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Truant officer Mr. Hilliard (Allyn Joslyn) is sent to the house of Morticia (Carolyn Jones) and Gomez Addams (John Astin) to make them send their children Wednesday (Lisa Loring) and Pugsley (Ken Weatherwax) to school - but the family, including knife-throwing Grandmama and Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan), and creepy butler Lurch (Ted Cassidy), as well as the house that comes complete with an assortment of strangling plants, freak him out to an extent that he takes a flight without even making his argument - and yet, Morticia and Gomez do send their kids to school the next day, based on how much they've liked Mr. Hilliard. However, they're disgusted when they learn that the tales of the Brothers Grimm are read to the children, where good always triumphs over evil, that they invite Mr. Hilliard back so that he can convince the school board to ultimately ban the book from the curriculum ...

Pop culturally, 1964 was a remarkable year inasmuch as two sitcoms with the same theme - a macabre family trying to make it in the real world -, The Munsters and The Addams Family, premiered a mere 6 days apart from one another (with The Addams Family taking the ever so narrow lead) - in other words, too close to one another to accuse either series of being a carbon copy of the other. And while it's more than likely that one was kicked into being after the other series had been announced or even rumoured about, their similar dynamics developed separately from one another, as even though The Addams Family is based on cartoons by Charles Addams, these showed none of the family dynamics that pretty much made the series.

Over the years, especially after the two series ended around the same time and went into syndication, a passionate rivalry between fans of the one series and those of the other emerged. Now I'll freely admit that I'm more a Munsters-guy, but this probably has to do with my love for the Universal Horror Cycle - and that said, not all in this first episode works as well as the canned laughter suggests, as some jokes in here are just too on-your-nose, but on the other hand Carolyn Jones and John Astin are pretty great in the central roles and have good chemistry between one another, and their innuendo feels rather natural. And as a horror fan with a sense of humour one can't but love the many macabre details the episode shows throughout, so this is more than just a time capsule to another era of TV but something that's genuinely entertaining.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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