Wednesday is frighteningly dull
Even Jenna Ortega can't save Netflix's bafflingly boring Addams Family spinoff
TV Reviews Thing
Though werewolves, sirens, and Gorgons abound, there’s no Frankenstein’s monster on Wednesday. But the show itself is a shambling corpse crudely assembled from pieces of undead media: Fans of teen fiction will recognize moldering chunks of everything from Veronica Mars and Mean Girls to Harry Potter and Wicked, with a slice of Gilmore Girls tossed in for good measure.
But the influence you won’t find anywhere is, ironically, The Addams Family.
Over the course of 80-plus years, Charles Addams’ 1930s comics have been adapted into multiple live-action movies, animated films, and TV series (not to mention a Broadway musical and a few video games). With this Netflix spinoff, creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar are clearly playing to fans of Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1991 movie and its sequel, which have become perennial favorites thanks to their dry wit, clever sight gags, and stellar cast.
These films also work because they’re about, y’know, the entire family of Addams and their gothic mansion of comedic horrors. Sure, part of the fun is watching these goth weirdos interact with mundane suburbanites. But it’s even more about the delight of seeing them playing off each other. Despite their propensity for homicide, they’re one of the most loving, functional families in all of pop culture. In other words, no Addams is an island.
Wednesday’s first mistake of many is separating the title character from her family almost immediately. Following a series of expulsions, Gomez and Morticia (Luis Guzmán and Catherine Zeta-Jones) have sent their daughter to study at their own alma mater, Nevermore. The boarding school is a cut-rate Hogwarts situated at the edge of a Stars Hollow-esque New England town, complete with a hangout coffee shop. In short order, the writers make the baffling choice to turn Wednesday into a teen detective investigating a string of mysterious murders.
The show’s laughably lazy version of “wizards” and “muggles” is “outcasts” and “normies”; and Nevermore, the writers remind us over and over again, is a haven for the former. While taking her on a tour, Wednesday’s chipper roommate Enid (Emma Myers) tells her that it’s a school for “outcasts, freaks, monsters—fill in your favorite marginalized group here.” And sure, their classmates are vampires, werewolves, seers, and the like—but they’re definitely not weirdos, let alone marginalized. No, Nevermore is populated by rich, mostly white kids who are as cliquish and put off by otherness as the students at any regular high school. For example, one teen is weirded out by the fact that Wednesday’s outfit is … monochromatic?
Over the course of eight listless episodes, Wednesday investigates grisly deaths perpetrated by a bug-eyed (and badly CGIed) monster. Along the way, she gets caught up in a love triangle, makes friends, and thaws the ice around her black heart.
We don’t know about you, but the very last thing we want to see Wednesday Addams become is an emotionally enlightened do-gooder; we come to this character for po-faced one-liners and casual sadism. Instead, we watch her unite the Queen Bee (Joy Sunday) and the Nerd (Moosa Mostafa) under a common cause, and navigate a love triangle with the trust-fund Bad Boy (Percy Hynes White) and the townie Nice Guy (Hunter Doohan).
The show’s dialogue is flavorless at best and laughable at worst. (See bully taunts like “Check out this greedy little freak” and “What are you? Alto, soprano, or just loco?”) And we get the sense that neither Gough nor Millar has talked to a teen in several decades; the Nevermore kids routinely read a blog about school gossip. (Welcome to 2005, we guess?)
The writers also take baffling liberties with history: Nevermore’s most famous alum is Edgar Allan Poe (because …“The Raven”?), who, IRL, went to boarding school in London. But that’s nothing compared with the series’ inscrutable lore involving Pilgrim colonists terrorizing other colonists who “live in harmony with the Native folk.” (No Indigenous characters ever appear onscreen.)
Though she has zero to work with, horror-movie fave Ortega does what she can with her character, nailing the deadpan delivery Christina Ricci perfected in the ’90s movies. She gets the series’ few good lines, dropping rapid-fire anecdotes about hibernating with grizzlies and the death of her pet scorpion. But the actor can’t make up for the fact that this version of Wednesday is the epitome of what fandom circles call a “Mary Sue”: Everyone she meets becomes instantly fascinated by her, and she’s skilled at everything she tries—cello, martial arts, fencing, novel-writing, archery, and botany, to name a few.
Speaking of Ricci, she plays a side character on Wednesday—one of several big names on the series who, having nothing to do with the boring material, don’t do much of anything. In sharp contrast to the live-wire spark between Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia’s Morticia and Gomez, Zeta-Jones and Guzmán don’t have an ounce of chemistry between them. Others caught up in this dreck include Gwendoline Christie, Riki Lindhome, and Fred Armisen. What’s more, horror legend Tim Burton directed half the season’s episodes; but the show’s visual language is so flat that you’d never know.
