The Best Episodes Directed By Ezra Stone

Herman is struck by a car. He isn’t hurt, but the car that struck him is totaled. The uninjured driver assumes she has disfigured Herman, and her attorney suggests that she try to settle with him for $10,000. When Herman receives the offer, he wrongly assumes that this is the amount he owes for the damage he caused to the car. He runs away from home rather than face the problem of financial ruin for his family.

Herman purchases ten acres in Happy Holiday Valley through a magazine ad. It turns out to be a patch of wasteland in a broken-down ghost town, so the Munsters absolutely adore it. This makes things difficult for the fly-by-night salespeople who get a better offer for the property and want to buy it back.

Herman advises Eddie to turn the other cheek when he gets pushed around by a bully. Shortly thereafter, Herman is the victim of a practical joke at work. Grandpa takes the situation in hand by teaching both Eddie and Herman how to box.

The Munsters are heading for a vacation in Buffalo Valley when Herman gets off for a rest stop at Indian Flats. He wanders into the village of an Indian tribe that specializes in luring the tourist trade. The tribe’s eldest member mistakes Herman for an ancient spirit leader.

Eddie gives Marilyn a ring he found in the attic as a birthday present. Grandpa recognizes it as the Fregosi Emerald, a centuries-old ring with a Transylvanian curse. Herman doesn’t believe in such a silly superstition; he is intent on proving that the ring does not bring about bad luck. He quickly regrets trying to do this.

Herman buys a convertible for Marilyn from a fly-by-night used-car dealer named Fair Deal Dan. Once he gets it home, it explodes into a piece of junk. Herman later finds out that the car is a stolen piece of junk when he is placed under arrest.

A massive argument erupts between Grandpa and Herman after Herman accidentally destroys a go-cart the two of them constructed for Eddie. Since Grandpa claims to own half of the house, Herman draws a white line down its center and insists that Grandpa remain on his side of the line.

To cure Herman of his hiccoughs, Grandpa puts him into a trance with the Transylvanian Brain Freeze. Meanwhile, a couple of fraternity pledges are sent to spend a night in the Munster house as part of their initiation. Thinking that sleeping Herman is a dummy, they bring him to a sorority house, where he awakens from his trance.

When Eddie reads a school composition entitled “My Parents – An Average American Family” to his class, his teacher believes the boy is exhibiting symptoms of an overactive imagination. The school principal suggests that Eddie’s wild exaggerations might be motivated by an underprivileged home life. It is decided that a visit to the Munster home is in order.

After going to the car to find something Herman falls asleep in the back of his car with the keys in the ignition. The car is then stolen by bank robbers who don’t know that Herman is sleeping in the back seat. When Herman wakes up he wanders into their hideout and is thought to be Big Louie, a gang member who has taken twenty years of beatings in the boxing ring. Herman winds up as an accomplice in a bank robbery.

When Herman and Grandpa go to the bank to make a withdrawal, they are mistaken for bank robbers and handed eighteen thousand dollars in cash. When Herman gets home and realizes the wrong he’s done wrong, he can’t rest until he returns the money. When trying to bring it back in the middle of the night, Herman and Grandpa wind up locked in the bank’s vault.

Herman arranges to meet Marilyn at the natural history museum. But he accidentally gets himself locked inside an Egyptian sarcophagus, whereupon a sleeping pill he swallowed earlier takes effect. A pair of museum curators open the box the next day and mistake the sleeping Herman for an ancient mummy. When Lily reads about their supposed scientific discovery in the newspaper, she goes to the museum and requests that the curators put Herman in a cab and send him home as soon as he wakes up.

Egged on by Lily, Herman demands a raise from his boss Mr. Gateman. He is promptly fired. Herman is afraid of Lily’s reaction, so he pretends that he is still going to work when in fact he is searching for employment. He gets fired from a number of blue-collar jobs – including one at a Chinese laundry, where he wreaks total slapstick chaos.

In this Cold War episode, a Russian fishing trawler picks up a scuba-diving Herman in its haul of fish and mistakes him for the missing link. The crew members report their find to Moscow, claiming it puts the Soviets ahead in the “missing link race”. The response from the Commissar is that Herman is an American spy.

Herman becomes insanely jealous of Chester, a mysterious boarder whom Lily has bought into the household in yet another of her schemes to acquire a little extra cash. After searching Chester’s room, Herman concludes that he’s a gangster. In fact, he is a lieutenant for the police department.

To provide poor unfortunate Marilyn with a future husband, Grandpa tries to turn a frog into a prince. Conveniently, he chooses a nearsighted frog who won’t be put off by Marilyn’s hideous looks. Not realizing that the potion has failed, Grandpa and Herman mistake a passing stranger for their princely frog.

Herman gets promoted to hearse driver and has to renew his driver’s license. This requires him to take a road test, which he fails. Grandpa convinces him that he’d have better luck taking the test in a one-horse town. He turns out to be extremely correct.

Herman tries to teach Eddie a lesson about the folly of gambling: he takes the money in Eddie’s piggy bank and bets it on a long shot at the racetrack. When the horse comes in a winner, it ruins the point of Herman’s lesson and leads to his entanglement with organized crime.

Eddie, an avid fan of ghoulish TV host Zombo, becomes the winner of the “Why I Like Zombo Contest” and gets to be on the Zombo show. Herman becomes jealous of Eddie’s new hero and wants to appear equally outlandish. But his efforts to impress his son fail. Eddie eventually learns that Zombo is not a real person but a phony character played by an actor.

Eddie is upset that his family does not treat him cruelly because he thinks this means they don’t care about him. When Eddie decides to run away from home, Herman employs a little child psychology, which naturally backfires. Various circumstances eventually lead to Herman’s getting involved with a dancing bear.

In yet another example of Eddie’s misguided regard for his father’s natural abilities, the young Munster enters Herman’s name in the bucking bronco contest at the local rodeo. Lily is unable to talk Herman out of such a dangerous task: he is intent on being a hero to his son in spite of the fact that he’s scared stiff. Meanwhile, the promoters plan to have Herman ride a horse that is guaranteed to break every bone in his body.

Herman and Lily want to buy each other an elaborate gift for their 100th Anniversary. Without telling each other, they both take night jobs as ship welders. Since the job requires them to wear protective helmets that conceal their faces, they don’t realize whom they’re dealing with when they start flirting with each other.

Eddie borrows a tape recorder belonging to the disc-jockey father of one of his friends. Herman records a version of DRY BONES, accompanying himself on the guitar. The following day, the disc jockey plays the song on his radio show – and it becomes an instant hit. Herman identifies himself as the mystery singer and quickly turns into an egomaniacal would-be celebrity. Grandpa comes to the rescue with his Nothin’ Muffins.

With inheritance money from Cousin Wolverine, Grandpa and Herman develop an invention for transporting an electrical current without wires. Lily and Marilyn use the rest of the money to operate their own beauty salon. Both endeavors turn out to be disasters, causing various parties to take legal action.

A lady in Sioux City, Iowa, has placed an advertisement offering a reward for the return of her lost husband, who is Grandpa. Grandpa claims to have never seen this woman before in his life – but when he discovers that she’s filthy rich, he’s ready to sign an affidavit stating that she is his spouse.