Adorkable: In stark contrast to the creepy appearances most of them have, all of the Munsters are excitable, love pop culture, and their naivete about the world can come off as very endearing, especially Herman.
It's been said that the Munsters can be considered Jewish, and it's not that far off. The family does have rather different traditions in food, clothing, behavior, their culture is significantly unusual enough to startle outsiders. Furthermore, Grandpa's birth place of Transylvania had over 160,000 Jews, mostly in the northern part of that region and Romania had a sizable Jewish population prior to the Holocaust. Though the family does mingle with people at large, it is when someone really stops to notice any of them, especially Herman or Grandpa, that their "otherness" becomes apparent.
The Munsters are aware that their odd habits, haunted house, and scary appearances frighten normal people. Though they do their best to get along with others, they play dumb to people's reactions to avoid angry mobs or guys with stakes they might've experienced in the Old Country.
Even detractors of The Munsters Today agree that the show's theme music, a rock version of the original show's theme, is pretty cool (when there aren't lyrics, that is).
Though both versions of the original series' theme music are well-liked, many fans prefer season two's Surf Rock-influenced rearrangement over the original.
Broken Aesop: Eddie has a tendency to brag to the other kids about Herman's abilities, to the point of making them up. This often gets Herman in over his head as he tries to make good on his son's lies. Eddie is never punished for this.
Contested Sequel: The Munsters Today gets a lot of flack, particularly because of its initial premise being that the Munsters of the original show ended up in the late 1980s because of being in suspended animation for over 20 years, but it still has its share of fans.
Creepy Awesome: The entire family as well as their house (which at times seems to be alive).
Fandom Rivalry: With the more popular The Addams Family due to their similar premises and releases. Some Addams fans accuse the Munsters of being a cheap knockoff, while some Munsters fans think the Addams' humour is stale and one-note.
Growing the Beard: The Munsters Today, a Sequel Series/Spinoff to the original 1960's show, started off as rather mediocre with cheesy costumes, Come the second season, however, and the costumes improve significantly and episodes began to have more poignant themes, such as "Once in a Blue Moon" revealing that Grandpa's wife is still alive and that she had to leave him for complicated reasons.
Harsher in Hindsight: In "Herman the Rookie" Leo Durocher says about Herman "I don't know whether to sign him with the Dodgers or send him to Vietnam."
Informed Wrongness: In "My Fair Munster", the Dailys are portrayed as utterly snobbish and mean for being displeased that their son invited the whole Munsters clan. But it's pretty understandable why they would be upset; they may not have enough space or refreshments to go around.
Older Than They Think: Some Addams Family fans accuse the Munsters of ripping off the Addams, notably because the Addams Family are based on a comic series made in the 1930s, and because of the shows' similar concepts. However, in addition to premiering the same week (and thus, giving the Munsters' writers no time to copy anything), the Universal monster franchise that they're based on came before the comics were published.
Periphery Demographic: Though the titular family were designed as an allegory for European immigrants in America (who were more often than not White), the series picked up a prominent following among the Black community during its heyday thanks to how well the Munsters' plights resonated with those of African-Americans. Retrospective analysts even categorize the Munsters as among the first major examples of "Black-coded" characters in mainstream media (that is, characters who aren't written as Black but strongly parallel Black experiences).
Jerry Paris directed three episodes. Paris is best known for playing Jerry Helper on The Dick Van Dyke Show, for which he also directed several episodes. He also directed several episodes of such shows as Happy Days, Here's Lucy, and Laverne & Shirley.
Gene Reynolds directed two episodes. Reynolds is also best known for serving as co-creator and co-executive producer of Lou Grant as well as his involvement with Hogan's Heroes and M*A*S*H.
Lou Shaw wrote an episode. Shaw is best known for co-creating Quincy, M.E..
Bill Prady co-wrote the screenplay to Here Come the Munsters (and had a small cameo). Prady is best known for co-creating and executive producing The Big Bang Theory with Chuck Lorre.
Sampled Up: The season two theme song, thanks to Fall Out Boy's "Uma Thurman". Most fans of the song and group likely have never heard of The Munsters in their entire lives.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many fans' anticipated reaction to Mockingbird Lane when it was first announced. The anticipated reaction became a real one once it aired.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: While there are episodes that are about Marilyn's differences from her family and (perceived) differences from "normal" people, the focus in those episodes is more on the other Munsters as they try to help Marilyn or react to her in some other way. Marilyn comes off as a Flat Character as a result of such little development and attention, despite her potential to be interesting. Munsters Today fleshes her out slightly, but mostly in the form of standard Valley Girl traits of the time.
