Spoilers Wednesday (Addams) Netflix Show

Finished episode 6. I think Laurel Gates is alive and I think I know who she's posing as.

 

I know nothing!

Sorry, I've gone a bit overboard here, I am loving their return.

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Gomez is correct!

 

I feel like Luis Guzmán resembles the original comic strip Gomez in some ways more than any of the other actors.

 

Finished it. I had mostly figured it out, but I thought the ending was great. I look forward to seeing where this goes if there's a season 2, but I do hope it stays "family-adjacent." I liked having the family members there on the sidelines, but not always present.

On a side note. Good lord Gwendoline Christie is a tall woman. 6 ft. 3 in.??!! I mean, Jenna Ortega is only 5 ft. 1 in., but still.

 

Right? Add maybe 2" heels on Gwendoline, not sure how high Jenna's combat boots add. Other than Eugene and Enid, most of the cast is quite tall in comparison.

I just finished episode 7. Damn what a great Fester that Fred Armisen guy makes. I'd be torn between another season similar to this one, and something with more of the family involved.


ETA: Before I watch episode 8, I'm going on record to say I'm rethinking who Laurel Gates might be. There have been clues that may be massive misdirects. In the end, maybe who I was thinking about (before episode 7 led us in the same direction) might be too obvious.

ETA²: Yep, it ended up being the one that looked the least like Laurel. A shame too unless she's still alive and comes back for revenge again. Damn I hope there's a season 2.

 

Two episodes down now. The second episode is packed, hunting down a mystery and the Edgar Allen Poe cup, callbacks to the movie and show. Lots of good stuff. Seriously felt more like a movie than just a single episode. I think this would be a blast to watch with a young'un but even as an old man I'm enjoying it.

I'm finding Wednesday's delivery better whether it actually is or I'm acclimating to it. I like Gwendoline Christie and Christina Ricci(!) in their roles but really everyone is pretty good. Enid is a surprise and Thing is great, I cheered when he knocked out the merman. Really enjoyed that, trying to savor these a little and not binge 'em all at once.

 

I really feel like they missed a trick not finding a way to cast Antonio Banderas as Gomez.

 

It's amazing how much screen presence and personality a hand can have.

Yeah, I'm not a good binger myself. I watched these 8 episodes over a 4 day period.

 

I feel like the whole piranaha thing was a weird choice to open the show, as it makes Wednesday out to be capable of murder (I mean realistically prianahas could have killed those swimmer boys, right?) but then for the rest of the show (that I've watched anyway) she isn't really like that. She makes sarcastic remarks about murder but you never really feel the thread that she's going to do anything, despite the opening scene.

I have been enjoying it a bit more four episodes in, at least. Jenna Ortega is great (that dance scene!) and the roommate is pretty good fun. I still find the knock-off Hogwarts setting a bit disappointing and the teen love triangle is bad (she didn't even seem that interested in either of the boys before they suddenly all start acting like the've been dating?), but overall the show isn't terrible so that's something.

The secret villain...

Spoiler

Has to be Christina Ricci, right? Otherwise why cast her as such a (up to now) bland character.

 

Well... realistically, most likely not, since the idea of piranhas swarming and devouring large animals or people is essentially a myth. It started when some Brazilian fishermen decided to impress the visiting President Theodore Roosevelt by stocking a body of water with a large number of piranhas that had been starved for several days and throwing in a dead cow or something of the sort (accounts vary), which gave Roosevelt the impression that this was their natural behavior rather than an artificially contrived circumstance. So he popularized that myth, and it was further promulgated by the media. Realistically, piranha attacks on humans are rare and usually cause only minor injuries.

Of course, one doesn't expect realism from the Addams Family, so presumably the piranhas in that universe would be the "monstrous" variety of media myth. But by the same token, Addams productions are full of gags about people being menaced by potentially lethal things, yet coming out of it intact, because the goal is to be comically macabre rather than genuinely horrific.

It's a tricky balance to strike, hinting at Addamses engaging in potentially lethal activities without crossing the line and making them unsympathetic. The original New Yorker cartoons didn't have to worry about that since they were single-panel gags, just enough to give a quick impression without getting into the consequences, and the '60s TV series didn't have to worry about it since it toned down their macabre aspects quite a bit. I always felt the Sonnenfeld movies occasionally pushed the black comedy a bit too far for my tastes. I wouldn't be surprised if Burton did too.

 

I just finished the season, oh man. I really hope it gets more seasons.

