The joke being that that’s basically the plot to every episode.
Endora is Samantha’s mother, so Darren’s mother-in-law.
Where would a young person even encounter Bewitched and actually watch it these days?
It’s on various streaming services, and maybe that sitcom/classic TV channel on digital broadcast
You’d actually have to seek it out to watch it, as opposed to coming across it when channel surfing.
Another American cultural reference that will be lost to technology…
Yeah it was different as a kid, I had Nick at nite before it was it’s own channel so the cartoons rolled into I dream of genie, bewitched, Mary tyler moore, dick van dyke. Welcome back cotter, happy days
I’ve seen pretty much every episode of these shows even though they were an easy 20 years before my time.
You can stumble across it on Pluto or tubi but who would bother when YouTube exists and these shows… I’m not sure they hold the test of time even though I look back on them fondly.
I’m a child of the 80’s and still have the theme songs for Mr Ed and My Three Sons because of that channel.
Who even channel surfs anymore? You have to seek out everything now. I find myself watching Pluto just because you can find random shows without having to know about it already.
I think it’s on Tubi which is free and young people can figure it out. But they won’t stumble upon it like you said
I’ve never actually watched an episode but do know about the general premise somehow, I think through references to it in other media. I was able to figure out most of the joke even though I don’t know the character names.
Jack Sparrow is one of my favourite characters.
You mean Major Healy
Or maybe it’s because it’s a 60 year old sitcom and not every reference has to be fresh forever?
I remember watching some bewitched reruns and they only had a few plots.
- Husband doesn’t want wife to use witchcraft ever
- Husband wants to be the breadwinner and doesn’t want any magical help with his career. By the way his job is in advertising which is useless and stupid so why would he care?
- Wife’s in laws hate husband and make problems for him using magic in some way
- Nosey neighbor keeps seeing strange things but nobody believes her
It’s a comedy so nobody ever thinks to use magic in a way to help society or something, so that’s ok. But it’s very noticeable how mundane the plots are. Also I think there were a few other old shows where the characters were in the advertising business or television business. I bet this was done to pander to the people who were paying for the show.
I think the characters are in those careers commonly because it’s what the writers know.
Close but it’s because if the husband is an advertiser, then it’s REALLY easy to slip product placements in. It was part of the transition from the actors just blatantly looking at the screen and advertising the product to making it more subtle.
This comment was so shocking I spit out my cool, refreshing (your product name here).
I nod approvingly as I sip my hot, comforting cup of (your product name here).
So many of the plots are of the form “housewife disobeys husband” that it’s seriously hard to watch.
Watching old media is painful sometimes because of how much inherent misogyny there is.
Like the times the wife has a valid disagreement and the immediate response is for her to “stop being hysterical.”
Or you watch even older films and the response is physical abuse.
On The Honeymooners his catchphrase was “one of these days Alice, bang zoom straight to the moon.” He was going to hit her so hard she flew to the moon. The height of comedy at the time.
But it’s nice to see how much progress we’re making as a society
Eh, it doesn’t bother me, but it’s probably because I grew up with it. I’m quite capable of separating that nonsense from the rest of the show, and not being misogynistic toward others (or so my wife says).
Even some not so old. JAG is a show I loved as a kid. I tried to watch it again a couple of years ago and was shocked at how much misogyny was portrayed in it.
