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Based on the original Goth cartoons by Charles "Chas" Addams that ran for decades in the New Yorker magazine, The Addams Family television sitcom portrayed a monster family whose moribund physical appearances were counteracted by each family member's exuberance for passion and adventure. This Volume Two DVD contains twenty-one episodes, including the last of season one and the whole of season two, plus commentaries, and a featurette about the cinematic impact The Addams Family had on American television culture. Premiering the same year as The Munsters, this short-lived series was one of the first two shows to take issue with the Leave It To Beaver aesthetic that dominated television throughout the 50s, in which perfect families narrowly defined normality in the American home. Instead, it starred a family feared by neighbors, who within the boundaries of their haunted Victorian mansion invented their own thriving, not to mention fun, culture. The Addams Family proved that outsiders could be extremely gracious, educated, and interesting, even if eccentricities rendered their looks a threat.
These episodes include the original cast: Gomez (John Astin) and Morticia (Carolyn Jones), Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan), the two children Wednesday and Pugley, butler Lurch, hairy Cousin Itt, and the enigmatic hand, Thing, who plays castanets for the married couples' cha cha parties, and looks up things in phone books. Macabre humor in each episode reverses average, expected logic. Flower arranging, for Morticia, involves de-budding and stripping roses of all but the thorns. In "Morticia, The Sculptress," Gomez bribes a local art dealer to buy Morticia's hideous art at the Addams Family's own expense, revealing Gomez to be a strange but loving husband. In most episodes, such as "Lurch, The Teenage Idol" and "Cousin Itt and the Vocational Counselor," The Addams' aim to help their loved ones succeed, in these cases Lurch, as a harpsichord-playing pop star, and Itt, on a career search for an unintelligible, hair-covered little person. The Addams Family house interior still looks exquisite forty years later, full of taxidermied animals, antique furniture, carnivorous plants, and medieval charm. One watches this show not only for its sets and costumes, but also for its refreshingly wide take on what successful families can look like. --Trinie Dalton
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71 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exit Season One, Enter Season Two!,
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This review is from: The Addams Family: Volume Two (DVD)
Picking up where Volume One left off, The Addams Family - Volume Two ends the show's first season with the remaining 12 Season One episodes, and starts the second season with the first 9 Season Two episodes. The 2nd of 3 cost-friendly volumes, The Addams Family - Volume Two is a 3-disc (546 min.) set which features Full Frame (1.33:1) video; English, French (on select episodes) and Spanish mono audio; English and Spanish subtitles. Here are how the discs will be configured, plus a list of extras:
Disc 1 Side A: 1. Thing is Missing 2. Crisis in the Addams Family 3. Lurch and His Harpsichord 4. Morticia, the Breadwinner Disc 1 Side B: 5. The Addams Family and the Spaceman 6. My Son, the Chimp 7. Morticia's Favorite Charity 8. Progress and the Addams Family Disc 2 Side A: 9. Uncle Fester's Toupee 10. Cousin Itt and the Vocational Counselor 11. Lurch, the Teenage Idol 12. The Winning of Morticia Addams Disc 2 Side B: 13. My Fair Cousin Itt 14. Morticia's Romance, Part 1 15. Morticia's Romance, Part 2 16. Morticia Meets Royalty Disc 3 Side A: 17. Gomez, the People's Choice 18. Cousin Itt's Problem 19. Halloween, Addams Style 20. Morticia, the Writer Disc 3 Side B: 21. Morticia, the Sculptress Special Features: * Commentary: On select scenes by Thing and Cousin Itt * Commentary: On "Morticia Meets Royalty" by Steven Cox, author of "The Addams Chronicles" * Featurette: "Mad About The Addams" * Tombstone Trivia: On "Morticia's Romance" (Part I) * Bonus: Guest Star Seance with Parley Baer, Milton Frome, Vito Scotti, Elizabeth Frazer, Richard Deacon, Sig Ruman, Margaret Hamilton, Elvia Allman, Eddie Quillan and Peter Bonerz The Addams Family - Volume Two March 27th! Two Snaps Up!