 

Yeah, I meant the way they're presented in the show rather than real life, I guess. If they're able to rip a testicle out they could kill somebody. But then the kids at Nevermore don't seem scared of Wednesday and seem more shocked that she wears drab killers than that she almost murdered some boys. I'd have preferred if if they were a bit more scared of her and we got more of a sense that Wednesday might actually do something like the opening scene again.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the show more now that I've got by the first couple of episdoes and adjusted to what it is.

 

Finally had a chance to watch the season this week and I loved every minute of it. Felt like a cross between Only Murders in the Building and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina in all of the right ways. Much like both of those shows, I loved the worldbuilding this series did through the local history, Addams history, and the different outcast cultural dynamics, although we didn't quite enough of the latter as I had hoped. Maybe in the potential second season.

I enjoyed the assortment of characters Wednesday got to know at both Neverwhere and the neighboring Jericho, but I especially loved her friendship with Enid. The sheer dichotomy of their personalities and life goals was a delight but still managed to be reasonably grounded in such situations as when Enid walked away from Wednesday after she risked Enid's life just to further Wednesday's investigations. It really helped that the chemistry between Jenna Ortega and Emma Myers was pitch perfect.

I loved how Wednesday, for all of her intelligence and resourcefulness, was still infallible and incorrectly guessed both the Hyde and master...even if it seemed clear to us outside viewers (I mean obviously Christina Ricci was going to be the master), although I was still disappointed that Tyler turned out to be the Hyde (even though I wasn't sure who else it could be and knew it wouldn't be Xavier). Nonetheless, I was thrilled by the lengthy investigation throughout the season and all of the pitfalls Wednesday had to navigate before finally coming upon the truth (and not just from her unreliable visions).

Lots of great Tim Burton pastiches throughout the whole series and not just the episodes he directed, particularly the character design of the Hyde. Maybe it was just me, but the lady who dropped off the guy who wanted to walk in the woods immediately reminded me of Large Marge. Maybe it was the deep sinister scowl on her face. Or maybe I was just imagining things.

 

Not just you.

 

I really dug that instrumental cover of Nothing Else Matters. Pretty good series though I still think it would be optimal for family viewing but I still liked it a lot myself. I was surprised I had seen Ortega before in the movie X though even as Goody she looked really different from "Wednesday". She's actually amassed a decent body of horror work in the past couple of years.

The cast was great, I liked just about everyone but in particular Wednesday, Enid, Bianca, Eugene (Moosa Mostafa is a great name!) and I thought Gwendoline Christie was good as Weems and can't think of anyone who was bad. I was rather surprised to see

Spoiler

Fred Armisen

as Uncle Fester.

They did a good job of using the framework of The Addams Family to create an entirely different type of show altogether. I haven't seen the movies in ages so I'm curious to revisit those now.

EDIT: found this on youtube

 

I'm four episodes into Wednesday and I'm liking it so far. I think my one criticism of the show is from the mind of Tim Burton and being an Addams Family universe thing, I expected it to be more wacky and weird. Right now it's Addams Family meets Harry Potter meets murder mystery.

The last episode I saw was the one with Wednesday's Dance (episode 4) and that was an amazing scene. I don't think anyone can top Ricci for me, but Ortega is doing a great job in the role.

 

The thing is, Tim Burton is an executive producer and director on the show, but the actual developers and showrunners are Alfred Gough & Miles Millar of Smallville. So I've expected all along that it would be more like Smallville than like a Tim Burton movie.

 

I did not. When I heard he was involved I thought this would be a Tim Burton style show. I still appreciate it for what it is, but even as an Addams family thing (especially Wednesday) it doesn’t really feel like an Addams Family thing.

 

Which is no doubt what the show's promoters wanted people to assume, hence playing up Burton's name in the ads. But Burton's never been that much of a writer, just a director, artist, and producer. So what makes something "Burton-style" has more to do with its artistic and directorial style than its story content. (Also its casting. If Burton had made this a decade ago, I'm sure Gomez and Morticia would've been played by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.)

 

They really have been pushing that whole "From the mind of Tim Burton" thing, haven't they? There's a lot of Burton here though, Gough & Millar wanted him from the start and to create a work at least in the aesthetic of Burton. Burton did directly design the main creature, and I'm sure it's no coincidence that Danny Elfman is doing the music. The stagy scarring on Thing seems like an homage to Frankenweenie and so on. His experience with animation probably explains why Thing is so effectively presented, even though a human actor is used for most shots I think he understands how to make such a character work. So I think we can attribute a lot of the style of the show to Burton but the story appears to sit firmly with Gough & Millar but I think it was a collaborative effort to be sure.