minutes of screen time.  It also helps that the movie is a lean 46 minutes; it gets directly to the point and doesn’t feel the need to pad its running time with unnecessary subplots. 

The sequel, Bride of Boogedy, is amusing but far less successful due to its fairly contrived story line – Mr.Boogedy mistakes Eloise for Marion and wants her to be his bride. Though, Eugene Levy is amusing as the grumpy store owner who resents the Davis family for imposing on his territory. The two movies would make for a fun double feature and I highly recommend you seek them out. 

Credits
Cast: Richard Masur (Carleton Davis), Mimi Kennedy (Eloise Davis), Kristy Swanson(Jennifer Davis), David Faustino (Corwin Davis), Benji Gregory (Aurie Davis), John Astin (Neil Witherspoon), Howard Witt (William Hanover/Mr.Boogedy), Katherine Kelly Lang (Widow Marion), Jamie McEnnan (Jonathan), Kedric Wolfe (The Devil).

Director: Oz Scott
Teleplay: Michael Janover
Running Time: 46 min.