Addams Family vs Munsters
So which one was your favourite, did you like them both, or couldn't stand either one.
They were sitcoms running opposite each other in the 60's and have been going ever since, although the Addams family started off as cartoon strip in the 1930s.
The Addams Family
The Munsters
So which is it?
If you don't know either of them, where have you been for the last 40 years?
In the land of the blind, the one-arm man is king.
I still like the Addams Family and always like it better. It was a fairly intelligent and witty show for the time. The Munsters were always a simpler 60s style comedy and I was not a huge fan and now I can't watch them at all.
Might as well add Bewitched vs. I Dream of Jeanie here. Bewitched for about the first 3 seasons was an interesting show that was fairly well done. Inspired by a couple of classic movies in "Bell, Book and Candle" and "I married a Witch" It was again written with some intelligence before it the gimmick got tired. It also sports a good group of recurring character. The show also tackled in a backdoor way the issue of race and prejudice. Later in the show they stopped even being coy about it in some episodes.
"I Dream of Jeanie" was just one awkward situation after another and the only real reason (for me) to watch the show was Barbara Eden in her costume. (A pretty good reason) but the show was not well written. Oh, I Dream of Jeanie was a direct take-off of Bewitched. It was derivitive. I thought the later "Nanny and Professor" that was one part Bewitched but mostly Mary Poppins was much more clever despite its very short run.
No offense intended to any Munsterphiles present, but I honestly have a hard time understanding how this is even a subject for debate. Comparing The Munsters with The Addams Family seems kind of like comparing Lost in Space with Star Trek. Yes, the shows shared some superficial trappings, but the overall tenor and the level to which the shows aspired were extremely disparate.
Theoretically, I can accept that there are people who might find The Munsters preferable to The Addams Family, just as I suppose there are passionate Lost in Space partisans* out there somewhere. Although in fairness, Lost in Space did have the benefit of June Lockhart and Angela Cartwright. But then The Munsters had Pat Priest... okay, maybe there is a certain argument to be made there.
The Munsters was basically a one-joke show: the people next door are MONSTERS! Wackiness ensues. All the humor proceeded from the incongruity of that basic juxtaposition. However, aside from their appearance, Herman and Lily are really no different from any other sitcom married couple, a point made abundantly clear during the opening credit sequence.
The Addams Family was something else again. Aside from Thing and Cleopatra, and perhaps Cousin Itt, none of them even qualified as monsters. In the context of 1960s televison, they were far more remarkable than monsters: they were nonconformists. Unlike the Munsters, there was no real reason why the Addamses couldn't live a 'normal' life; they just chose not to.
While the Munsters generally tried their best to coexist with their suburban neighbors, the Addamses freely embraced their peculiar Chaotic-Neutral lifestyle with grand disregard for convention or inhibition. Gomez and Morticia Addams were passionately in lust, and didn't care who knew it. Did any other TV couple in the 1960s get it going on so exuberantly?
* "You passionate partisan of pabulum! You pusillanimous pipsqueak! You doddering dunderhead!" they might be heard to say.
Last edited by terrifel; 10 Feb 2010 at 12:27 PM. Reason: Strike that... reverse it.
The Wikipedia article says nothing about it, but I cannot believe that The Munsters was not a partial ripoff of The Addams Family cartoons which had been published in The New Yorker since the 1930s.
The Addams Family is much better.
The Addams family is clearly superior.
Wednesday Addams was a role model of mine, growing up.
The Addams Family, all the way. No question about it. The Munsters were simply buffoonish. The Addamses? Delightfully fucked up. And Christina Ricci as Wednesday was one of my biggest crushes growing up.
(She's almost a year older than me, damnit. I'm not a pervert. I was a little kid, too!)
Another clear vote for the Addams Family, here.
A point that was brought up when this came up on the Dope a couple years ago, the Addamses were perfectly happy being other than normal - they embraced their quirks, and the narrative of the show made no judgment that they were wrong to do so. Whereas the Munsters were very clearly wishing they were a normal blue-collar family, and were constantly stressed by the ways in which they did not fit in.
Of those two rubrics, there's no question which I find more appealing, and more worthwhile.
Never really watched either as a TV program, but just wanted to say I had a crush on Wednesday too in the movies.
I'll take the third Wednesday thank you very much.
Welcome to Mellophant.
We started with nothing and we still have most of it left.
She used to have more boob than that.
Well, you have to figure that she probably still has them around somewhere as a keepsake, like tonsils.Originally posted by Zuul
She used to have more boob than that.
"Man, that Christina Ricci has a great body. She keeps it in a steamer trunk in the attic."
...that is not reassuring.
Posting rules
Reply with quote
