...To any Adams family episode 😂 (can I insert emojis here...)
However, in any given Addams family episode, there are events loosely related to each other, and then there is a basic catastrophe.
This episode really isn't about a photographer wanting to take a picture of the Addams family for some mysterious unmentioned reason, which all of the Adamses get incorrect when they speculate on why a man from strife magazine wants to take a picture, and it is not really about Morticia making a portrait.
This episode is in fact Gómez' attempt to procure a drivers license! Because this is how the logic of Gomez mind works: Gomez needs a picture. Gomez will only get a picture done by one particular photographer. Said photographer has quit making portraits and now works at the DMV. Ergo, Gomez must need to get a drivers license. See? And this circular and tangential reasoning is common with just about every second season Addams family episode (for some reason, the first season depicted the Addams family and particularly Gomez as a lot more competent than they are depicted in the second season).
But I had a different reason for targeting this episode for a review.
In 2 1/2 years, this is the very first episode of the Addams family that has the Addams family participating in an outside activity where they actually show the venue: namely the California Department of motor vehicles, and I am assuming California because the sign outside of the DMV is the exact same sign that I used to see when I went to the DMV when I was 15 years old to get a drivers permit. The letters are exactly the same, the sign is the same. All of the DMV's in California used that particular lettering. Of course I don't know if they actually filmed this episode at the literal DMV, however they could have just used the lettering to make a sign.
But what we have here is a bona fide episode of the Addams family where they actually shot on location- even though they do not show Gomez adventures while driving, which would have been great have a been able to show that.
The Addams family was basically a low budget operation, until this episode they never filmed outside of the house set.
As far as the reason why a photographer from strife magazine wants to come to the Addams family house, well that actually does eventually get answered. but it is never what the Addams family is expecting. This episode is basically an example of the quirky storytelling that they used especially in the second season.
In the first season, it's not that Gomez is shown as more successful a financier, but he is just shown merely as more competent than he is shown in the second season. And he was always able to attain his goals. In the second season those goals are only obtained by farcical coincidence.
For example, in the first episode of the series Morticia and Gomez want their children to not be read fairy tales where dragons are slain. Between Morticia and Gomez, they tie the principal of the school up in knots and by the end of the episode he is being carried away muttering "they jiggle, they jiggle!"- while at the same time the Addamses endear themselves to two of the women on the school board who think they are charming and clever.
This almost never happens in the second season, where they always show people running away. But in the first season they actually had a few people react positively to them as a family. I don't know what happened between the first and second seasons but it was kind of a disappointment. Especially since, despite how popular the show was, it was not picked up for subsequent seasons. And I always find that the Munsters were a poor copy of The Addams family.
The Addams family were based on a book that kind of represented the family of a particular author and as far as I remember it was allegedly true to life. This was Americas first "Goth" family, and they did it the best. But they weren't really "monsters", The way The Munsters were depicted.