Gough and Millar have a long history with teen-genre potboilers: They dipped into the superhero world with Superman high-school drama Smallville, which ran for a whopping 10 seasons. Next, they took a stab at fantasy with MTV and Spike’s The Shannara Chronicles. These shows were formulaic in their own ways; but they don’t hold a candelabra to the profound unoriginality of Wednesday.
Wednesday premieres November 23 on Netflix.
151 Comments
They’re tedious, not kooky
Mediocrity’s not spooky
It left me feeling poopy
The Addams family . . . spinoff series Wednesday
I’m not sure you deserved that star, but I gave it to you regardless.
I accept your star with humility and gratitude.
My prediction was right. They “Sabrina’d” this fucking thing and of course it’s going to be fucking terrible.
I honestly liked the Sabrina series. I don’t know the source material but I found it fun.That said I don’t think applying that shows template to Wednesday would be a good idea. I haven’t seen Wednesday yet, but so far I’m not hearing good things.
It started off okay but by the end it was shiiiiiiit. Just fuckin’ terrible.
I liked Sabrina, too, but the first season, holy fuck! Nearly every episode played out like an Afterschool Special.
Sabrina was mostly fun and occasionally surprisingly atmospheric and enjoyable – with some tedious bits, of course.
I knew this would happen when I saw Jenna Ortega. Christina Ricci had an interesting face, Ortega is your average pretty Hollywood girl.
HA! I just realized. Wednesday premiers this Wednesday.
“(No Indigenous characters ever appear onscreen.)“Who cares? Why does this matter in the least? And color me shocked that this formula of taking one female character from a formally popular show and making her a total girl boss who pushes back against the patriarchy (etc.) is shitty and doesn’t work.
Because it makes them background characters to make there made-up non-genocidal colonists look good. Would be like having a backstory about virtuous Jewish loving Nazis who the bad Nazis oppressed and never actually showing any Jewish people .
Maybe they should try Rastifying Wednesday by 10% or so?
Clearly they added a nice schmear of detective.
Jenna Ortega looks the part as Wednesday and has the right expression, but she’s a one note character with no dimension or depth. We need to see her grow and evolve. Take her out of her comfort zone. Her schtick grows old fast.
Tim Burton used to be my favorite director but hasn’t done anything worth watching since Ed Wood in 1994. He’s clearly run out of ideas.
Big Fish?
No no I agree with him and Ed Wood.
very funny to retort ‘he hasn’t made a good movie in 30 years!’ with ‘no, he did one 20 years ago!’
Big Fish is ruined by Billy Crudup’s character. You hate your father because he exaggerates his stories? Boo-effing-hoo. (But yeah, the flashbacks with Ewan McGregor are pretty good.)
Albert Finney makes it all work.
I may be remembering the movie wrong but isn’t Edward a traveling salesman in the movie? I always assumed Will’s falling out with his dad had as much to do with his dad being an absent parent as it did with not believing his wild stories. Basically that he felt his dad not only wasn’t there for most of his childhood but was never genuine with him when he was there.
I may be remembering the movie wrong but isn’t Edward a traveling salesman in the movie? I always assumed Will’s falling out with his dad had as much to do with his dad being an absent parent as it did with not believing his wild stories. Basically that he felt his dad not only wasn’t there for most of his childhood but was never genuine with him when he was there.
Mars Attacks is big dumb fun and Sleepy Hollow has its charms. Planet of the Apes is pretty bad, but not as bad as people remember (and Tim Roth is freakin’ excellent in it).But Burton’s output in the 21st century is depressing. The only film he made in the last 20 years that I liked was Sweeny Todd.
I’ll always defend Corpse Bride. It’s not as good as I remembered, but it’s still good.
I feel like he lost any remaing whimsy when Mars Attacks! wasn’t a hit. Rough going after that. I was really looking forward to Sleepy Hollow, but it was so bland.
Sleepy Hollow was the movie that first made me think: is Burton just a great production designer and actually a really shitty director? There’s been far more evidence since then for this hypothesis than against.
Todd did have an energy that almost everything else this century from Burton has entirely lacked, but honestly, everything genuinely good from that movie is from Sondheim. Depp and Carter are easily the worst Todd and Lovett of all time.
I really liked Big Eyes
His schtick is so incredibly limited, and honestly, I’m not sure it was even that good in the first place — he just hit at the right time for it.
