Gomez and Morticia Addams are certainly an interesting couple. While they delight in offbeat and at times, murderous comments from themselves and their children, they have always had a particular gusto. In addition to being simply supernatural, they possess a passion for one another that, like their supernatural abilities and magic extended family (Cousin Itt being just a head of hair, or Fester being nearly invincible), seems to be the thing of fantasy. In Netflix's Wednesday, starring Jenna Ortega, Fred Armisen, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzmán, and Christina Ricci, we see no shortage of the love the pair have for one another. In each iteration of The Addams Family, Morticia and Gomez's love for one another is as significant to the production as Wednesday's classic dead stare. Their love is so strong that in Wednesday's first episode, Wednesday herself remarks as her mother and father sing to each other that "they were making her nauseous and not in the good way." Isaac Ordonez as the helpless Pugsley Addams, rolls his eyes from the front seat, indicating that this is a day-to-day occurrence for his mother and father.
Wednesday is right — it's nauseating. But why? Everyone has seen them in real life: that couple who are annoyingly in love. The couple that speaks a different language than the rest of the world, known only to each other, and in some way, those are the only words that truly matter. It's a love each person secretly hopes for, a love that is fully accepting of the other. To be cheesy, it's the love of the person who sees all of your flaws but loves them anyway, for whatever reason. What makes Gomez and Morticia so iconic is that they are the dramatization of that sickening love and the depiction of it in the strangest way possible.
The Addams Family Through the Ages
The Addams Family saw its first TV iteration in 1964, starring John Austin as Gomez and Carolyn Jones Morticia. From the beginning, we saw the adoring Latin Lover character in Gomez and the romantic Morticia. Comically, their expressions of love were often littered with phrases of dark humor, like remarking that their honeymoon took place in Death Valley. Gomez frequently was seen kissing his wife's arms, and she showered him with loving, albeit unorthodox, compliments. Their love was playfully antagonistic but not resentful. The patriarchs of The Addams Family gave the appearance of physical attraction that was a bit more taboo for the time, especially on TV. Regardless of how weird they were on the surface, what made them weirder was that they expressed a love that may not have been that of most households of the era.
The 1960s did not see many divorces, however, the following decade did, and with a marked spike. Radically, so. The rate of divorce in the United States more than doubled by the 1970s, supposedly because of the institution of no-fault divorces (irreconcilable differences, rather than adultery, abuse, etc.). In other words, they did not work out and were unhappy. This trend may indicate that the marriages seen at the time were the antithesis of Gomez and Morticia, and may have started the show's appeal in itself.
By the 1990s, we saw the definitive films for the peculiar family, The Addams Family and The Addams Family Values starring the late and legendary Raul Juliá as Gomez and Anjelica Huston as Morticia. In the 1990s, we saw the same love between Gomez and Morticia and the focus on Wednesday (portrayed memorably by a young Ricci). There was no shortage of passion between the two, and we saw two lovers who were even more unabashed about their love. Perhaps the best representation of this was in 1993's The Addams Family Values in the form of a tango between Juliá and Huston. Once again, we see the quintessential arm kissing from Gomez in an unrealistic rendition of an already complicated dance. Of course, Gomez and Morticia execute it flawlessly, at moments flirting with onlookers and inciting dedicated jealousy from one another.
Finally, in Wednesday, we see Gomez and Morticia deeply in love again. Fans are also given a bit of their long-awaited backstory at Nevermore, which only makes us want to see more of how such a legendary love began. Wednesday lets us know how the Addams family kids saw their parents more clearly. Wednesday remarks after her father's arrest for the murder of his former classmate, Garrett Gates, that he would go insane being separated from Morticia. She adds that the pair have spent each night together since they married. Of course, through the drama, Wednesday never loses the dark humor of its origins, and in a flashback, Morticia remarks that seeing young Gomez in handcuffs, accused of murder, made her never love him more. When they finally get to see each other in prison, kissing constantly, Wednesday comments that she has seen jackals with more control than her parents.
What Makes Them Special
It's not just the obvious physical attraction, though. Gomez and Morticia demonstrate what relationships are supposed to be. Morticia and Gomez are consistently supportive of one another. Morticia goes directly to the mayor (Tommie Earl Jenkins) to crusade for her husband's innocence, accusing him of protecting Gates' father and covering it up to advance professionally. Huston's Morticia is endlessly helpful as Gomez frets in his brother's marriage to the evil Debbie, making snide comments like "But Debbie... Pastels?" Debbie even sees the purity of their love and expresses her bitterness by citing their "love affair" as the reason Fester no longer wishes to see them.
The truth is that a successful relationship requires compassion, support, and gratitude. As life becomes increasingly demanding, keeping your partner at the forefront of life becomes more challenging. Gomez and Morticia always focus on one another in a way that makes their love something to strive for. They can be unapologetically themselves with one another and thus give us true #couplegoals. Although their love is an entirely dark exaggeration of what love should be, it is based in reality and offers adults a reason to focus a little more on some of the first-rate Addams Family Values.