The Addams Family: 10 Jokes That Aged Rather Poorly

The Addams Family is a classic TV sitcom which follows the lives of the famously spooky family. The Addams family loves to help others, keep the Halloween spirit throughout the year, and live their eccentric lives while ironically believing that it’s everyone else outside of their family that is strange and unusual.

Since the days of the 1960s when the episodes originally aired, some jokes have aged gracefully, funny, and heartfelt as ever, while some jokes just haven’t held up for reasons varying from contradiction of Addams family values to not being very humorous to begin with.

10 The Charade

When Lurch’s mother arrives for a visit, it turns the lives of the Addams family upside down. Though the Addams family kindly agrees to go along with the lie Lurch told his mother in that the house is his, they play his servants and things go way too far much too fast.

Lurch comes to believe he’s the man of the house and begins treating the Addams family differently, with his mother only egging him on. The storyline has grown old and translates poorly to the modern era, given that it’s a common storyline where audiences can practically predict everything that will happen and because Lurch is so desperate to please his mother that he forgoes who he really is. Even after his mother’s departure, Lurch still treats the Addams family like his servants.

9 Assumptions And An Awry Romance

When Pugsley copies an old love letter of Gomez’s and sends it to his crush, his teacher, a big mess is created. Pugsley’s teacher comes to the Addams residence to discuss it and comes to assume that Gomez wrote the letter, and she quickly falls for him. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Gomez goes along with it according to Morticia’s wishes, as Morticia wants to reassure the lovesick teacher she’s attractive and can get a significant other.

Things quickly get out of hand, however, and the Addams were lucky to escape relatively unscathed. The entire storyline was a recipe for disaster and broken hearts, and Morticia never should’ve convinced her husband to lead on Pugsley’s teacher, even if she was trying to do a good deed.

8 Family Interference

In the final episode of season one, Fester reads an article written by a psychologist that states that at the root of Morticia’s and Gomez’s happy marriage lies negative emotions, masked by their apparent bliss. Fester clearly didn’t take the saying “don’t believe everything you read” too seriously.

Fester does everything he can to instigate a fight between the couple. Instead of helping, he only creates problems where there were none, which eventually leads to a duel between Gomez and the psychologist for Morticia.

7 Halloween Shenanigans

Halloween is pretty much every day for the Addams family, but, nonetheless, they still love to celebrate the spooky holiday. The Addams unknowingly allow two bank robbers into their home, treating them as special guests to take part in their Halloween festivities.

However, the naiveté shown by Gomez and Morticia is too much. They always look for the good in people and situations, but common sense should kick in at some point, especially when Gomez opened the robbers’ bag to see it full of cash. Instead of assuming the worst, he gives them more money, rendering the joke ridiculous.

6 A Contradiction

When Gomez gets amnesia after an accident, it’s chaos and mayhem as he suffers a personality change, rattling the Addams family. Wanting the old Gomez back, the family surmises that to restore Gomez’s original personality, he’ll have to be hit over the head once again.

The joke doesn’t make sense, given the Addams family usually does not condone violence of any kind, especially Morticia. Though Morticia can’t hit her husband over the head herself, she doesn’t necessarily object to someone else doing so.

5 Lack Of Communication

Morticia and Fester fear Gomez has lost his money and resolve to do what they can to earn cash. Morticia and the rest of the family all find their own unique ways to garner some income, but none of them are particularly successful. Yet, instead of talking to Gomez directly about what she overheard, Morticia decides to solve the problem on her own.

She may not want to hurt her husband, but she should have discussed it with him since their financial situation affects them both. Lack of communication is serious, especially in a marriage, making the joke of Morticia’s misunderstanding more critical than funny as a result.

4 The Bumbling Foreign Diplomats

In “Addams Family Meet the V.I.P.’s”, two foreign diplomats, accompanied by Mr. Harris, take a tour of the Addams family home and observe the Addams family. The two foreign diplomats are insistent on seeing the “average American family” and come to think of Americans as geniuses, as they believe the Addams family have mastered building robots after meeting Cleopatra, Thing and Lurch, and witnessing Fester recharge himself.

The joke hasn’t aged well because the diplomats are quite dim-witted and surely would have noticed the other, more normal-looking houses on the street, in addition to other clues that would’ve proven their robot theory wrong.

3 Gomez, The Saboteur

Morticia decides to become a writer after discovering the reading assignments given to her children by their school. She sets off on her task, becoming so invested that Gomez grows concerned he’ll lose her.

Instead of talking to her about it, he, with some convincing from Uncle Fester, decides to sabotage her work, hoping it won’t get published. Instead, her work becomes a great success, with Gomez’s plan backfiring on him. Gomez’s plan has certainly aged poorly, even if he did get his karma.

2 Bad Case Of Jealousy

Gomez is hit with a terrible bout of jealousy when a childhood friend of Morticia’s, Lionel, comes to stay with the Addams family. His jealousy causes him to hire a maid who’s looking for a man in her life, hoping to distract Lionel to prevent him and Morticia from running off together.

However, Morticia believes something is happening between Gomez and the maid, and she fears for the state of her marriage. Gomez and Morticia are shown to be a very loving couple, how could they so easily doubt their significant other and their marriage? Given the joke of jealousy, it makes their marriage seem unstable and their love uncertain.

1 Pugsley’s Normalcy

In “Morticia and the Psychiatrist,” Pugsley’s desire to join the Boy Scouts sends his parents in a tailspin as they fear he’s becoming “normal.” Their reaction to Pugsley’s Boy Scout uniform, as well as his desire to care for a puppy, appears to contradict Gomez’s and Morticia’s loving and caring disposition as parents.

Why should they care if their son is different from them? They should’ve supported his aspirations regardless, and their overreaction to Pugsley’s being different comes across as more cruel than funny.

About The Author

Kacie Lillejord
(374 Articles Published)

A Seattle native, Kacie has loved entertainment in the forms of books, films, television and music since day one. Inspired by a filmmaker relative, Kacie has been pursuing a career in the film and television industry in Los Angeles ever since. A graduate of The University of Arizona, Kacie has written for her college newspaper The Daily Wildcat, Harness Magazine, 25YL, and now has added Screen Rant to her resume. She loves writing and all things pop culture.

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