Transcription
Psychiatrists studied every major family on American television, and the one they said was the healthiest was the Addams Family. Not a joke. Here's why.
Every other family sitcom in the 1960s ran on the same blueprint. Father comes home from work, emotionally checked out. Mother has dinner on the table, no identity outside the kitchen. Children are expected to be quiet, tidy, and normal. It looked perfect on the surface. Underneath, it was a master class in suppression. Nobody said what they felt. Nobody was allowed to be different. And the marriage, if you could call it that, was cold, formal, and about as romantic as a filing cabinet.
And then, there was Gomez Addams. A man who, the moment his wife said a single word in French, would grab her arm and kiss his way up it, like he just won the lottery. Who told Morticia she was beautiful every single day, without irony, without awkwardness, without needing a special occasion? Morticia, for her part, had opinions, passions, a full inner life. She wasn't there to serve the plot. She was the plot.
John Astin, who played Gomez, said it himself. Psychiatrists who wrote about the show thought we were the healthiest family on the air. And when you break it down, it makes complete sense.
One, unconditional acceptance. Wednesday's morbid obsessions, Pugsley's love of explosives, never treated as problems, celebrated as personality.
Two, an openly passionate marriage. At a time when TV couples slept in separate beds, Gomez and Morticia were visibly, extravagantly in love.
Three, a whole community raising the kids. Grandmama, Uncle Fester, Lurch, nobody in that house was alone with their problems.
Four, they didn't need the world's approval. Neighbors feared them, guests fled, they didn't care. They were secure in who they were. That's not weirdness, that's psychological health.
The show ran for just two seasons before it was canceled in 1966, but it never went away. Six decades later, Netflix's Wednesday became one of the most watched series in the platform's history because what the Addams family offers never gets old. A place where you are loved exactly as you are.