WEDNESDAY
WRITTEN BY A LOTTA PEOPLE
DIRECTED BY TIM BURTON
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Wednesday to her credit is rarely portrayed out of character, possibly to both the first season's credit and its detriment. In the source material she's very sadistic, but intelligent, she thrives in the macabre and thats played for humour. The same applies here, except well, theyre also trying to tell you that this behaviour sort of intrigues people. At least 3 of which later consider themselves her friends. This creates a new form of a tired trope that is the will they wont they...except with her friends.
This only becomes funnier (at least to me) when the trope is later played straight in a love triangle.
At times Wednesdays first season is playing with tired tropes in a way that feels fresh given the main character has like 0 interest in playing along. At other times it simply plays those tropes verbatim. But I don't think thats necesarrily a bad thing. For me at least i never got the sense the show didnt know exactly what it was doing, and what i was expecting, It used that knowledge to great effect to frequently get a smile or a chuckle or even a halfbaked criticism that got absolutely subverted 10 minutes later.
Which again, is probabbly down to the fact that this is a fish out of water, coming of age story, set in a prepschool....that just so happens to be full of supernatural weirdos and the main character is a toxic, sociopathic tendencey laden individual.
Youre gonna find yourself either amused by wednesday herself, or absolutely irritated by her. Which is fine you dont need to like a character to find their journey interesting (very important lesson the internet needs) but if you don't already buy into and like her just a biiiit, you might find everything else falling apart.
Ahead is the SPOILEROONI SECTION BWAHHH
GONE YET?
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Okay, so I do buy enid and wednesday, theyre complete functional opposite personalities but as the show later spells out for you, they fuffill eachothers missing bits. Enid gives wednesday a heart, wednesday gives enid a backbone. Which is why i was somewhat disapointed in the halfbaked resolution they pulled to solve the 3rd Act Breakup. She just kinda gets over it, because she has to, because wednesday cant say im sorry, thats apparently ooc.
This occurs constantly in the narrative, and while for one particular character it makes sense, a lot of the time i was wondering why the heck these people kept giving her more chances.
Suppose while it was frustrating, i cannot really think of a way to change it without betraying the point if the character, she is emotional when the extreme calls for it, and as a character study it works well.
The Big Finale is suitably big finale esque, calling in every surviving cast member to roll the dice one last time. Everyone gets their moment. And yet there are still threads left dangling. Questions left hanging, and then the show goes and addresses it by saying yeah we know, wont you just die waiting for season 2?
Which is a bold move i admit, but if netflix gives it the chop its gonna age SOOOO badly....speaking of which
Wednesday tackles racism, bigotry, liars, thieves, evil with good intent, evil with mal intent, the existence of the LGBT, literal genocide, murder most foul including that of children, and the fact that most everyone has their demons and most dickheads have reasons (but not excuses) to be the way they are.
There are jokes on everything from conversion therapy to whitewashing history, to a statue of a bigot being errected as a town hero.
Wednesday makes NO effort to hide the message its sending, and thats gonna piss people off. And as cheesy and forced as it is at times...id have it no other way. The Addams family has always been about the deviant being vilified, the outcasts, the unlikes. And how that is wrong. Why then should a darker more serious take on the IP not do the same, updated and in your face for the current world.
Art is political, it will always be so. It has always been so, its just we all got a little less subtle in recent years. And to be honest...the internet has taught me that subtly isnt deserved anymore anyway.
In the end of it all, flawed yet fresh, cliche'd yet subversive, I feel confident saying Wednesday the Series...or at least season 1 gets an
A-
And as always,
Stay Golden
Gemjax