Sleepy Hollow
Well, most of the ideas for his movies sprang from writers who were not him, so……
Didn’t he do Big Eyes? Big Eyes was pretty good.
Wait. Why are we talking about Tim Burton?
In general? Or in the context of Wednesday, on which he’s an EP and directed half the episodes?
Ed Wood is still his best movie, and while he didn’t fall straight off a cliff like Kevin Smith, they both had the misfortune to peak early and then do a bunch of worsening versions of their original schtick.
This really was just warmed over teen/YA serial boiler-plate by a couple middle-aged guys who only know Wednesday as a graphic on Hot Topic tees. Also:“That’s more, horror legend Tim Burton directed half the season’s episodes;”Burton is now a “horror legend,” despite having never written or directed a horror movie?
I think Sleepy Hollow qualifies, and certainly a number of his films are horror-adjacent and include tropes and imagery usually associated with the genre.
Okay, totally spaced on Sleepy Hollow; that’s certainly the closest. But, still someone I associated much more with family and comedy films, just with what, for a time, was considered an unorthodox aesthetic.
Yeah everyone that’s feigning shock over Burton being labeled a “horror legend” is being ridiculous. I’m not his biggest fan, but Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd are certainly horror. They’re a specific genre of horror, but let’s not be snobs about it.
If Guillermo del Toro gets to be one, I guess he does too
Okay, you’re usually on the ball but wtf. Dude’s debut movie is Cronos. He made The Devil’s Backbone. He made Pan’s Labyrinth and Mimic. Even his movies in other genres are all 25%-50% horror. And of course he’s one of the biggest fans of the genre. He’s in the club.I’ll give that the man loves to tread the line between fantasy and horror, but pretty much his whole career is about making that line as bleedy as possible.
I’d contend (cribbing from Stephen King, if I remember Danse Macabre correctly) that horror is essentially fantasy with darker elements and endings anyways.
Most of his films travel in horror tropes even if they aren’t flat out horror films (which, as people below have pointed out, at least two are). Just because they’re generally more family friendly than Carpenter or Craven doesn’t that away.
It’s currently at 71% on Rotten Tomatoes, way more than I was expecting.
But that’s nothing compared with the series’ inscrutable lore involving Pilgrim colonists terrorizing other colonists who “live in harmony with the Native folk.” (No Indigenous characters ever appear onscreen.)Damn Tim Burton is real desperate to maintain the purity of his white casts eh
You’re sooooooo brave.
When I saw the trailer I was immediately excited about, and then gravely disappointed that she’s only briefly seen attending a normal high school before getting shipped off to Nevermore. I’d have much rather seen a series about Wednesday in the setting of a regular high school. Plus they could’ve had some fun with the character. Like what if she winds up being really popular precisely because everyone things she’s alternative and authentic, and she has to confront that the qualities that she employs to self-isolate and to keep people at arm’s length actually attract others two her. I think there was real potential here to do something akin to Daria.But then Netflix backed up a dump truck of money and everyone just got on board.
The Sonnenfeld films were at their best when the Addams’s were forced to live among normal society (getting evicted in the first film, summer camp in the second). It’s a shame this show doesn’t understand that.
It had been years since I watched the Addams Family movies, decades even, and in my older, wiser years, I was struck by how they are, for all their oddness, exemplars of the family. They’re loyal to each other, supportive of everyone’s interests and quirks. . The parents are loving and still deeply in love with each other, and the kids stand up against bullies and offer friendship to the bullied. There is so so much here to be built upon, particularly these days where identity is so fraught and complicated. It would’ve been fascinating to throw the Addams’s into that. And instead, they made a cheap Harry Potter rip of.
The funny thing is you also described the Belchers from Bob’s Burgers.
good call Garth!! Im currently re-watching Burgers and love how the family really do love and support each other. Not quite ‘them against the world’ since they have many friends and allies, but they truly are a family unit, and it’s delightful…
I mean, what is Louise if not Gen Z’s answer to Wednesday?
Yep – in the second movie, when the baby turns (gasp!) blonde, the response is “this is horrifying, but we still love him because he’s still an Addams!”
Similar problems seen in What We Do In The Shadows. The fantasy fluff is a bit boring, but the real comedy is when they interact with normal society.
Well to be fair in the context of the show Wednesday is STILL the odd one among a school of “monsters”. I mean most of the other characters, despite being monsters, are more or less normal high school kids.
That trailer made you excited? Where she gives a bully comeuppance by causing severe bodily harm with piranhas (specifically castrating him) and she acts like, “Hehe, no more penis, I’m such a rascal.” You thought that was going to be good?
