[embedded video: Addams Family]
Look, I’m an Addams Family girl. Always have been, always will be. This means that I have, since my earliest memories, resented the Munsters. Despised them, even.
I thought the Addams clan was charming and funny and their house was fabulous.
The Munsters? Lowbrow and tedious, with very uneven direction and too much mixed-monster mythology. Even a kid could see that.
I was going to embed the The Munsters theme but I’m only allowed to link to it. So here you go.
Additionally, since we only had a black and white TV when I was a wee child, I failed to understand that these shows were in reruns and the Munsters were not, even as I watched, actively conspiring to destroy my beloved Addams Family.
When I got older and co-curated an exhibit on horror movies and television, I learned that the networks really had waged this battle. And the Munsters lost. It was only in syndication that the Munsters seemed to have primacy, and only then because their reruns were obviously cheaper than the Addams Family. As a kid, I didn’t understand that “back to back” episodes really meant, “We got this crap super-cheap.”
Despite all this pop-cultural monster baggage, I tivo’d the pilot episode of Mockingbird Lane so that we could watch it and give it a fair shot. It’s from Bryans Singer and Fuller, so at the very least I figured it would be more visually interesting than the original.
The show was MUCH MUCH MUCH better than the original and, most importantly, I want every single item that Lily (Portia de Rossi) wore. Even the spider dress. Okay, maybe just the dress, you can keep the spiders (although that kind of instant tailoring would be very handy…)
