History YMMV / Bewitched

* SeparatedAtBirthCasting: One of the saving graces of the ''Tabitha'' spin-off was that Lisa Hartman looked, and, uncannily enough, even ''sounded,'' like she could be Elizabeth Montgomerey's daughter. Not that it saved the show.

** Also, the distrust of Samantha's marriage to Darrin may arise in part from a general witchly distrust of the notion of marital happiness. Endora and Maurice do not live together and flirt with people outside the marriage, none of the warlocks who are appear in the series are known to be married or have children other than Maurice, and none of Samantha's female relatives are known to be married or have children other than Endora. Several times Samantha has been pursued by a lovesick warlock only to have his mother intervene, but in none of those cases has there ever been a mention of a father. Marriages of love rather than passion may be almost unknown in the *Bewitched* witching world.

** Some consider the show is about class warfare. The witches represent wealth (which can command anything, just like magic). Darrin loves Samantha, but doesn't want to look like a gold-digger, least of all ''to himself''. Unlike [[ComicStrip/{{Blondie}} Blondie Bumstead]], her family didn't disown her, but they're also not like [[WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy Carter Pewterschmidt]] who is happy to see his daughter swing in the wind with her poor, working-class husband. They don't hate mortals/the poor, it's just that mortal/poor person ways (like working for a living) simply aren't for folks like them, and Endora knows it. Even early on, she expresses concern that Samantha can even remain happy in her new, downgraded circumstances, and indeed worries that Sam is just "going through a phase". This is reinforced by the aggressive snobbery with which Darrin's mother Phyllis snubs everyone, even Aunt Clara, and the fact that Darrin had been in what amounted to an arranged marriage of elites when he chose "no name" Samantha instead.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: The ''Tabitha'' spin-off, among other things, retconning Adam to be a mortal (as well as Tabitha now being the younger sibling) despite the pilot showing him to be a warlock. Apparently, the original audience was also upset that Tabitha and Adam were suddenly adults.

* TheyCopiedItSoItSucks:
** Averted with ''Series/IDreamOfJeannie'', which was wildly popular despite people involved in it admitting that it ripped off ''Bewitched''.
** Played straight with the failure of ''Tabitha'', which was credited to its similarity to ''Series/TheMaryTylerMooreShow''.

** Many see the series as a subversion of the conformism and internalized xenophobia of the IJustWantToBeNormal trope. Darrin starts out a desperate conformist who was willing to marry a woman he didn't love just because he was expected to do so -- until he meets Samantha, and over the next few years of the series, he slowly and awkwardly learns to appreciate being different. Samantha starts out assuming she is supposed to conform as well, in part to appease Darrin but in part because she doesn't understand mortal life that well at first, and "when in Rome" as they say, but over the years she comes to realize how much damage conformity does to herself, her husband, and her children. Both Endora and Phyllis Stephens are most villainous when they are trying to force Samantha or Darrin to conform to their preferred ways of life, with Phyllis' xenophobia an ongoing shtick of the character, and TokenGoodTeammate Aunt Clara and later Uncle Arthur have to fight against conformist peer pressure from their fellow witches. Larry Tate's primary shtick is conforming on a dime to whatever the client prefers at the moment, and his most heroic moments are those when he defies conformity. Finally, NoseNeighbor Gladys Kravitz's greatest sin is not her snooping but the fact she snoops expressly as a tactic to catch nonconformists in the act, which is why there is so little sympathy for her when she witnesses witchery and no one believes her : her mislike of witchcraft seems to be based on nothing more than xenophobia.

