Season 2 Episode 1: Poppy’s by the Tree, Part 1
September 27, 1987
The series’ first two-part episode, and its first holiday. The Bundys drive to Dumpwater, Florida, a fictional town the map places near Lake City, with a name that reads as a direct insult to Clearwater, and check into a cut-rate motel called Poppy’s by the Tree. The name is a joke on the “by the Sea” convention of Florida beachfront resorts, and there is no sea. There is, however, an axe murderer who has turned up at the motel every five years since 1962 and does not care for tourists, and the locals have started taking bets on which of the Bundys he will get.
The episode opens in black and white for a flashback to the earlier killings, captioned as such, which is a formal flourish the series rarely attempted and never bettered. From there it settles into something closer to a horror pastiche than a sitcom: the family installed in rooms 21 and 22, the townspeople cheerfully unhelpful, and the threat treated as a local tradition rather than an emergency.
As the first Bundy holiday it sets a template the show returned to for a decade: the destination is terrible, the accommodation is worse, and the danger is real. Season six’s England trilogy follows the same shape. The episode also marks the point where the house itself changed: the second-season titles use an updated exterior shot after the Bundy home was repainted from orange to white. And for the first time the end credits drop the usual still of Al and Peggy on the couch, substituting a frame of the family walking into Poppy’s.
Episode Facts
- Original air date: September 27, 1987
- Season 2, Episode 1, the season premiere, and the 14th episode of the series
- Part one of two, and the first two-parter the show ever did
- Originally broadcast as a single hour alongside part two
- Written by Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye
- Directed by Linda Day
Guest Cast
- Gary Grubbs as Delbert
- Richard Paul as the sheriff
- Charlie Dell as Roy
- Ian Patrick Williams as Beany
- Kim Morgan Greene as Becky
- Becky Phelps as Gloria
- Dan Gauthier as Kelly’s boyfriend
Members get the full episode breakdown, famous quotes, behind the scenes notes and the episode discussion.
