The New Addams Family



The New Addams Family was an American-Canadian Sitcom that aired from 1998-1999 on YTV and Fox Kids. Produced by Saban Entertainment and Shavick Entertainment, the show was meant to be a revival of the original sitcom made in 1964, but also combined elements of the film series -- to the point of including some musical numbers from the films' soundtracks.

It's also one of the few installments of the franchise to employ cast members from previous versions, with John Astin (the original Gomez Addams) playing Gomez's father Grandpapa Addams, and Nicole Fugere as Wednesday Addams, reprising her role from Addams Family Reunion. It also features Glenn Taranto and Ellie Harvie as Gomez and Morticia Addams, as well as Brody Smith as Pugsley Addams, Betty Phillips as Eudora "Mama" Addams, Michael Roberds as Uncle Fester, John DeSantis as Lurch and Steven Fox's Hand as Thing.

Mostly the show cycled between remakes of episodes from the original sitcom and original stories. It was cancelled after its first and only season.

"Wednesday: When crushing someone's skull, you should always put newspapers down first."
 * Adam Westing: John Astin as Gomez' father, Grandpapa Addams, is pretty much him playing an older yet still suave Gomez. Played for laughs when he accidentally tries to romance the current Morticia in front of his son.
 * Animated Armor: Their suit of armor is not only sentient, as befitting of a haunted house, it's also a boxer. In "Wednesday Leaves Home", Officer Fife accidentally picks a fight with the armor, only to get several left hooks and one right cross into his face. Gomez warns Fife, not to continue. The reason? The armor is a Golden Glove. Fife, wisely backs away.
 * Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: As per the norm of the series.
 * Big Sister Instinct: While Wednesday enjoys torturing Pugsley, woe be to anyone that tries to take him away from the family. In "Morticia and the Psychiatrist", the Psychiatrist tries to call Child Welfare thinking Pugsley is in a bad environment. Wednesday appears in the dumbwaiter armed with a brand and bearing an expression more angry than her usual stoic creepiness, which the psychiatrist wisely takes as a sign to run away before.
 * Catchphrase: Many of the family members have their own catchprhases.
 * Gomez and Morticia often share a few between each other. The most common ones are "Cara Mia" and "Mon Cher." Which often triggers Gomez' classic line "Tish, that's French."
 * Lurch has both "You rang?" and "Follow me."
 * Wednesday has multiple variations of explaining certain tortures. Often formulated as "When X (The name of said torture.) you must Y (Instructions on how to do the torture properly.)" For example in "Wednesday Leaves Home." she explains to the Chief of Police how to use her Head Cracker.


 * Creepy Child: Played straight as always with Wednesday, but played for laughs with Pugsley. In "Morticia and the Psychiatrist" the Addams are mortified that Pugsley is a Junior Trooper, treating it like he's joined a cult.
 * Dark Is Not Evil: The Addams may have a love for all things evil, but they are in their own way a loving family.
 * Dude Magnet: Morticia Addams. Gomez aside, there's her suitor Vlad, who even in death pines for her; there is also The Grim Reaper himself, who shamelessly lusts after Morticia even though Gomez isn't dead yet. Both of them tend to induce a jealous rage in Gomez.
 * Morticia even used this trope to her advantage to help out Lurch. When Lurch has trouble finding a date to the dance, she comes to the dance disguised as a belly dancer, helps Lurch dance when he has trouble, then leaves him be Cinderella-style so that any women nearby would be all over him. It works.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: While their shtick is loving everything that is bad including death and macabre, per Dark is Not Evil they do have their limits. For example, they do not take allergies lightly, treating even the most bizarre of them as normal people would -- in "Wednesday Leaves Home", Officer Fife falls into an open grave while helping the Addamses look for Wednesday, and Gomez casually states that she wouldn't be in that grave because she's allergic to ring worms.
 * Their standards are also played for laughs in the same episode. When Wednesday leaves, Pugsley tries to torture himself to fill the gap. However, each torture he tries doesn't hurt him because it's not the same without Wednesday.
 * Lastly, while they like death, they don't like the idea of dying in a sense that they'll never see each other again - as shown in "Death Visits The Addams Family", they are genuinely heartbroken when it seems Gomez' time is up.
 * Gentle Giant: Lurch as always, but it's expanded upon here. While anyone outside the Addams Family would find him scary due to his size and deep voice, he's actually socially awkward. In "Wednesday Leaves Home", Wednesday catches him rehearsing pick-up lines; in "Lurch Learns to Dance", everyone tries to help teach Lurch how to dance so he can get a date.
 * He's Back: In "Lurch's Little Helper", Lurch was just about to move out, because he felt the family preferred Simon over him.
 * Made Of Iron: The Addams are no slouch in this regard. However, it also seems to apply to anyone that's within close proximity of them. In "Wednesday Leaves Home", Officer Fife has a running gag of getting injured by accident while helping the family search for Wednesday; despite getting his leg broken, his hand caught in a mouse trap, beat up by a suit of armor, his head injured from falling into an open coffin, swarmed by bats, and electrocuted, he seems to keep going, hoping to get home and continue normal police work. It's not until he survives an explosion from a grenade Fester set off that he quits the force.
 * Mugging the Monster: A frequent gag on all the shows is that some "normals" seem to underestimate the Addams and see them as easy prey compared to people they handled, only for them to fall victim to their usual antics. The best example is in "Wednesday Leaves Home": When Wednesday gets arrested and put into juvenile holding, one of the older teen prisoners think she's an easy bullying target. When Gomez and Morticia come to the station to pick her up, the guard alerts the head officer of what's going on, and they find thatWednesday has the girl bound, gagged and scared out of her mind while the rest of the juvenile criminals are begging to be let out, even promising to be good.
 * Only Sane Man: Much like the previous works of the franchise, there are three kinds of people that fall into this trope.
 * Most normal people view the Addams' antics as crimes and evil acts, yet go overboard in trying to stop them.
 * The Addams themselves, who believe the normal people are the odd ones.
 * The odd normal person that genuinely gets along with the family, seeing past their horrors and seeing the nice, loving people they truly are underneath.
 * Rule of Funny: Much like the old TV series, this series seems to run on that trope the most. In "Wednesday Leaves Home", Officer Fife seems to get injured more as the family searches for Wednesday.  Each scene post-injury has him use bandages and walking aids as the episode rolls along. No one knows where he got them or if the Addams has a stockpile of them for previous guests, however it doesn't make it less funny.
 * Shout-Out: In "Lurch's Little Helper." Gomez orders and builds a mail-order robot butler named Simon, to help Lurch get the weight of work off his shoulders. Simon himself, looks and sounds like a dead-ringer for C-3PO, only in a classic English butler costume. It becomes a little on the nose when Gomez fences Simon. With Gomez using his Rapier and Simon using a lightsaber.