Michiko Kakutani at Literary Hub:
In the mid-1960s, network TV was suddenly awash in what scholars would later call “supernatural sitcoms.” My Favorite Martian featured an anthropologist from Mars who crash-lands in Los Angeles and hides out at a newspaper reporter’s apartment while he tries to repair his spacecraft. Mister Ed starred a talking horse who only speaks to his bumbling owner, Wilbur, and constantly gets him in trouble. Bewitched depicted a nose-twitching witch named Samantha who marries a nervous ad executive who insists she refrain from using her magical powers.
I Dream of Jeannie recounted the story of a genie named Jeannie who falls in love with an astronaut who finds her bottle when his space capsule splashes down near a deserted island. And The Addams Family concerned a macabre family with supernatural gifts who don’t understand why their neighbors think they are weird.
At the time, such shows were regarded as simple ditzy, escapist fun. Later, academics would argue that the sitcoms were products of the civil rights era of the day: They metaphorically examined the subjects of “mixed marriages” and integration; and in the case of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie they reflected growing tensions between empowered women and men who want them to just be ordinary, stay-at-home housewives.
More here.