I’m going to rip off The Nostalgia Chick’s analysis and point out that The Addams Family was quietly transgressive. The concept, of course, was that the Addams’ were weird and ooky and not like the neighbors. But Gomez and Morticia had probably the happiest, most solid, and certainly most passionate marriage of any sitcom couple of the time. They equally parented their children, and didn’t often scheme against each other. They were never malicious to each other or even to the square neighbors. They most certainly had odd interests and behaviors, but they absolutely did not give a tinker’s damn about what the rest of society thought about that. They rejected Main Street’s values in favor of their own, and, far from being punished or suffering for that, the show presented them as the healthiest and happiest family in town. That’s what made The Addams Family so subversive.
Although it was for a completely forgettable reality show loosely based on the show’s premise, it did have the greatest commercial promo ever!!
Funny sidebar: The episode with the vampire bat was on today. Yeah, the one where you can see Mary Ann’s panties up-skirt! (I have it saved on my “hard-drive” but don’t know how to post it here. Do your own damn search!)
We never got no Ginger panty shot!
Interesting. I thought the last radio adaptation had been done long before that. But was it surrealistic? A Green Acres that just had the city slicker being taken by the rubes would not have been nearly as good.
After all, what can happen to an old fashioned?
Green Acres was mentioned earlier, so I’ll say here that Eddie Albert made a great beatnik/photographer in Roman Holiday. The SO said Eddie Albert was quite handsome when he was young.
Short version of my lost response: Gomez and Morticia were not the only sitcom couple who had a wonderful relationship, do not confuse the chemistry between the actors with a higher quality of scripting or character development by the writers. The Addamses didn’t reject societal values and or judgements. The central joke is that they didn’t think they were any different from everybody else. They didn’t realize they were weird. The exact same central joke as The Munsters.
Remember, the script writers for The Addams family were the same script writers who did earlier shows you would consider dumb and later shows you would also consider dumb. I strongly doubt they tapped into unknown genius for the couple seasons The Addams Family lasted and then lapsed back into mediocrity.
Possibly, but the Munsters were a boring family - but for the monstery trappings, they were as dull as any stereotypical suburban family. The Addamses, in contrast, consistently indulged a rather grim and violent sense of humour.
Or so I vaguely recall, I’m prepared to admit.
They did, but vastly less than the New Yorker cartoons that inspired them or the 1990’s movies with Raul Julia and Angelica Houston. The tv show, especially if watch a few episodes back to back, is rather formulaic and corny. As noted upthread, they had some good jokes, but they used every one of them in every episode. John Astin and Carolyn Jones aren’t just the main reason to watch the show, they are nearly the only reason. They undeniably had better chemistry than Fred Gwynne and Yvonne DeCarlo. The gags, though, are pretty standard high concept show gags, neither notably better or worse than the “they don’t know they’re weird” gags from The Munsters or The Beverly Hillbillies.
If you want a “quietly transgressive” sitcom from that general period, Green Acres from season 2 on has a better claim and they also relentlessly recycled gags.
There’s an answer for this as well, sort of: there was an episode where a weather balloon landed on the island, and in the last scene, Gilligan tears it up so they have material to make clothes and sheets. Of course, that turned out to ruin a planned rescue attempt by trying to repair the balloon.
The Addams Family is a wonderful refutation of Chekov’s claim about happy families.
Someone here on the SDMB said it brilliantly: The Munsters thought they were like everyone else; the Addamses thought everyone else was like them.
The Munsters adhered to societal norms; the Addamses paved their own path and created their own norms.
They could get away with it because they were rich…
No, no, that’s “Barney Miller”.
That’s because she didn’t wear any.
The United States Air Force uses leopard-skin and sequined weather balloons?!!? :eek:
it was probably a USMC weather balloon.
Nope. Gilligan looked at the printing on it and said “‘Usaf’?!?” :dubious:
Well, I’m willing to admit that my memory of the show - which I haven’t seen for decades - might put a gloss on it that perhaps owes something to the Addams Family movie, which I adored. But while other sitcom couples had a happy marriage, were there any other couples as sexually passionate as Gomez and Morticia? Granted, Astin and Jones had great chemistry, and played off each other brilliantly, but The Nostalgia Chick review that I basically plagiarized had clips from the show in which the sexual innuendo was almost transparent. (Inufaceo, so to speak.) And whether or not the scriptwriters intended to or not, the fact that:
…did give the show a subversive twist lacking from, say, Gilligan’s Island or My Three Sons.
Agreed. The Addams Family, as a show, promoted real people emulating the life-style, at least to the degree of indulging in outré home décor. Let’s be honest here: how many of us are proud that “Our house is a museum?” The show encouraged us to express ourselves.
Many, many sitcoms preached the lesson, “Be yourself.” Believe in your dreams, follow your heart, etc. But the Addams Family preached “Be yourself…and the dickens with anyone who criticizes!”
And, yes, I keep a copy of Gray’s Anatomy in the kitchen with the other cookbooks.
GI is a male pornographic fantasy.
Think about it. You’re basically alone on a deserted island with two readily available women. One a seductive sex-godess type, the other a healthy girl-next-door type with a nice butt. So guys have it all, the madonna and the whore. Women get nothing; we get a geek, an overweight middle-aged guy, some nerdy scientific type…