I already dumped my original Scooby-Doo column, but here’s MY version of the October one. Feel free to check it against the joke-free one that will appear in the October Movieline:
Thanks to the wonders of video and cable TV, our generation can do what our parents and grandparents couldn’t—revisit the beloved entertainments of our childhood and go, “were we insane?” I remember Bewitched fondly, so I picked up a three-episode video (Columbia Tristar). I guess compared to Gilligan’s Island and Petticoat Junction, Bewitched is Noël Coward-quality. But even the brilliant cast and clever concept can’t quite gloss over scripts on the level of third-grade knock-knock jokes.
You all know the plot, right? Ad exec Darrin Stevens marries perky witch; wackiness ensues as she tries to be a normal suburban housewife for his sake. By the way, I actually know a number of ad execs who got into the business because of Darrin (I should talk—I became a Girl Reporter under the influence of Brenda Starr!). I could never warm up to the whole concept of Darrin: “Naw, I don’t want untold riches or fame, Sam—just make me some dinner!” In addition to which, the guy was a blatant anti-witch bigot: can you imagine if he’d married a black woman and forced her to go around in whiteface? Think of the zany mixups, when his Klan pals visited while her family was there!
The three episodes on this tape feature Darrin I (Dick York), which I was happy about; but they also have nosey neighbor Gladys Kravitz II (I preferred the vaudeville shrillness of Gladys I, Alice Pearce). The first two shows have first Samantha, then Endora, losing their powers—oddly, when Dr. Bombay is summoned, it’s without the cry of “Emergency, come right away!” I thought I’d remembered—I didn’t just hallucinate that, did I? In the third episode, the delightfully farchadat Aunt Clara tranports the family back to the 17th century for a real old-fashioned Thanksgiving. Darrin nearly gets burned as a witch (yes, I know, they hanged witches then, but I guess “burning” was funnier). We also get to enjoy hilariously inaccurate “Pilgrim” costumes and dialogue (no one seems to notice Aunt Clara’s hennaed perm or Sam’s huge false eyelashes).
As expected, all three scripts are painfully awful—but the laugh track reliably wets its little pants every time Darrin says, “Saaam!” or Endora calls him “Durwood.” I’d love to be a laugh track, wouldn’t you? They seem to find humor in every little thing. Laugh tracks are never depressed or out-of-sorts; I’ll bet they never need therapy or Paxil.
There is one reason to grab these tapes—to see a cast you can’t beat. The always-wonderful Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York make a great road-company Burns and Allen. The Stevenses are one of the sitcom families where you really wonder about their sex life; I’ll bet Darrin wasn’t so dead-set against witchcraft when the lights were out. My friend Ike adds that “Darrin must have been incredible in the sack—I mean, she could have had Errol Flynn or Casanova or anyone, and she stuck with that doofus!”
But the high point for me was those two brilliant character comediennes: the over-the-top campy Agnes Moorehead as Endora (how old were you when you first got the joke in her name?), and the incomparable Marion Lorne as Aunt Clara (we all have an Aunt Clara in our family—some of us are the Aunt Clara in our family). As Mr. Mirror becomes less kind in the harsh light of day, somehow these two ladies make old age seem a little less terrifying and a little more stylish. Now, if only I could find my own personal laugh track . . .