NBC Has Found Mockingbird Lane’s New Herman Munster and His Name Is… Jerry O’Connell?

Steve Barton   |  

Jun 5, 2012

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Jerry O’Connell has been cast as Herman Munster in NBC’s “Mockingbird Lane”. Let me repeat that so it will fully sink in: Jerry O’Connell has been cast as Herman Munster. Nope, still hasn’t sunk in.

When word broke that Eddie Izzard had been cast as Grandpa Munster in NBC’s revisionist reboot of the classic 1960’s sitcom “The Munsters”, one could at least see him in the wig and make-up as the character.

But Jerry O’Connell as Frankenstein-ish Herman Munster? Jerry O’Connell? The fat kid from Stand By Me? The “Sliders” guy? The dude whose penis was eaten in Piranha 3D? The guy whose last three TV shows all got cancelled in less than a season? That Jerry O’Connell? I just don’t see it.

Hopefully the show’s re-creator Bryan Fuller (“Pushing Daisies”) and pilot director Bryan Singer (X-Men) have something truly fantastical in store for viewers of “Mockingbird Lane”, or else this NBC TV pilot is going to go down as one of the great unsung television train wrecks since… Well… Since last year’s catastrophic “Wonder Woman” revamp.

Deadline describes the pilot’s premise as follows:

O’Connell will play the family patriarch, the handsome and gangly Herman Munster, a great dad and a devoted husband. He is married to Lily, a vampire, with whom he has fathered a 10-year-old boy, Eddie (Mason Cook). Strong but sentimental, Herman works at a funeral home and worries that Eddie’s transformation into a werewolf and burgeoning awareness of his family’s origins will crush the boy’s spirit.

The mere fact that Herman Munster is now described as “handsome” pretty much tells everyone watching to throw out any preconceived notions of what they know about “The Munsters”. That still might be a problem given that no matter what they call this show, it’s still a rebooting of “The Munsters”.

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