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« on: April 29, 2007, 05:51:54 PM »
Thanks a lot, Gerard, for that!
The Addams cartoons in the New Yorker were well-known. Carolyn Jones didn't want to do television, but agreed to this because of that connection.
There seemed to be a point under the surface with AF. I was never on the side of the grunts and yahoos and unimaginative yokels who would enter the house, look amazed at each other, and swear off drinking. They represented what was wrong with the world, to me, getting thrown by, and knocking down whatever was unlike them. The Addamses were the cool ones.
One and only one (I think) AF episode had an overt serious moment-- it was when a beatnik-y biker was laid up in the house for awhile, and felt at home whereas he didn't in the 'outside world'; his hostile parents were reconciled with him and supposedly came to accept him because of the AF. Well done, up till the point at the very end, where one of those Thing-agrams announced that the guy had put on a suit and joined the family business. So it was the kid who caved. Tacked-on through ntwk. interference?
With The Munsters, you can just relax and get goofy, though I felt as if I shouldn't be watching after reaching a certain age. Later though I started noticing elements to it that made it work really well, without calling attention to themselves, and I let myself appreciate it again as an adult. Great old-time burlesque chemistry between Al Lewis and F Gwynne.