WEDNESDAY
SEASON 1 CHAPTER 1 – WEDNESDAY’S CHILD IS FULL OF WOE
This episode is one of the few things I’ve watched from Tim Burton that doesn’t feel very Tim Burton. We don’t get his usual whacky aesthetic, but rather a very UMBRELLA ACADEMY feel. In fact, the entire series is probably what would happen if HARRY POTTER had been written by someone who worked on STRANGER THINGS. It’s dark but manages to sneak in plenty of morbid, but oddly endearing humor. Basically, we know Wednesday enough from the main ADDAM’S FAMILY TV series that it’s fairly easy to approach the material with the understanding that we need to expect Wednesday’s macabre nature will come with a bit of heart in the end.
Acting wise this episode introduces Jenna Ortega (SCREAM) as Wednesday Addams, briefly Isaac Ordonez (A WRINKLE IN TIME) as Pugsley Addams, Catherine Zeta-Jones (ROCK OF AGES) as Morticia Addams, Luis Guzmán (THE LAST STAND) as Gomez Addams, Emma Myers (LETTERS TO GOD) as Enid Sinclair, Gwendoline Christie (STAR WARS: EPISODE VII - THE FORCE AWAKENS) as Principal Larissa Weems. There were more, but I am going to stop here until I get into later episodes.
In this episode, we learn that Nevermore is for outcasts but doesn’t specifically cater to werewolves, vampires, and mermaids. Humans can attend as well as long as they are weird enough or have some sort of extra ability like getting visions of future events, I guess? Wednesday has many talents and the second one we get exposed to is that she can fence. I would say that just being able to understand “Thing” is a talent because “Thing” is an animated hand without a body. Only in this show, everyone can understand “Thing”. She also displays other abilities in this episode, but this is meant to be fairly non-spoiler.
There is a ton to like here and even though we get some fairly subtle “wokeisms” in the script, there is a nice balance. Wednesday is anti-TikTok and doesn’t want to be a slave to technology so she doesn’t own a phone. In a show with stacks of things that are really what you would want to do in real life. Those two things fall in the category of “wisdom”.
Best Line: Those are the “fangs”, aka “vampires”, some of them have literally been here for decades.” - Enid
Second Best Line: “Whoa, you’re in black and white, like a living Instagram filter” – Ajax
Third Best Line: “I never thought it was possible to be an outcast in a school full of outcasts.” - Rowan
Fact – In the Addams Family rainy days are considered “beautiful”.
Fact 2 – Wednesday Addams was born on FRIDAY THE 13TH.
Oddity – The show doesn’t explain why Morticia and Gomez didn’t bother putting Wednesday in Nevermore Boarding School in the first place. They both attended the school.
Another weird thing is that we find out Wednesday spent five years in a Tibetan Monastery as a prisoner. This seems like it would be a huge thing, but the episode glosses over it like it’s no big deal.
Overall this episode gets a 6 out of 7. It’s a stellar introduction to the journey we are about to embark on, but a few things left out of the script or put into it, seem more like oversights than things that were done on purpose. It probably feels like I gave a lot away, but there is a ton to unpack in this first episode that I didn’t get into. We even get a few clever nodes to the original series in the script which I thought was a great touch.
Next Chapter -
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