The show specified that it was only one testicle.
Five’ll get you ten that it was just a generic “weird school for quirky kids” pitch, and then someone got ahold of the Addams IP and, well…
The second Addams Family movie climaxes with Wednesday literally incinerating the Thanksgiving myth of New England colonists and Native Americans breaking bread and living in harmony. This show, which is even more specifically about the same character, invents a brand-new historical fantasy involving New England colonists and Native Americans living in harmony, which apparently goes unchallenged. That is such a specific way to be insipid and reactionary that it’s hard to overlook. Is Tim Burton a Republican? Or is Netflix so peeved about losing viewership that it’s just going to trash people’s memories of beloved movies out of spite?
He sure shits on Black people like one.
The whole POINT of the Addams Family is that they don’t consider themselves outcasts.
Similar to the Munsters
Why are you always gross?
Only way he can get attention bc he’s certainly not funny.
How does he get away with it? Volume, baby, volume!
I’m sorry to Ortega—I’m sure she’s lovely as a person. But she is one of the most lackluster performers in recent memory. Like, almost infuriatingly so.
I’ve only seen the trailer thus far, but it certainly seems like her direction began and ended with “be Christina Ricci”. And I don’t think that particular performance makes sense to put in the lead role, let alone stretch to an entire series. I was looking forward to this series, so it’s disappointing, but not necessarily surprising.
It felt more to me like they had wanted to cast Aubrey Plaza but knew she was too old, so they found the teenager who looked most like her and before every take told her to just do her best Plaza impression
Jenna Ortega has a definite Aubrey Plaza vibe in this. I don’t think this is a bad thing however. I appreciated her commitment to stillness, and her expressive eyes
I was getting Audrey Plaza vibes too, in a “give your best Aubrey Plaza impression” sort of way. Plaza’s flat approach to comedy has subtle nuances, which is one of the many characteristics that make her such a great actress. Ortega’s performance was just flat, full stop. She’s being Ricci in Addams Family, which is fine when one’s playing a one-note character surrounded by an ensemble of other one-note eccentrics. But a younger Plaza would have been able to make Wednesday Addams much more dynamic.
Just the idea of framing the Addams’ as “outcasts” is bizarre since the entire premise of the Addams Family is that “incredibly rich aristocrats can afford to be weird, what if they were incredibly weird and because they don’t generally mix with other people they don’t really recognize this.” Specifically if Morticia and Gomez were not good-natured people who want for nothing except each other, they would be the sorts of people you tell horror stories about.So the story about Wednesday ought to be that she has not figured things out like her parents have, and there are absolutely pitfalls that she needs to navigate on lest she become someone the audience is not rooting for.
“we come to this character for po-faced one-liners and casual sadism.”Yeah, but if the character doesn’t grow or change in some meaningful way, you won’t have much of a show.You can sometimes get away with it. Like Beavis and Butt-Head. It works because the characters never change, never learn. But it’s a cartoon too and doesn’t wok as well in live action.
For a comedy having a character start off one way, question themselves and act different, then eventually learn they were fine the way they were, is an acceptable character arc.
Daria changed very little over the course of her show – sometimes she was forced to confront her own behavior but mostly she was just Daria. I would watch 10 more seasons of Daria were they available to me.
…and yet, the internet hype machine, which posited this show would be the greatest thing since Christina Ricci got her tits out in whatever-movie-that-was, let us down once more…and nothing will be learned from this.
I feel like calling a Wednesday a mary sue because she is skilled at everything is completely ignoring the fact that that’s literally how the Addam’s family rolls. They’ve always been weirdly lucky, cartoonishly agile and insanely good at anything they attempted.
But the moment you take that seriously is when it stops being comedy. No one wants Wednesday to be homecoming queen, she’s supposed to be overlooked by stupid, terrible people so she can put them in their place. “What if Wednesday was popular and beloved?” is the wrong thing to explore.
I have a hard time believing anything is taken too seriously in something Tim Burton has directed, but I guess we’ll see when it comes out.
Hey, you were totally right. Pugsly is a complete wuss. And Wednesday is basically a goth Sherlock Holmes. She helps in a different way to her friend instead of be sinister as in the two first movies. Also this is obviously Gothic Harry Potter.
