Aug 28, 2026 · 24 min · 13 segments
Debbie Jellinsky is the gold-digging, murderous, glamorous, Black Widow in Addams Family Values who when Fester says gimme a kiss, she says gimme a 20. Today, we honour her legacy. In this episode, I…
Candis GreenHost
[eerie music] Gomez and Morticia Addams have a baby named Pubert, and their two other children, Wednesday and Pugsley, try to kill him.

So they hire a nanny to try and get that under control, and in comes Debbie Jellinsky.

They are, however, unaware that Debbie is actually a Black Widow-style serial killer who seeks out wealthy men and then murders them.



Meanwhile, at Camp Chippewa, Wednesday is cast as Pocahontas in an upcoming play depicting the first Thanksgiving.

During the performance, Wednesday breaks from the script and leads the other outcast campers to burn everything down in a protest against the whitewashing of the ravages of colonialism.

They, along with the rest of the Addams family, are accosted by Debbie, who straps them into electric chairs.

Debbie recounts, using a slideshow, how she murdered her parents and previous husbands when they weren't able to satisfy her expensive taste or when they gave her Malibu Barbie instead of ballerina Barbie.

Meanwhile, Baby Pubert escapes from his crib, connects two loose wires, rerouting the electrical current back to Debbie.

When Debbie flips the switch to say sayonara to the Addams family, she is electrocuted instead.

Addams Family Values is the second Addams Family movie, and yo, if you're a child of the '90s like I am, this is the cast.

Anjelica Huston, Christina Ricci, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, and of course, Joan Cusack as Debbie Jellinsky.

Addams Family Values is an example of a movie like Hocus Pocus that was not successful when it was initially released.

It got really mixed reviews and didn't do so hot at the box office, partially because while the first Addams Family movie stuck pretty close to the original feeling of the beloved Addams Family TV series from the '60s, the second movie played more into a dark humor, like when Wednesday and Pugsley try to decapitate Pubert with a guillotine.

I like to call this the trick-or-treat effect, where numerous Halloween-y movies from the '90s did not get their flowers in the theater when they were released, but got them years later when they were added to TV rotations on Halloween night, like Freeform's 31 Nights of Halloween.


Addams Family Values has built its own kind of cult following, with fans appreciating the movie's pitch-black humor, like when Morticia says that Wednesday's at that very special age when a girl has only one thing on her mind, and the mother from Camp Chippewa says, "Boys?" And Wednesday says, "Homicide." [eerie music]Every hardened killer has a dark backstory that explains how they came to be, and this is Debbie Jelinski's story.

[eerie music] Gomez and Morticia Addams have a baby named Pubert, and their two other children, Wednesday and Pugsley, try to kill him.

So they hire a nanny to try and get that under control, and in comes Debbie Jellinsky.

They are, however, unaware that Debbie is actually a Black Widow-style serial killer who seeks out wealthy men and then murders them.



Meanwhile, at Camp Chippewa, Wednesday is cast as Pocahontas in an upcoming play depicting the first Thanksgiving.

During the performance, Wednesday breaks from the script and leads the other outcast campers to burn everything down in a protest against the whitewashing of the ravages of colonialism.

They, along with the rest of the Addams family, are accosted by Debbie, who straps them into electric chairs.

Debbie recounts, using a slideshow, how she murdered her parents and previous husbands when they weren't able to satisfy her expensive taste or when they gave her Malibu Barbie instead of ballerina Barbie.

Meanwhile, Baby Pubert escapes from his crib, connects two loose wires, rerouting the electrical current back to Debbie.

When Debbie flips the switch to say sayonara to the Addams family, she is electrocuted instead.

Addams Family Values is the second Addams Family movie, and yo, if you're a child of the '90s like I am, this is the cast.

Anjelica Huston, Christina Ricci, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, and of course, Joan Cusack as Debbie Jellinsky.

Addams Family Values is an example of a movie like Hocus Pocus that was not successful when it was initially released.

It got really mixed reviews and didn't do so hot at the box office, partially because while the first Addams Family movie stuck pretty close to the original feeling of the beloved Addams Family TV series from the '60s, the second movie played more into a dark humor, like when Wednesday and Pugsley try to decapitate Pubert with a guillotine.

I like to call this the trick-or-treat effect, where numerous Halloween-y movies from the '90s did not get their flowers in the theater when they were released, but got them years later when they were added to TV rotations on Halloween night, like Freeform's 31 Nights of Halloween.


Addams Family Values has built its own kind of cult following, with fans appreciating the movie's pitch-black humor, like when Morticia says that Wednesday's at that very special age when a girl has only one thing on her mind, and the mother from Camp Chippewa says, "Boys?" And Wednesday says, "Homicide." [eerie music]Every hardened killer has a dark backstory that explains how they came to be, and this is Debbie Jelinski's story.
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