34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Almost Altogether Ooky,
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This review is from: The Addams Family: Volume Two (DVD)
I have reviewed a fair number of DVD sets that collect TV series, and have tried to focus on the original content while disregarding the larger aspects of the DVD package. After all, the majority of fans buy these packages for the original episodes, and DVD bonus items are usually inconsequential gravy. I even discussed this same matter in my review for Addams Family Volume 1. But alas, for Volume 2, I am compelled to break my own rules and dock the DVD package one star for reasons that have nothing to do with the greatness of the original episodes. MGM must be criticized for stretching the two original seasons into three DVD releases, regardless of their PR about making each set more affordable. What really creates the expense is the addition of modern bonus material, and here, that material is so thin and weak that it reveals, harshly, MGM's real motives for putting the Addams Family show on DVD. The key bonus item is a brief and poorly-produced documentary on a squishy subject - the influence of the show on pop culture - with most of the commentary coming from C-list cronies and hangers-on who crowd out the under-utilized John Astin. The other bonus items here are even less useful, including unfunny "commentary" on a few episodes by stand-ins for Thing and Cousin Itt, and a feature called "Tombstone Trivia" on a couple of episodes, which is merely pop-up tidbits that appear on the screen an average of once every several minutes.
So beware that your love of the classic Addams Family show is being manipulated by modern cheaply-created corporate filler. As for the show itself, hopefully it will still be easy for you to love the episodes that are presented here. Rest assured that these episodes still brutally satirize the typical middle-American sitcom family and subversively reveal much deeper family values. These episodes also feature many crucial character developments. Important advancements include "Morticia Meets Royalty" in which Thing falls in love, and "Lurch the Teenage Idol" in which our faithful butler accidentally becomes a rock star. The highlight of this package is surely the two-part "Morticia's Romance," in which the sexy Carolyn Jones manages to be fetching in three different ways - as the present Morticia, the younger Morticia, and her sister Ophelia. That episode also features Margaret (Wicked Witch of the West) Hamilton as Morticia's mother. As noted above, I have broken my own rule about ignoring modern DVD packaging practices while assessing only the original content. But here, try not to let your love for the episodes be damaged by the weaknesses of the package. [~doomsdayer520~]
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
They don't make them like this anymore,
This review is from: The Addams Family: Volume Two (DVD)
The Addams Family TV show was based on a series of cartoons started back in the 1930's and authored by Charles Addams for the New Yorker. Whether or not Addams intended for there to be some kind of Depression-era message on the idle rich being scary in more ways than one I do not know, but it does seem like that is one of the messages trying to come through all the dark humor. What I do know is that a show this offbeat and creative would never get aired on network TV today, and even if it did, the minute it got successful the network suits would start tinkering with it and ruin it. If you need an example of this phenomena, I point you in the direction of Lost. Back in the mid 1960's, TV seasons were actually so long - basically running week in and week out for nine months - that you would often end up with over 30 episodes a season, thus the odd format of the Addams Family DVDs not breaking at individual seasons.
The Addams' are portrayed as a close knit and happy family - in fact they rarely have contact with outsiders other than the children attending school. They appear completely human, but they eat food that seems completely inedible by any normal human being and they each have their own peculiar qualities that seem beyond those of normal humans such as Uncle Fester's ability to generate electricity. If they do have visitors, they are usually other family members from some remote area who display these same characteristics. The show never explains the origin of the Addams' or their great wealth - that's just part of their intrigue. The standout episodes in this volume are "Thing is Missing", which appears to be a spoof of The Maltese Falcon; "Lurch The Teenage Idol" which pokes fun of the early Beatles and similar rock bands; "Cousin Itt's Problem" in which Itt is losing his hair; and "Halloween - Addams Style" which shows us how the Addams' celebrate this holiday and all the misunderstandings that come along when trick-or-treaters show up at their house.
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