Not sure where you are coming from here. The show was “OK” for me. But while he Wednesday of this show might be good at many things, she is absolutely NOT a “goth Sherlock Holmes”. One thing she totally sucks at is detective work. She is wrong far more that she is right. And she apparently routinely falls for other characters being framed time and again.As for other comments about being a Mary Sue, I just don’t see it. She is not popular with most of the kids. She is never “homecoming queen”, even metaphorically. Playing the cello and being good at fencing (or most weapons I would assume) I would think would be expected Addams family traits (along I assume with chemistry and poisons).
And magically buying bags of thousands of piranha and then walking through the entire school.
Classic TV Gomez was a very bad driver. That’s all I got.
That’s fine when she’s a side character. It doesn’t work when she’s got to drive the entire story
Zeta-Jones and Guzmán don’t have an ounce of chemistry between them.
Well, no shit! Guzman looks like a toad that got high on his own secretions.
Yeah, I don’t want to sound mean, but you don’t cast a dude who’s butt-ugly to play Gomez Addams
Nah, that’s how the OG looked.To paraphrase the all-time classic Addams Family theme song, Morticia does who she wants to do, plays how she wants to play.
Now see, they could have cast someone who is not conventionally good-looking, but has charm, charisma … John Leguziamo comes to mind. Or Marc Anthony. Heck I wouldn’t have been mad at Jack Black!But to have a role last played with aplomb by the magnificent Raul Julia, to now be butchered by Guzman and his horrid acting, who stumbles through every line reading, (and on top of that, is not easy to look at) – a real travesty!And it’s made even worse by the fact that he’s paired with the perfectly-cast Catherine Zeta Jones as Morticia. All their scenes together seem like he was a last-minute replacement, dropped on set 5 mins before shooting, given a bad toupee and told to repeat lines fed live through an ear-piece!
He doesn’t have to be traditionally handsome, but there needs to be some kind of ‘what the french would call a certain… I don’t know what’ that translates across the screen so everyone gets why Tish is always DTF. Guzman is funny and he’s got a nice dad rapport with Wednesday, but he’s not that.
I was reading the comments on Reddit about this show – and it turns out I’m not the only one who was distracted by Guzman’s atrocious line readings : Someone commented that he sounded like he was struggling with lung capacity to say his lines, and I totally agree.Also, someone else also commented that Oscar Isaac would have been the ideal Gomez Addams – and now I can’t help but imagine the series that could have been, with him opposite Catherine Zeta Jones. Could you imagine the potential Gomez/Morticia dance sequences?
Well Oscar Isaac did play Gomez, of course, in the recent animated films.
Guzman looks like a toad that got high on his own secretions. Damn, that’s cold, son! And yet – I’m not disagreeing with you!
I thought Gomez and Pugsley both were given a more porcine look as opposed to amphibious. Toad strikes me as too complimentary.
The show’s premise is broken from the start. So you’re putting Wednesday Addams in a school that is itself creepy and kooky and weird? Uh, where’s the tension there? Wednesday is only funny when she’s fucking with the squares.As a friend of mine described it, “it’s a classic fish IN water story!”
Starred just for that “fish in water” line. High-five your friend for me, that’s solid.
Thanks! I should have taken credit for it. Alas.
This is such a stupid argument, especially if you have watched the show. It is clear that she is a fish out of water (I just watched the first three episodes). The school to me does not seem that creepy, it’s just an excuse to have students with powers and weird/supernatural interests.
And honestly I thought the premise of the show was that she is figuring out who she is as a person and there is a mystery going on at the same time. This is keeping me engaged specifically because it is Wedensday: a teen who always says funny and morbid things. It seems like a perfected version of Sabrina where I never felt any tension because they would always make up a magical solution to everything at the end.
I also preferred it to Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, it felt more like an actual school & like she needed to be there & figure things out about herself & make connections
I feel pleasured with how correct my instincts were from the trailer that told me it was just another edgy “fuck Batman” nostalgia reimagining with no substance.More importantly, I am offended by the idea that anyone would refer to Tim Burton as a “horror legend.” No, he isn’t Wes Craven because of Beetlejuice. His biggest audience are Christian moms who love Halloween and wear striped tights and black nail polish regularly, but had to stop watching Game of Thrones because it made them throw up. Tim Burton is peak softboi. This man should not be working anymore, and I especially don’t want another movie where Johnny Depp has his face painted white again.