* Many see the series as a subversion of the conformism and internalized xenophobia of the IJustWantToBeNormal trope. Darrin starts out a desperate conformist who was willing to marry a woman he didn't love just because he was expected to do so -- until he meets Samantha, and over the next few years of the series, he slowly and awkwardly learns to appreciate being different. Samantha starts out assuming she is supposed to conform as well, in part to appease Darrin but in part because she doesn't understand mortal life that well at first, and "when in Rome" as they say, but over the years she comes to realize how much damage conformity does to herself, her husband, and her children. Both Endora and Phyllis Stephens are most villainous when they are trying to force Samantha or Darrin to conform to their preferred ways of life, with Phyllis' xenophobia an ongoing shtick of the character, and TokenGoodTeammate Aunt Clara and later Uncle Arthur have to fight against conformist peer pressure from their fellow witches. Larry Tate's primary shtick is conforming on a dime to whatever the client prefers at the moment, and his most heroic moments are those when he defies conformity. Finally, NoseNeighbor Gladys Kravitz's greatest sin is not her snooping but the fact she snoops expressly as a tactic to catch nonconformists in the act, which is why there is so little sympathy for her when she witnesses witchery and no one believes her : her mislike of witchcraft seems to be based on nothing more than xenophobia.

*** Still, a lot of this unfair: No one seems to remember that the very first time Maurice met Darrin, ''he killed him'' -- and then refused to bring Darrin back to life until Endora threatened extortion because "I don't a mortal on my conscience" -- and yet Darrin ten minutes later was offering him what for Darrin was an incredibly expensive bottle of champagne as a gesture of respect for his wife's father. Endora has also reminded Darrin that she could kill him easily by turning him into a "carrot in a field of hungry rabbits." How many people would try to show respect and compassion for a spouse's parents after they threatened to kill him or actually killed him even if the death were reversed?

** Several episodes imply that Darrin realizes deep down that he could never survive in Samantha's world, where at best the other witches would treat him as Samantha's pet or Samantha's trivial self-indulgence and where he would be completely defenseless against anything they do as well as treated as a tragic burden since he would need help just to pop over to Jupiter, for example. Several witches state that marriages to mortals "don't count" and then magically entrap or discard Darrin so that Samantha can marry them or their sons instead. His own father-in-law Maurice kills him the first time they meet and then brings him back to life (and yet he still tries to treat Maurice with respect by offering him particularly expensive champagne he had squirreled away). While Samantha can try to live in his world, he has no hope of living with any success in her world.

** Some consider the show is about class warfare. The witches represent wealth (which can command anything, just like magic). Darrin loves Samantha, but doesn't want to look like a gold-digger, least of all ''to himself''. Unlike [[ComicStrip/{{Blondie}} Blondie Bumstead]], her family didn't disown her, but they're also not like [[WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy Carter Pewterschmidt]] who is happy to see his daughter swing in the wind with her poor, working-class husband. They don't hate mortals/the poor, it's just that mortal/poor person ways (like working for a living) simply aren't for folks like them, and Endora knows it. Even early on, she expresses concern that Samantha can even remain happy in her new, downgraded circumstances, and indeed worries that Sam is just "going through a phase".

* EnsembleDarkhorse:
** Aunt Clara, you can't help but love her.
** Uncle Arthur was only in about ten episodes, though some fans feel like he's been in more because Paul Lynde was so hysterical as him.

* NightmareFuel: The ghost conjured up at the seance in "Abner Kadabra" (Uncle Harold, according to Gladys Kravitz) is surprisingly grotesque in appearance. He also speaks in a low, menacing voice.

* WhatAnIdiot:
** '''You'd expect:''' Darrin to learn to bite his tongue in front of Endora and Samantha's other relatives.
** '''Instead''': He doesn't and keeps getting spells cast on him.

* BaseBreakingCharacter: Darrin and Endora. Those who support Darrin think that Endora is an EvilMatriarch who is prejudiced against mortals and sadistically tortures him for no good reason while Endora's supporters see Darrin as a PoliticallyIncorrectHero who deserves every bit of supernatural torment that Endora throws at him (and more). Then there are those who support both. It doesn't help that Darrin and Endora have legitimate reasons for being irritated by the other and that both of their negative traits got turned UpToEleven as the series progressed thanks to {{Flanderization}}.

* WhatAnIdiot: You'd expect Darrin to learn to bite his tongue in front of Endora and Samantha's other relatives. But he doesn't and keeps getting spells cast on him.

* RecycledScript: By the end of its run, the show was recycling its ''own'' scripts.