Wednesday (season 1)

IP may defiantly remain king, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still room for creative expression. Take Netflix’s newest breakout hit - series creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar could easily have settled for an umpteenth variation of The Addams Family - the devilishly morbid riff on the traditional nuclear family first dreamt up by cartoonist Charles Addams, whose popularity has endured for close to 85 years. Instead, they chose - rather ingeniously - to build a show entirely around Wednesday, the Addams clan’s dispassionately deadpan teenage daughter, who - let’s be honest - is most people’s favorite character anyway (particularly following Christina Ricci’s iconic portrayal in the 90’s live action films). The result is a ticklishly macabre teen horror comedy - like a subversive reimagining of Veronica Mars tricked out with a tantalizing fusion of gallows humor and gothic flair. 

Jenna Ortega assumes the title role, and she enjoyed a breakout year in 2022 - appearing in the horror films Scream and X, as well as the SXSW-winning indie The Fallout. It’s hardly a stretch to suggest that the show rests entirely and unequivocally on her diminutive, pigtailed frame. The character of Wednesday is a deceptive quandary for any actress - her stoic moroseness both exceptionally easy and exceptionally difficult to play. But Ortega is game, and commits fully to the role. She fixes her face with a dour, recalcitrant scowl that appears impregnable, her lips pursed with scorn and her eyes heavy-lidded with preemptive boredom (Ortega supposedly never blinks in the entire series). Her monotone delivery rarely quavers… yet she commands a wide spectrum of emotions that breach her otherwise impassive features in impressively subtle ways; in this case, the minute adjustment of an eyebrow or facial muscle, or the precise angle she tilts her head conveys volumes. If Ricci seemed more preternaturally suited to the role, that’s only because Ortega is called upon to do far more. If her previous films hinted at her potential, this is the performance that cements her stardom.          

After an unfortunate incident involving piranhas and the boys water polo team, Wednesday is expelled from yet another high school and subsequently finds herself enrolled at Nevermore Academy - her parents’ beloved alma mater. Luis Guzman and Catherine Zeta-Jones are well-cast as Gomez and Morticia, but they’re basically limited to a pair of early episodes (Fred Armisen pops up as Uncle Fester later in the season) - it really is Wednesday’s show lock, stock and barrel, and only the disembodied hand Thing (a marvelously expressive triumph of FX work) can be counted as a series regular (even in their limited screentime, Ortega’s chemistry with Zeta-Jones is considerable; it would be a shame if their relationship weren’t utilized more fully in season two).  

Nevermore suggests The Academy of Unseen Arts from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, but it feels more like Hogwarts with a heavy infusion of Tim Burton’s kook-goth DNA (the veteran filmmaker helms the first four episodes and is such a natural fit on both a spiritual and stylistic level, one almost forgets it was actually Barry Sonnenfeld who directed the films). To a certain extent, the show wants to have it both ways. Nevermore is a haven for supernatural freaks and oddballs and weirdos (they’re literally referred to as “outcasts”)… and yet Wednesday is somehow depicted as a disruptive force, swimming upstream against the typical high school social currents. It doesn’t help that virtually no other character on the show is a genuine match for her - not Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones) as Nevermore’s tight-faced principal Larissa Weems; not mooning townie Tyler (Hunter Doohan) or brooding classmate Xavier (Percy Hynes White), who form the opposite and the adjacent to Wednesday’s hypotenuse in a would-be love triangle; not the town sheriff (Jamie McShane) or Wednesday’s court-mandated therapist (Riki Lindhome); and not resident Queen Bee Bianca (Joy Sunday) or her siren cohorts or the secret society known as the Nightshades. The one exception is Emma Myers as Wednesday’s almost pathologically bubbly werewolf roomie Enid - her vibrant pastels and Wednesday’s monochromatic gloom separated by a demarcation line that literally bisects the stained glass window that dominates their attic dorm room (Wednesday, explaining that she’s allergic to color - “I break out into hives and then the flesh peels off my bones”). But their rapport is joyously good… and when the emotional payoff between them comes, it’s a moment that’s so fully-earned that even the hardest heart is bound to quicken. It’s one of the most endearing female friendships on TV.  

Wednesday further evokes the Harry Potter formula in terms of the everyday rhythms and rituals of school life being juxtaposed against a larger mystery to unravel… in this case a murderous creature whose trail of bodies triggers Wednesday’s inner-sleuth (not to mention her recent tendency towards psychic visions). The payoff isn’t terribly difficult to suss out - each red herring fairly obvious in intent - but that doesn’t detract from the show’s mordant sense of fun (Tyler, trying to appeal to Wednesday’s fondness for horror films, screens Legally Blonde for her. “That was torture. Thank you,” she remarks afterwards). Watching Wednesday command the entire school’s attention with a blistering late-night cello rendition of “Paint It Black” is an obvious highlight, but the season’s most universally beloved moment (if legions of TikTok videos are to be believed) comes when she cuts loose to “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps at the Nevermore dance - her eyes widening as if possessed, her normally repressed limbs goosed into life, as if by electrical current. But then that has always been the appeal of Wednesday Addams - an icon to those who chafe at the pressure of trying to fit in, a patron saint of eccentricity, an unapologetic outsider who’s completely comfortable in her own deathly pale skin.​

“I act as if I don’t care if people dislike me. Deep down… I secretly enjoy it.” Nonetheless, by season’s end, Wednesday has managed to amass her own fiercely loyal Scooby gang, and it’s an appealing group… the sort that make the prospect of a return to Nevermore a giddy no-brainer. But then that’s the show’s most unexpected, unlikely triumph - Wednesday’s child may be full of woe, but Wednesday’s Netflix series has a big, bloody, beating heart.