Ahhh, the simplicity of the commercials of yesteryear!! The sound of the wheat being shot through guns was a nice touch I gotta say.
The logic rests heavily on the fact that Sam kept her witchcraft a secret until after the wedding as well as her own supposed desire to live as a mortal, but one would think that eventually all concerned would admit that that was just not practical.
I just don't like how poorly Darrin treats Sam about such ultimately unimportant things. Why on earth did she need to be an ordinary housewife the "normal" way if there was an easier way? He certainly wasn't the one doing the work nor was he actually affected by it. Most of the time if he'd just let her do her thing they'd have ended up with less problems than they actually had (which I get means the plots would have had to be different, but it could be done). The quote on the previous page about bigotry sends the message that they wanted to push a message of tolerance and while yes, Endora needed to tolerate Darrin better because she was rude to him, Darrin could do with giving the same courtesy.
I love that people have reevaluated Bewitched; whereas Darrin was conceived as a sympathetic "everyman" and Endora was the "meddlesome mother-in-law" many people have come to view Darrin more critically and Endora more sympathetically (similar to Frankie and Sable on The Colbys). Several people involved with Bewitched said they deliberately intended the show to be analogous to real life mixed marriages. Darrin and Samantha decided to conceal Sam's true identity while in real life many couples concealed the race, ethnicity or religion of one of the spouses.
It was before the start of production of season three that Elizabeth Montgomery told William Froug she didn't want to work with Dick York. York may have developed romantic feelings for Montgomery over time but initially it was her physical attributes, specifically her legs, that appealed to him. As a beautiful woman working in show business during the 50s and 60s I imagine Elizabeth Montgomery had to tolerate a lot of inappropriate comments and unwelcome advances; York's behavior must have been especially bad or so frequent that Montgomery simply couldn't tolerate it any longer. Everything I've read leads me to believe the collapse of Montgomery and Asher's marriage and their mutual infidelities came later. I'm inclined to think that Asher's failure to support his wife when she stood up to a co-worker's sexual harassment did irreparable damage to their marriage.
A logical story arc would have been for Endora, who was an intelligent woman who loved her daughter and grandchildren, to eventually warm to Darrin (we even catch a glimpse of this when Tabitha is born) but by the time it would have made sense for that to happen the the cast and crew had "checked out": the writers were simply writing re-treads of earlier, better, scripts and Elizabeth Montgomery was no longer emotionally invested in the series.