Burton is the Tyler Perry of spoopiness
Urgh! Did you really have to utter the phrase “I feel pleasured” – I think I did a full body cringe reading those 3 words (and the italics on the last one just made it worse!).I’m trying to think another phrase that would be even more cringe-inducing: “I feel moisssst” perhaps. Or “This feels moissst and crunchy!”*shudder*
How about “gooey beaver panties”
How about “gooey beaver panties”Actually, none of those 3 words make me cringe at all. “Gooey” makes me think of the comforting chocolate in those chocolate chip cookies you get for free at the Doubletree. Mmm. “beaver” makes me think of a wholesome sitcom from the 50s, and “panties” sounds like a cute fun word.None of them have the harsh, disgusting sound effect of the “zj” in “deep deep plezzjjjurr” (words used by chef Nigella Lawson to describe the feeling she gets tasting the dessert she just made, words that made me recoil!)So when you say “you felt plezzjjjurred” … just … ew! To paraphrase Cher Horowitz from Clueless, that sounds “Way Harsh, Ti(gerNightmare)!”
It was clear just from the synopsis that this was going to be a YA pile of mleh
Alfred Gough and Miles Millar are shit show-runners who always mean well. Not a single thing they’ve done was ever elevated beyond just a cool concept. Superman in high school. Apocalypse samurais. Those should have been awesome. Well, for a few season, Smallville was decent. I’ll give them that.
Was Into the Badlands not worth a watch? Because it’s always been on my “break in case of emergency shows” for when I have nothing else to watch.
Sadly, no. At least not in my opinion. It was a cool concept that they somehow managed to make boring. You could watch the first five episodes and then map out the rest of the series yourself, and there’d be no deviation of the outcome. Very disappointing.
That’s sad. 🙁
Aww. It seems like such a great showcase for some Eastern awesomeness in a Western show, a rare thing even now. I may still watch it someday just for the martial arts (which I hear are spectacular).
If you watch it I certainly hope you enjoy it!
Into The Badlands was a great series.
The writing is weak and catches up to it in the last season but it has some compelling performers and the best fight scenes I have seen in live action tv. Seasons one and two are good. Three so-so
They should just cast Ricci again and use that de-ageing technology. just form the trailer, this looked trash.
Why not a middle aged Wednesday?
Then there are the people who watched the show and decided the review is what’s trash.The Wednesday actress is excellent in the role, btw.
She is quite good. Good cast all around.
All her emotional work has to be done through the eyes, almost nothing through any other expression or even tone of voice. She pulls it off.
This sounds like they misunderstand the Addams’s the same way the Broadway musical did. In that, teenage Wednesday has a secret boyfriend. She’s invited him and his family over for dinner, and desperately wants her family to act “normal.”
WRONG!!! The Addams think they ARE normal. To have Wednesday consider them creepy and kooky is offensive. It’s no longer the Addams Family.
“And so the studio finished Mars Attacks without him, and since no one ever found a body, my client Tony Tromboni has been making movies under the name Tim Burton ever since!”
For the genius take, see Melissa Hunter’s “Adult Wednesday Addams” web series. She got C&D’d by the folks who did the one being reviewed.http://itsmelissahunter.com/mediaAnd which AV club liked a lot more:https://www.avclub.com/wednesday-addams-could-destroy-catcallers-1798277427
This whole review is deluded. It’s a fantastic show, it’s fun and whimsical and creates an immersive world that matches what we love about Harry Potter. Wednesday doesn’t need the Addams. Have you even seen the YouTube show? Nothing here is hamfisted or overreliant on nostalgia. Don’t unfairly compare it to the films and stop pretending that this show is for you when it’s aimed at teens.
Because if you want Tim Burton to do a show, you really want him to pare back everything about his directing that made it fun in the first place!I really sick of lame reboots. I just watched Confess, Fletch and wanted to gouge my eyeballs out. Why didn’t they just get Christina Ricci to play a middle aged Wednesday? I would have watched that.
I love the skinny little sourpuss!
If y’all want to read positive reviews, here are two, from “The Guardian” and from Roger Ebert’s ghost. I’m enjoying the show. I don’t know what you want out of life.https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/wednesday-review-tim-burton-eldritch-addams-family-spin-off https://www.rogerebert.com/streaming/wednesday-netflix-addams-family-tv-review-2022
I enjoyed it too. I thought it was a fun watch and it kept me engaged enough to watch the whole season in one day.
Thank you! Just seeing the Four-Word title of this review on the AV Club main page was enough to dampen my enthusiasm for seeing this. But I started anyway and now I’m mid-way through and it’s …watchable … EDIT: literally just finished episode 4 and I’m furious!
OK, came back to say I jumped the gun with my last comment – I was about to RIOT at the end of episode 4 when I thought they had killed off one of the few likable characters on the show Turns out it was a fake out.I’ve finished all 8 eps now. You know, I think they could have gotten away with Christina Ricci and Riki Lindhome playing teenagers Wednesday and room-mate Enid. Would be easier to suspend disbelief with that than some of the other adults-as-teenagers casting that we’ve had to swallow in other shows …Also, maybe I missed something, but where did Uncle Fester disappear to all of a sudden?
