The 1970s Were Hard on the Addams Family

[TMC]

http://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2019...e-hard-on.html

The original show based on the Charles Addams cartoons ended in 1966 after two seasons, so 1977 seemed like the perfect time to unleash a TV movie that could potentially kick off a revival show. After all, it had been more than a decade since John Astin made his crazy eyes and Carolyn Jones shuffled her feet in that mummy shroud of a dress. So it was that Halloween with the New Addams Family debuted on October 30 of that year.

But people made bad decisions in the 1970s. It’s just a fact of history.



First, the showmakers decided to do it in color, which, you know, is not a bad decision (the early 1990s Addams Family movies looked great in color). However, the production color was the gaudy hues and saturation of the 1970s. It felt like it was lensed in the same neighborhood as the early episodes of Three's Company. And it didn’t help that the movie was shot on video. Now, granted, I watched a low-quality version of it, but even so, it was obvious that the feel of the show was far removed from the elegant, crisp, textured black and white of the original show.

All the actors from the series returned except for Blossom Rock, who played Grandmama. She was ill at the time of production and would die two and a half months after the special aired. Wednesday and Pugsley are grown up, but Gomez and Morticia have two more children: Wednesday, Jr., and Pugsley, Jr.—a joke that sounds a lot like the first joke you make during the awkward, slow moments at the beginning of a writer’s room brainstorm. It must have just stuck.

There are basically two parts to the plot, one that is bizarre and, I think, brilliant, and the other that is classically bad-sitcom awful.

[Hazel Anyday]

I don't know if all that above was written by the poster or quoted from somewhere else by who knows. But I can tell you why that Halloween special failed, THEY DID'NT HAVE GOMEZ & MORTICIA in IT enough either. Isn't this the storyline where suddenly a Gomez & a Morticia younger lookalikes suddenly show up and the real G&M just come in for basically cameo appearances once in a while. The special WOULD have worked if they had let G&M remain the main characters even if they hired new kids to play their original kids it would have been good. But to have basically the entire cast replaced with "younger and improved" actors playing the same original character types even wearing the exact same clothes the originals wore & THE ORIGINALS ARE STILL IN THE SHOW TOO (partially)!! It's ridiculous why were these fake young versions of M&G there anyway? It didn't make any sense. They should have just done a Halloween story involving the regular cast (those still alive, of course) and just used new child actors playing the original children. You know as if the kids had frozen in time. That would have been so much better than all the fake younger Addams Family people.