#technically enid and wednesday quip but

[hydenraven]

WEDNESDAY & TYLER QUIPS (3/?)

[half-giant]

So I finished that new Wednesday TV show, and I have thoughts about it. But, in short: it wasn’t bad, just disappointing. Spoilers throughout this post if you care.

I’ll start with what I liked:

The casting, particularly for the Addams themselves, was fantastic. Luis Guzmán played Gomez, and was practically on par with Raul Julia. I can see him doing the Mamushka. Catherine Zeta-Jones is a lovely Morticia. She’s a little more lighthearted than I expected, but she makes it feel authentic. And Fred Armisen makes for a both creepy and kooky Uncle Fester.

And the other cast were fun as well. You can tell they had a good time making the show. They come across as a little Riverdaley at times, but that comes down to the writing (which I’ll be getting to).

And I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about Jenna Ortega as Wednesday. She is THE highlight of the show, delivering her lines perfectly, and capturing the feel of a girl from a family of lovable psychopaths. Even when everything else seemed bad, I enjoyed her as Wednesday.

Also Thing. I don’t think this counts as casting, but Thing was done very well. Incredibly expressive given that Thing is just a hand. I think my favorite moment was in episode one when he curls down two of his fingers to simulate bending the knee in submission.

The set design and costuming were also done very well. The school uniforms gave a cohesive aesthetic to most of the cast, while still allowing characterization through the minor customization of done by individuals. The scenes were mostly kept to a few key sets: Wednesday and Enid’s room, The Conservatory (where all two or three classes we see are held), The Weathervane (a café), and Principal Weems office, as well as the woods. And those sets look very pretty, as are the one or two off sets, even if they’re less complex.

The quips, for the most part, were actually funny, and the show let itself sit in emotional moments without feeling a need to undercut them. That’s a low bar to clear, sure, but I’ve seen enough Marvel movies that it feels refreshing.

The moment in particular that most impressed me was when Thing was stabbed and Wednesday thought he was dead. She’s on the verge of tears (we know she hasn’t cried since her pet was killed as a child) and Uncle Fester is shocking him to try to resuscitate him or something. Here she tries to make a quip, but it doesn’t come off as funny. It comes off like a scared girl who’s afraid of losing her friend, who’s afraid it’s already too late. (I don’t know whether this was something the writers intended or just something Ortega interpreted herself, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt given how well it turned out)

Now onto the stuff I thought wasn’t so good. Which I think I shall divide into questions I asked multiple times while watching:

Why do they call themselves that? The show makes it clear pretty early on that in this world vampires, werewolves, and all sorts of other monsters not only exist but are known by the world at large. Nevermore Academy is a place for all those freaks and weirdos (affectionate) to gather. And they call them “outcasts”, which is used as a technical term and comes off a bit stilted (particularly when Wednesday has a psychic vision where a bunch of New England puritans say it).

It’s much weirder, however, when everyone who isn’t an outcast is called a “normie.” Now, if this were a thing the students used it wouldn’t be so bad (and for the 3/4 of an episode it’s used that way I liked it), but it seems to also be the technical term (it’s used by the principal, the mayor, and the sheriff). I feel like I’m 16 again the number of times I heard normie used. I would rather die than be 16 again.

Why weren’t they in college? This is a question I have for most every show set in a high school, and Wednesday fails to give a satisfactory answer. The characters seem to spend more time out of class than in it. They are constantly off campus. One of the characters, Tyler (who I presume is also in high school), seems to spend every moment not at home working at the local cafe, morning and evening.

Why are the Addams family so adverse to murder? Wednesday seems appalled by the idea her father could be a murderer. And her Mother is appalled that Wednesday believes her father is a murderer. Tied into this, in a flashback, we see Gomez get his ass handed to him by some rando (not actually a rando but he kinda is) and seem unable to fight. Morticia too, seemed to not understand how to hold a sword, despite being the captain of the fencing team.

In The Addams Family (1991), Morticia and Gomez discuss meeting at Gomez’s cousin’s funeral when he was “Still a suspect.” Then in Addams Family Values, Gomez accidentally cooks a stripper in a cake for his brother’s bachelor party. It’s pretty sexist, but it shows the family’s attitude towards manslaughter and murder. Nonchalance.

And in Wednesday, they have this attitude 90% of the time, but then actual murder happens and suddenly it’s “Your father is innocent.” I wish he had murdered that dude, it would have been cooler.

Wait, why did no one comment on the bad guys (One of whom is an actual Puritan witchhunter) using magic? Isn’t that, like, super hypocritical? Asking this question almost worries me that I’m asking to have my hand held and be spoonfed my morality, but I honestly don’t think the writers even realized the contradiction here. I figured someone would have said even a throw-away line about this. But no, everyone just accepts that the bad guys use magic. I’m not surprised the bad guys are hypocrites, but you’d think that someone would at least use that to make a point.

If Wednesday is so woke, why does she act like the cops are the good guys? This could be better phrased as “Why isn’t this show subversive when it clearly wants to be?” I actually think I have a good answer for this one, Tim Burton. He likes the aesthetics of transgression, but doesn’t actually like transgressing. His characters look like freaks but aren’t. The word for this where I came from is poser.

Wednesday works as a detective and constantly tries to collaborate with the sheriff despite knowing that he hates her, thinks her father is a murderer, and also doesn’t want her around. The end of the season shows that he’s corrupt (he at the very least suspected his son was a monster), but she insists on doing it through proper channels or whatever.

In addition, the show uses “woke” language a lot, and it makes me cringe every time. I don’t mind that it wants to be woke, I’m not some chud. In fact I encourage it. You might even call me a feminist. The problem with Wednesday (2022)’s language is that it merely comes across like early 2010′s pop feminism, without actually saying anything. A character says “There’s no patriarchy in the [bee]hive.” I think that sentence alone encompasses everything I mean.

Do you think this could have used a rewrite? That’s a bad way to use my framing device, but I don’t know how else to say it. A lot of the show has good ideas, but it needs rewritten to actually be good. Whether this is a dialogue, or characters, or plotting, or just factual information. We establish that Wednesday is smart. I like this a lot. I love it when a girl gets to be smart in media. I wish she sounded smart. I wish anyone sounded smart. No one sounds stupid luckily, but there wasn’t enough time spent refining the script. Instead we just get glimpses of what it could have been. Maybe I have too high a standard for TV, or media in general ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Most importantly, why wasn’t it gay? I was properly queerbaited by the marketing for this show, and I want to complain about how ungay this show is. Despite making a poster for the show with the text “Wednesgay,” there are only two queer characters in the show. They are the mothers of Eugene and are in maybe three scenes with maybe 10 lines between the two of them. This damn show promised me a gay Wednesday Addams, and instead I got her stuck in the world’s shittiest love triangle between the guy we’re supposed to think is the murderer and the actual murderer (who are both the most CW characters in the show). For that alone I must give this show a 0/10.

I will watch season two but I will be frowning and shaking my head throughout.