Omggg I was so upset about that too! So glad it was a takeout in episode 5.
He was on the run from the law. Overall I enjoyed the show. I really enjoyed Ortega as Wednesday.
He was on the run from the lawThanks – I must have missed the exact moment he dipped out. Last I remember was him resuscitating Thing, and then all of a sudden it’s like he was never there in the first place …
eah he robbed a bank, I think, and after he berings Thing back Wednesday tells him the cops found his motorcycle andd he needs to skip town. And say Ill see you at the family reunion or your arraignment.
“The reviews are in! Fans say Netflix Wednesday is…watchable.”
“The reviews are in! Fans say Netflix Wednesday is…watchable.”Well, actually in my original comment I wrote “enjoyable” – but then just after hitting ‘Publish’, i saw the end of episode 4 and yelled NOOOO! and came back and edited my comment to say “watchable” instead.Now I’ve seen the whole thing, however, after all is said and done, I’d rank the series higher than watchable, but not quite reaching the heights of enjoyable …
Same! I do feel it was inconsistent in quality and there were some real missed opportunities to be truly weird and fun. Especially with a school like Nevermore. BUT it was a fun little jaunt for a rainy weekend for me. Plus I don’t mind the whole she’s good at everything trope, especially since she’s clearly kind of a shit detective…. Haha. Talented female characters being called Mary Sue annoy me. Isn’t every dude superhero ever a Mary sue? Oh he’s a super genius billionaire who is also catnip to the ladies? His only weakness is his brooding charm? Amazing.
Just got around to watching the first episode last night. It exceeded my expectations.
Those that can, so. Those that can’t become critics.
I actually enjoyed it, but mostly for Jenna Ortega. Her portrayal of Wednesday is sadistically enjoyable to watch.
Jokes on the haters of the series. Season 2 started filming. It’s going on whether you liked it or not.
Hopefully it tortures you.
I’ve only seen the first episode but except for her smiling too much the show isn’t absolutely horrible.
Did you watch the same show that I did? What the heck.
I’ve watched all available episodes, so spoilers….Wednesday the series is best when it builds its supernatural world by allowing its “outcast” characters to interact with one another. The idea of a werewolf who can’t “wolf out” beyond long fingernails is cute. I would’ve rather seen Enid navigate her position among other werewolf students at Nevermore than face the threat of a conversion camp from her mother. But beggars can’t be choosers, I guess. (Seriously? A conversion camp? Are we supposed to draw a parallel between a late-blooming wolf and a queer child or something? And why?)Likewise, the idea of a gorgon standing up a date because he accidentally turned himself to stone and then was too embarrassed to admit it is super cute. But the execution leaves me with questions. How often does that self-stoning happen to gorgons at the school? Why cover the bathroom mirror haphazardly with a towel? You’d think there’d be some sort of protocol to avoid just that thing. Maybe a special gorgon bathroom with no mirrors?All in all, that’s what I wanted more of, especially because our quick intro to the different outcast cliques was so lacking. We know there’s werewolves, gorgons, sirens, and vampires. (Did we ever do anything with the vampires? Even when blood-like paint rained on the school dance? Why was Wednesday the only one upset that the blood wasn’t real? Shoulda been a vamp line.) But we also know there’s seers, telekinetic kids, bug gurus, shapeshifters, and more at the school. It’s a weird choice to omit them from the Official Intro Sequence when we already know, for example, that Wednesday is having visions.Also, clearly, the series isn’t interested in showing us what classes at the school actually look like, beyond a fencing lesson or the like. Fine. This isn’t Hogwarts. I don’t need to sit in on classes or watch students studying or doing homework.We have all the classic non-school school things going on. Dorm life. Annual student competition. Special student society. Volunteer day. School dance. Parents’ weekend. Etc. Really, the series wants to be more Legacies than Harry Potter in that regard. And that’s fine.Whereas Legacies had its supernatural students band together to battle potentially world-ending threats, Wednesday the series has its title character work slowly to solve a mystery involving a threat to the school. Okay. But the series also wants to involve the rest of the Addams family, for some reason. And it wants to explore the relations between “outcasts” and “normies.” It’s just too much. We need to know more about the outcasts first.Other thoughts:- What was the deal with introducing Bianca’s mom and MorningSong? Setting up next season’s mystery?- The series went in an easier direction than it should have by having the monster be unrepentantly violent. The series could have had the Hyde hate having to do what it was told.- Wednesday recklessly leapt to conclusions toward the end, with no real comeuppance.- I get that magic was in the air, so to speak, from the moment Thing—a living severed hand—appeared, but I still wasn’t prepared for the kind of magic happening at the end. I thought the body parts were for some sort of Frankenstein experiment, not a spell.
