The Addams lived and hung out all day in their gigantic, well-appointed 19th century mansion full of sentient plants, suits of armor, a lion and more, enjoying each other's company and occasionally dealing with the stuffy local conservative figures who populated the generic town outside its doors. The Addams Family took a different approach - let the water come to the fish. There were a lot of weird sitcoms in the '60s, many of them built around fish-out-of-water scenarios like The Beverly Hillbillies and My Favorite Martian. At least The Addams Family: The Animated Series restores and updates the 1960s sitcom version's iconic, snap-happy theme song, and draws inspiration from the rich, busy look of the 1991 Addams Family film. It's a little heavy-handed, too - Gomez, Morticia, and the rest live in a sunny town called Happydale Heights, next door to Norman and Normina Normanmeyer, who are as normal as their name suggests, except for their seething resentment of the Addamses and their mysterious and spooky ways. Sure, the Addamses live in a creepy, shadowy mansion, and yes, Wednesday and Uncle Fester gleefully like to blow stuff up whenever they get the chance, but the show leans too heavily on the family's interactions with the outside world and its suffocating normalcy. but the people who made it focused so hard on making it squeaky clean that they lost the spirit of what makes the Addams Family special. This early '90s animated cash-in on the popular live-action movies aired on ABC Saturday mornings, so it's obviously geared toward children. The only true innovation of The New Addams Family is how it took a cue from the early 1990s Addams Family movies - or perhaps was just aware of its child and tween target audience - and gave much more screentime to Wednesday and Pugsley Addams than the '60s show ever did. At least they had the good sense to bring in original Gomez John Astin as occasional character Grandpapa Addams, but his presence just reminded viewers of the greatness that once was. It plays like an eerie (but not in a good "Addams" way) remake of its predecessor, with many of the actors not so much interpreting their characters but imitating their counterparts from the 1964-'66 series. A Canadian production which aired the Fox Family Channel in the U.S., The New Addams Family inadvertently gave away its premise in its title: It's the same old Addams Family as presented by the 1960s The Addams Family sitcom it's just. ![]() Nothing about any Addams Family property made it unfriendly to kids (except for kids spooked out by just a general sense of the macabre), so there doesn't seem to be much of a point to The New Addams Family.
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