The Addams Family (1964 - 1966)
d: Various

Been too busy with work these last couple of days to watch much of anything. But I cuuld not resist a couple of episodes of the long-awaited The Addams Family. The DVD release had been held up by legalities, and for once I'm glad. The show is so popular that it would likely have come out in the early days of DVD, and been not nearly so nicely transferred.

I have no objectivity about The Addams Family at all. I was eight when the show premiered, and it was immediately obvious to me that the Addams' were far superior to my family in every way. I desperately wanted Morticia and Gomez to be my mom and dad, and expected to marry Wednesday when we grew up. It didn't occur to me that sharing parents would make us brother and sister, nor was I troubled by the fact that I also had a crush on Morticia. Sometimes I imagined being married to Wednesday, other times to Morticia. I was never bullied much at school to begin with, but I figured Lurch would deal with any future problems of that sort for me. And who wouldn't want Fester for an uncle, Thing for a pal, and lions and octopi for pets?

It wasn't only that the Addams' were a horror family. The Munsters were a horror family as well, but I had no interest whatsover in being a Munster. The draw for me was that the Addams' were, unlike my own, a genuinely happy family. Not only were they happy, they were happy because they were true eccentrics, who delighted in each others' quirks and obsessions. The Munsters were just a sitcom family in monster makeup. Sitcom families were happy because families were "supposed to be" happy - the same reason my family was "happy" or would pretend to be. The Munsters were always trying to fit in with normal people, the Addams' didn't even recognize normality. Which is pretty much as things should be, I think.

More to come...!