Usually on my blog, I write about things in real life.
But seeing as it's my blog, I have the liberty to write about whatever I want!
Those who know me know that I like 1960s sitcoms. I used to consider them classics, believing that they were superior to modern shows. Now I realize that that isn't the case. But I like them for their campiness, cleanliness, and culture. They tend to be really cheesy, and they are often so bad they're good--sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. They are definitely cleaner than today's shows--there is no swearing, and the few innuendos they have are still cleaner than a lot of today's kid shows. (That is not to say I completely agree with their morals; in 1960s shows, cigarettes are delicious, alcoholism and drunkenness are something to laugh at, and some episodes are mildly to moderately sexist or racist.) And I feel that when I watch them, I get just a little insight into what the world was like back when they said "groovy" and "terrific." (Although I realize that I don't get to see it all, as network censors kept out some of the grittier things. Also, I'm pretty sure there weren't any talking horses, mothers reincarnated as cars, flying nuns, or genie-owning astronauts--but with all the drugs going on, maybe people thought they existed.)
It just so happens that this month marks fifty years of four of the best: Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, The Munsters, and The Addams Family. (It's also fifty years of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., but I haven't seen much of that, and I think it was mainly successful because it was a spinoff of the ever-popular Andy Griffith Show.) So in honor of their anniversaries, I'm going to write a little about them!
*****
I often hear one thing repeated about Gilligan's Island, often verbatim: "If the Professor could make a radio out of a coconut, why couldn't he build a raft for them to sail off on?" Sometimes there are variations, but it generally is the same. But all the facts and arguments herein presented are wrong, as I will show.
First of all, the Professor never made a radio out of a coconut. They had a working radio. How else would they know what happened to all the visitors they had? What they needed was a transmitter, which Gilligan destroyed by dropping a pile of logs on it (after he had accidentally thrown it and the radio in the ocean and fish swallowed them).
Second, although coconuts were among the materials used for Professor's inventions, it wasn't the primary one. I would say bamboo was the primary material, although the lie detector used a gourd and the phonograph used the ship's wheel.
Additionally, it wasn't that they couldn't build a raft. In fact, the very first episode (not counting the very different pilot episode) was entitled Two on a Raft, and Skipper and Gilligan went out on a raft they had made. But Professor warned them that it wouldn't work, and he was right; waves and sharks destroyed their little raft.
In the third season, Professor determined that the currents were such that they could safely sail back on a raft. Unfortunately, Dr. Boris Balinkoff, a mad scientist (who had previously switched their bodies around), came on the island and gave them rings that transformed them into his obedient robots. He wanted to use the castaways to rob Fort Knox, so while he was experimenting on them, he didn't want them to leave, so he had them destroy the raft while they were in their robotic trances. By the time he left, the currents had changed again and it was no longer safe to travel on a raft.
Sometimes the argument is changed to "Why couldn't he fix a boat?" or "Why couldn't he build a boat?" In one early episode, they tried to fix the boat using a tree sap glue, since they couldn't make useful nails (their nails were either too brittle, too flexible, or too explosive). They coated the entire S.S. Minnow with the sap, but it didn't hold, so the entire boat fell apart. (It must have dissolved the nails or something.) In one episode, a robot visited the island, and when they asked it to build them a boat, it explained that to build a boat would require a huge amount of materials.
You see? It was a perfectly logical show. ;)
*****
Bewitched is one show that is very predictable and formulaic. A lot of the episodes follow this pattern: Endora is mad at Darrin for some reason, so she casts some nasty spell, which causes him a lot of embarrassment and causes his clients to not want to do business with him. Then Samantha demands that Endora take off the spell. She reluctantly does so, and they explain to Darrin's client that his odd behavior was to prove a point or demonstrate a new campaign.
But despite its predictability and its primitive special effects, I think Bewitched may just well be the best show to come out of the 1960s. I have had multiple roommates enjoy watching it with me, and it's in my top three favorites (the others being Gilligan's Island and Green Acres).
I'm not sure what made it so enjoyable. Maybe it's that we all wish we could solve problems by twitching our nose. Maybe it's that the premise was such that it could utilize a wide array of situations. Maybe it's the cast of characters--in addition to what I would consider the four main characters (Darrin, Samantha, Endora, and Larry Tate), there is a large array of regular characters: Tabitha, Adam, Serena, Uncle Arthur, Maurice, Phyllis and Frank Stevens, Louise Tate, Abner and Gladys Kravitz, Aunt Clara, Esmeralda, and I'm sure I'm missing some, not to mention some of those that appear in just a few episodes.
Bewitched ran for eight seasons and had a good run. The first season had kind of a heartwarming approach, but by the third and fourth seasons, it was full-on sitcom. The last three seasons, with the second Darrin, weren't as good, but they were still passable, even though they recycled earlier episodes.
I'm honestly surprised there have not been more efforts at spinoffs. There was a spinoff about Tabitha in the 70s, and there was the 2005 movie. Tabitha and Adam appeared in an episode of the ABC Saturday Superstar Movie (which, as far as I can tell, was a show to try to get spinoffs), but that was all. Japan did their own version of it. But there have been no genuine remakes, as the movie (which I have never seen) was just about remaking the show.
*****
When discussing The Munsters or The Addams Family, it seems that you can't talk about one without talking about the other. And they are very similar. Both premiered in September 1964. Both ran for two seasons, both of which were in black and white, even though other shows of the era were beginning to use color. Both were about strange families who lived in haunted-looking mansions and delighted in the macabre. Both were loosely based on preexisting material--The Munsters on Universal's monster movies, and The Addams Family on the drawings of Charles Addams. (And both are mentioned in Jan Terri's Halloween song, "Get Down Goblin"!)
But in many ways, the shows were very different. The Munsters were a typical suburban family, with a housekeeping mom, working dad, school-going kid--except that they were monsters. The Addamses, on the other hand, were just altogether ooky, but they were mostly human (Uncle Fester's electricity, Morticia's "smoking," and Cousin Itt's everything notwithstanding). The Munsters sometimes struggled with money, but the Addamses were filthy rich, keeping drawers full of money throughout their house.
Of both shows, I really think The Munsters was the superior show. The jokes were funnier, and because they were a normal family with a twist, the episodes had a lot of flexibility. The Addams Family was more gimmicky; most of the first season episodes follow the same formula, down to the point of reusing the exact same gags over and over. It got a little more creative in the second season, but The Munsters was the more enjoyable show.
Paradoxically, though, more people are probably familiar with The Addams Family because they have seen the movies or another incarnation of it. I haven't seen the movies because they don't fit my standards, but my understanding is that they were decent. As a kid I enjoyed The New Addams Family, even though I had never seen the original. There have also been two Addams Family cartoon series, and now there is a musical. The franchise lends itself well to remakes.
The Munsters, on the other hand, has not had as many remakes, and those that exist are not good. There was The Munsters Today in the late 1980s, and it was just awful. (It's on Hulu if you don't believe me.) The only one I've seen that I think worked was a pilot episode two years ago called Mockingbird Lane--and that was so different that pretty much only the character names were the same. I just think that the original actors, particularly Fred Gwynne (Herman) and Al Lewis (Grandpa), made their characters, so no one will be able to replace them. John Astin (Gomez) and Carolyn Jones (Morticia) were good, but they didn't define the characters, so remakes work for The Addams Family.
*****
Forgive my nerdiness for writing about a topic that so few will care about. At least now I know that people won't care.
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