Anyone remember the grown-up Wednesday Adams Web series? I was hoping this would be more like that–with Wednesday and her killer dead-pan navigating through the everyday world. Wednesday at Hogwarts lite just makes it all a bit twee. The Addams Family, in all its previous incarnations, was a satire of American family norms.
This review is a bit harsh. It is a children’s show and it works excellently on that level. Seems to me you judging for being somerthing it is not. There is a sweet simplicity to it I think. Who gives a fig about whether the writers have the characters on myspace etc… Is that important? Yes the dialogue isn’t great as it is hampered by Wednesday’s continued verbal reticence. She didn’t evolve but that was to create the finale which works on an emotional level beautifully. The acting is impressive and for crying out loud if you rate the dialogue in ‘House of the Dragon’ as superior to this (as you did?) then you’re outta your mind!
Well i binged it over the weekend and thought it was very good. Jenna Ortega was a great Wednesday and i found the rest of the cast to be well done. Didn’t even mind Luis Guzman.
As for the Mary Sue comment do we really need this? Yes Wednesdays seems to excel at certain things but fails miserably at others like basic interaction. Thats meant to be the point.
I’ve been really enjoying Wednesday.
When you are off the mark you are way off. Wednesday is a lighthearted breath of fresh air. It was a well worth it weekend binge. The core cast acted brilliantly and there are plenty of plot twist to keep the series going for another eight episodes. This is not MacBeth… It’s the friggin Addams Family, and it’s the best adaptation out there.
Aside from The Addams Family’s historic success as a family, there’s a reason NBC never launched spinoffs around Cosmo Kramer or Karen Walker. A good show needs a “straight character,” the main one from which the audience takes its point of view. Sure, we sympathize with certain characteristics of Norm from Cheers or Wednesday Addams, but we need to be anchored by a Frank Malone or a Jerry Seinfeld. In The Addams Family, we’re anchored by the dark but grounded Morticia Addams. She carries with her all the hallmarks of her family’s peculiar atmosphere, all of which make their stories unique and worth telling, but from a relatable perspective. Wednesday has always been one of her world’s most beloved characters, not because she’s particularly dynamic, but because she is so exclusively one-note. Gomez, Fester, Cousin It, Pugsly, Lurch, and Wednesday have all historically represented very specific aspects of life told through the windows of the Addams family’s mansion, all held together by the rationality of the home’s unconventional matriarch.In Netflix’s Wednesday, Wednesday Addams is both reduced to and expanded into the “straight character” in order to produce an origin story for a supporting character whose entire identity relies on being two dimensionally violent and unempathetic. With Wednesday playing the “straight character,” the one grounded in relatability, we’re left with a poorly CGIed Hogwarts and cliques of mythical cliches so exhausted even the CW has stopped indulging in them. Caterine Zeta Jones played an apt Morticia, but was there for little more than a virtual billboard. Jones was so digitized I wondered if she was even in the same room as her co-stars when filming, and if this gig wasn’t just a new vacation house for her.But I feel, to Netflix, none of that matters. Wednesday is already a success if it secured Netflix its quota of new subscribers per show. Wednesday succeeds because Netflix doesn’t write stories, it “produces content” for parents busying themselves with dinner and kids scrolling through phones. Unfortunately that seems to be the future of streaming content. Streaming isn’t about winning awards or being declared “prestige TV,” it’s there to sell subscriptions, the way carbon copied family sitcoms existed in the ‘80s to sell Prell. As long as it captures about 30% of our attention, it’s a success. In fact, given our countless distractions while streaming content, the goal seems to be not to capture too much of our attention, thus Netflix’s catalog of long-winded serials that would have made decent two hour movies. Netflix could have produced a gripping prequel to The Addams Family full of the family’s iconic innuendo and subtle jabs at society’s abnormal normality. But it would have instantly failed in asking viewers for their undivided attention. So instead we got Saved by the Bell: Hot Topic.
We seem to have watched different shows.
Although I would have loved to see a show more dedicated to replicating what we loved about the original Adams family movies, I do enjoy the show as it it. I understand people’s want for more from the creators but the show is enjoyable if you don’t compare it to the old movies.