Wednesday Addams' Half-Term Report

So, I watched the first half-season of the second series of Wednesday. Is it okay to review half a season? I guess so, if that's how it comes.

There seem to be a whole slew of different ways streaming platforms choose to parcel out the goodies now. 

At one extreme there's The Online Box Set deal, where the whole season gets dumped onto the service on day one. Up at the other end, there's Let's Pretend It's The Nineties, when a single episode appears on the same day of the week, every week, until it's all over. 

A lot of people like the Box Set approach and it does have the merit of allowing viewers the choice of how to pace things. It's up to you to binge-watch or show some restraint. My preferred cadence is one episode a day so it works for me but it's obvious why the streaming platforms don't always want to do it that way. It front-loads views hugely and almost invites people to watch and wander off. 

On the other hand, it's like doing a cannonball into the cultural pool. It gets everyone's attention. That has to be good for attracting new subscribers.

Letting the season play out old school, the way the networks used to do, risks annoying the impatient but also locks everyone in for however many weeks the season lasts, which is presumably good for holding on to the subscribers you already have, always assuming you don't piss them off so much, doing it that way, they jump ship anyway. 

Having grown up with most shows playing out weekly, I'm generally fine with it. Plus if it's not a show I feel super-strongly about, I generally have the self-control to wait until all the episodes are available and then watch them one-a-day, as is my wont.

In between those extremes come the always-annoying variations, where several episodes drop at the start and more follow, sometimes one a week or in pairs or who the hell knows what. If anything's likely to make me not bother getting started, it's three episodes today then one a week for three weeks, then two together at the end. Just stop it!

Wednesday didn't go for any of those, opting instead for half the episodes now and half in September. At least, I'm assuming it's an even split. That would be eight episodes and eight is one of the common runs these days. That or ten. It's always an even number. 

I haven't checked because I'm trying to avoid spoilers and every time you run a search on anything there's a risk. You'd think just the number of episodes would be safe but who knows? 

Oh, alright then. I'll chance it...

Yep. It's eight. I squinted at the screen and that's all I saw, so phew! Got away with it.

And that would be an appropriate point for me to issue a SPOILER notice I guess. I have no idea what I'm about to write next but it's a fair bet it'll have some details that anyone who hasn't yet watched the first half and plans to won't want to know.

 

Hah! Can't miss that! I did say I wasn't exploiting the full range of visual options on the blog, didn't I? 

So, what was it like then, Season Two, Part One? 

Good, I thought. Very good, even. I watched the four episodes in four consecutive evenings and really looked forward to it each time, which is the proof. 

They're all an hour long, give or take a couple of minutes, but they felt shorter, another good indicator of quality. I also did absolutely nothing but watch the screen for the whole hour each time, by which I mean my mind didn't wander at all. Immersion was high.

The first episode began with a recap, which I certainly needed. Even as I was watching it I could barely remember most of the plot from last time. That has a lot more to do with my non-retentive memory than how memorable Season One actually was. 

I had already read that Wednesday's putative love interest from Season One, Xavier, wasn't coming back, thanks to some purported indiscretion by the actor. This is what I mean by spoilers being hard to avoid. 

I was surprised when the script dealt with his absence in the first episode. I thought they'd just pretend he'd never existed. Apparently he's off at some Swiss Finishing School for Outcasts so theoretically he could return, possibly recast, but I don't think anyone's likely to care enough about the character to want to bring him back. I can't really remember who he was anyway.

What I do remember is that in Season One there seemed to be some element of attraction between Wednesday and her roommate Enid. A lot of people were shipping them by the end of the season, to the extent that the producers came out and stated fairly plainly that it wasn't happening. 

I think they said then that they were rowing back on the whole romance thing, at least where Wednesday herself is concerned. It certainly was a major theme of the first season, who she might want to let into her closed circle of one. And the retrenchment does indeed appear to have happened. There's still a romance sub-plot but it's all focused on Enid and her competing beaus, the snake-hair guy from the first season, who has plenty of brooding personality and some teen-werewolf male model, who so far has the charisma of wet sand but who Enid is not unreasonably attracted to, given his dark good looks and general werewolfiness.

