I have always been very proprietory about “Bewitched”. The series, which ran from 1964 to 1972, neatly paralleled my childhood. My father, like Darrin Stephens, worked in advertising, dressed in suit and tie, and came home to drink martinis. Like Samantha, I lived in a world of fantasy, where my true identity was hidden, but normality and pleasing people were considered primary virtues.

Our home in Lincolnwood, IL was surrounded by nosy neighbors. We lived in a home of sometimes chaotic and messy circumstances, and my younger brother was (is) retarded and needed constant monitoring and supervision. We hoped for a magical intervention, perhaps a witch that might come into the house, twitch her nose and clean up things….but it never happened.

My father was often at the mercy of brutal bosses, who tossed him around on the economic seas of instability, much as Larry Tate with his whims could pronounce Darrin a failure or when a client smiled “my boy”. The ridiculous rules of submissive woman and the domineering husband, a role only enacted by most families, is in reality one where the men are boys forever… looked after by a mommy figure until they die. In the Stephens household, Darrin would throw fits and mouth edicts, but Samantha really ruled.

There was a subversive undermining of suburbia which took place on Morning Glory Circle. When the divorced Endora popped in, univited, on her way home from skiing in the Alps or when an elephant appeared in the living room, you felt good that the bourgeois prison and middle class proprieties were broken. They always could be twitched back. No matter what calamities befell the Stephens, such as when Darrin was shrunk and ended up in a garbage dump or another time when he was turned into an old and infirm man, you were certain that the ending would be happy.

That’s why we need the supernatural and why I will always love “Bewitched”. It makes everything we fear go away.