While I am a fan of The Munsters tv show, most people (even those who watch it) don't even know about this episode because it was never meant to be broadcast. Before the producers behind The Munsters were sure they had a worthwhile source of entertainment on their hands, they had to pitch a pilot episode to CBS in order to see if the idea was worth pursuing. This pilot episode of the show is interesting for quite a few reasons, the biggest of which is apparent as soon as things start appearing on the screen: it's in color. Anyone who's watched this show before knows it's always in black and white, but that wasn't the original intention. The Munsters was released at a time when color was becoming more common (especially with regards to movies), with the last majority black and white year for film being 1961. Why not take this route when it came to television? People all across America were probably getting slightly tired of staring at gray on their tv's all the time, so I can't blame the show's producers for this move. By the time The Munsters was released for real, they decided to change it to black and white to resemble old horror movies, which I mentioned already in my review of the show proper. Another strange thing about the pilot is that Lily is the only character not to be in it. Some of the other characters are played by different actors, but the characters themselves would still eventually be featured in the show. Not so with Lily. In the pilot, the name of Herman's wife is "Phoebe", and she bears a striking resemblance to Morticia from the Addams Family. This is actually what got the show's producers to change her appearance, as they didn't want to be accused of plagiarism. Both shows are from 1964, but Addams Family aired a week earlier. Another difference in terms of the characters has to do with Herman. He's somewhat skinnier here than he normally is, and is more noticeably downhearted. On the actual show, he's always making jokes and being funny despite how he looks. The Munsters pilot is also much shorter than a typical episode, only being about half the length the show normally is. While the episode itself is fairly nondescript, its plot (technically incomplete) serves as the basis for the episode My Fair Munster. Describing the plot won't do much good here, as it gets cut off at the end anyway and was left unfinished on purpose. The end scene has Grandpa trying to mix a potion in his underground dungeon, and it's really refreshing to see all the colorful vials as we've never seen them before. Overall, there simply isn't much to say about The Munsters pilot episode, other than that fans of the show are no doubt thankful that CBS didn't end up turning it down. Who knows what tv would be like were it not for The Munsters.
Review of My Fair Munster: Unaired Pilot