I'm rooting for snake-hair. He has good comic timing and a nice line in internalized angst and there's some chemistry between him and Enid that's absent between the would-be consenting werewolves. Clearly I don't like him enough to remember his name, though. Let me check... oh god, it's Ajax. No wonder I forgot. Who could take that seriously?

I did enjoy the various shenanigans with Enid and her two suitors but it leans very heavily into sitcom territory, which is somewhat true of the show as a whole. Of course the Addams Family has always been a sitcom at heart. I do find that easy to forget sometimes.

Speaking of the Family, they're much more present this season, with Morticia and Gomez moving into a lodge in the school grounds for wholly unconvincing plot convenience and Pugsley joining his sister as a student at Nevermore, ditto. Catherine Zeta-Jones, who I have never noticed, let alone rated, as an actor, makes an excellent Morticia, although I felt she was softening a little too much towards the end.

 

Luis Guzman as Gomez is... well, I guess Gomez is supposed to be unsettling. I'm still wondering what his quirk is, too. The global population in Wednesday-world is divided into Normies and Outcasts and every Outcast appears to have some paranormal ability but what Gomez's gift might be I still have not the slightest idea. Other than a taste for eating bugs and rats, something he shares with Pugsley, who can also generate electricity like his uncle, but surely eating bugs isn't enough on it's own. I mean, we're all supposed to be doing that, now, aren't we?

Pugsley is annoying but, again, Pugsley is meant to be annoying. He's been teamed with Eugene from the last series as some kind of double act that doesn't entirely come off. Both of them seem to have aged by about five years over the summer holiday, too. Someone does actually mention it at one point, which is good. It's impossible to miss so best make a feature of it.

Just about everyone from the first season, other than the aforementioned Xavier, returns. We'll be here all day if I go through the whole lot of them but I will just say I was surprised and delighted to see Christina Ricci pop up again, reprising her role as Marilyn Thornhill. I thought we'd seen the last of her and it seems highly unlikely we'll see any more now, after what happened in Episode 4, but I guess when you have magic in the mix you can't rule anything out.

New in the mix are Steve Buscemi, hamming it up big-time as the new Principle, Billie Piper, playing a music teacher, Joanna Lumley (With an American accent.) as Morticia's mother and Christopher Lloyd as a head in a jar. On wheels. The producers have suggested there may be seven seasons of Wednesday, which clearly suggests it's going to turn into another Harry Potter Retirement Plan For Ageing Character Actors but that's fine by me. They all put on a good turn.

Oh, and let's not forget Agnes, Wednesday's lower-classmate, super-fan and rival for the role of creepiest student on campus. I'm not sure about Agnes. She's a fun character and her invisibility affords her endless plot opportunities but the more we see of her, the less invincible Wednesday appears and I've always felt that invincibility, along with inscrutability and total lack of affect, are what makes Wednesday, as a character, work so well. 

Agnes gets the better of Wednesday altogether too much for my liking. Also, how the hell did she contrive to hang all those knives from the ceiling in the bell-tower and how did a slight, thirteen year-old girl manage to knock out two werewolves and transport them from Wednesday and Enid's room to the top of said tower? The way it's all done quite overtly off-camera suggests no-one in the script conference had any idea either.

The plot as whole, it must be said, does not bear too much close examination. I could pick on any number of threads and pick them into holes. Also, the main villain of Season One Part One is not so much a Big Bad as a Minor Threat. I'm guessing they're saving the real villain for Part 2. 

Which I am very much looking forward to watching. For all its glazing over awkward plot points and not making a whole lot of sense most of the time, Wednesday is a show bubbling over with pleasures. The script is consistently amusing, there are some good visual gags and character after character has me wishing they'd get more screen time. 

Jenny Ortega, who I probably should have mentioned earlier since it's her show, continues to be the perfect Wednesday Addams. Also, she's really short, isn't she? Now half the cast has grown up a little, it's hard to miss just how tiny she is. 

Possibly my favorite character, though, is Uncle Fester. He was always great in the original black and white series and Fred Armisen does a fantastic job of re-creating exactly that vibe. He and Wednesday seem like a natural team, too. The flashback to Wednesday, looking about eight years old, driving the getaway car as Fester robs a bank was a highlight of the half-season.

Part Two arrives on 3 September. I should have finished watching it by the end of that week. Expect a second part to the review to go with it soon after.