"Follow That Munster" uses the slur "wetback" in dialogue, and one of Herman's detective disguises is an Asian caricature with glasses and buck teeth that would certainly NOT be allowed or tolerated today.
In "Herman the Rookie," Leo Durocher says that the Munster family looks like "a bunch of wetbacks from the petrified forest."
The episode "Yes Galen, There is a Herman" didn't age well after the era of Too Smart for Strangers. To wit, Herman makes friends with a little boy named Galen, has the boy call him "Uncle Herman," and invites him over to visit by saying that he has a son Galen's age (and even worse, once they're there, Grandpa invites them down to the basement). True, it's only Gentle Giant Herman, and the whole thing is innocent, but it goes against everything that you should teach kids about strangers.
Herman's speech from "Eddie's Nickname" made the rounds on social media in 2020 during that year's anti-racism demonstrations, showing that his words in 1965 still resonated with a 21st Century audience.
Herman: The lesson I want you to learn, is it doesn't matter what you look like. You could be tall or short, or fat or thin, ugly, or handsome — like your father — or you can be black or yellow or white, it doesn't matter. What does matter is the size of your heart and the strength of your character.
Herman and Lily are a very close knit couple who stand out in ways for their time. They have equal share in raising their kids, which for men was not the norm when the show aired. On top of that, it's clear they're best friends who respect each other, and Lily is much more independent and assertive in their relationship than women were expected to be in the 1960s.
Lily and Herman decide to go to counseling for their issues. This was not as common a solution to marital problems as it is today.
Viewer Name Confusion: Grandpa, who is Lily's father, is actually named Vladimir "Sam" Dracula. There is no character named "Grandpa Munster", this would refer to Herman's (never seen) adoptive father.
Visual Effects of Awesome: The special effects for a 1960s cable show are very good for its time, notably with Spot the dragon or the Invisible Man playing checkers with Grandpa.
The Woobie: Marilyn. Everyone in the family, including herself, thinks she's hideous, and anytime she tries to form a relationship with a boy the family accidentally scares him off or something else goes wrong.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The suspended animation plot in The Munsters Today is only used to explain why the characters haven't aged. The characters don't react at all to the changes that occurred in the intervening 20 years.
For The Rob Zombie Film:
Adorkable: Many fans found the movie to be this more than truly bad, from the dad jokes to seeing how sweet and goody Herman and Lily are in their romance.
Count Orlok, whose love for his rats makes him come off like a cat lady, and his attempt to woo Lily with the "Disco Vampire" dance, which unfortunately does not work.
Awesome Music: Zeuss and Rob Zombie- the latter of whom has already made a lot of his own bops in his musical career- made a pretty catchy soundtrack with a few bangers for Halloween parties.
Development Hell: Rob Zombie had been fighting to do a live-action remake of his favorite childhood show for decades.
Zombo is pretty popular, despite being a one-time side character on the show (and a phoney.) The merchandise of him certainly does not hurt.
Orlok gained quite a following when the movie came out and his true personality of a goofy Nice Guy who adores his pet rats- and took rejection from Lily quite gracefully- was shown.
Freeze-Frame Bonus: The newspaper the Count reads the day Herman leaves for work shows Shady Magoon is out of jail and back in business. It also, unforunately, shows Count Orlok got eaten by his rats.
He Really Can Act: Also doubles as he really can direct, for Zombie, as he proves he direct a family-friendly PG-rated film with his trademark stylizing next as natural as his usually dirty and crude high hard R-rated entries.
Memetic Mutation: The Count's promise to whip X up down in his lab.
Narm: More than one reviewer has pointed out that the film’s climax, which takes place on Halloween, tries to have some suspense built around monster characters mingling with costumes, but because the monster makeup is so poor it is difficult to tell which is which and underscores how cheap everything is.
Narm Charm: Many who expected something gritty and scary out of Rob Zombie were disappointed. New fans and old alike found a lot to enjoy about the mega-campiness, though.
Even some haters of the movie admitted Herman's band playing was pretty good.
Questionable Casting: Herman and Lily's performances by Jeff Daniel Phillips and Sheri Moon Zombie, respectively, have been criticized for being jarringly distant from their iconic originating portrayals by Fred Gwynne and Yvonne De Carlo and for lacking chemistry with each other as characters. Their broad, ungrounded portrayals and lack of resemblance to the classic characters in vocal delivery and behavior stands out even more against Daniel Roebuck as the Count, who does a pretty pitch-perfect revival of Al Lewis's character and portrays more dimension than Phillips and Zombie. Since Phillips and Zombie are frequent collaborators with Rob Zombie (and Sheri Moon is his wife), their weak casting may be a negative consequence of the Production Posse.
