#somehow despite everything about me I've never seen any of the Addams Family

[tearlessrain]

straight up did a double take while watching the old Addams Family series because there's an episode where they just casually decide to ask Pablo Picasso to teach them to paint and I like. thought the bit was that Picasso is dead for the first 1/3 of the episode because I fully forgot that Picasso was actually very much alive in the 60s. Which even having double checked on wikipedia feels very incorrect.

[trainsinanime]

What amazes me most about Wednesday is how the show manages to be so good when so much of it is objectively just kind of crap. Not terrible crap, but kind of lack-lustre and easily dismissed and ignored. But somehow it manages to pull something great out of that.

The most obvious thing is that in tone and vibes, it largely ignores what the Addams family is, how they work and what they stand for. It's actually horror, not horror comedy, and it isn't really any contrast to what we consider normal life. Which is explained in-universe, sure, but I'm not actually convinced that it's the most interesting thing they could have done.

Its setting in a store brand Hogwarts is hardly original. They themed it around Edgar Allan Poe, for seemingly no reason other than that he's cool (I don't think he was a founder or alumni, and he certainly doesn't super relevant thematically). There's the vague idea of "what if Hogwarts had american high school cliques", which they don't do anything with. Harry Potter is nowadays much maligned and for very good reasons, but it did know how to make its fictional school seem interesting, deep and mysterious, and Wednesday is very lacking there. The biggest issue is that we don't spend enough time exploring the various students and their deals. We do it a bit, but it could have been more.

The wider world building creates the idea that the world has "norms" and "weirdos", which seems to be the officially accepted nomenclature, and treats them almost as if they were different sub-species. Some people are just born "weirdo", from "weirdo" families, and that's how it is. That's basic urban fantasy stuff - very basic, in fact. And again, it's not that interesting, and the show doesn't do anything with it. A key bit of classic Addams lore is that they consider themselves to be normal, and everyone else a bit weird, and thus question our ideas of what is and isn't normal. In Wednesday, these things are clearly delineated, which helps with the oppressive tone of the show, but makes it overall less deep.

And then there is the murder mystery, which is the big driver of the plot. Except it's barely a murder mystery at all. Everything we learn is because the main character has a vision that just tells them a key bit of background, or where the next important scene will be set, or, eventually, who the murderer is. Things barely ever flow, and there is very little deducting and reasoning; we just get told stuff. Again, it's not terrible, none of this is, but it could be better.

As for things that are actually terrible, I think enough has been written about the love triangle already. It never feels like Wednesday is ever interested in either the boys (her bond with Eugene is considerably stronger and more important). I think what goes underappreciated in discussions of the love triangle is that both boys are suspects in the murder mystery, and remain so until the final episode. As a result, there is always a certain distance. We don't ever actually get comfortable with any of them; we're always supposed to be wary and keep our distance, and indeed, Wednesday does. In the end, we totally get why the boys are in love with her (how could you not be? Just look at her dancing), but she barely shows any signs of attraction, and they certainly never become close friends. That's not the only problem, but it really doesn't help.

But despite this the show works anyway, because while the overall plot is a bit meh, the moment to moment stuff and in particular the actors are just stellar. Jenny Ortega: Amazing. Gwendoline Christie: Love her, she should be in everything. Thing is just perfect. And while the show drops the ball on the official romance, they really nail the relationship between Wednesday and Enid, the emotional cornerstone of the whole show. I just love watching these two together.

In the end, we have the kind of show where I logically agree with basically every single mean-spirited criticism I've ever seen about it, but at the same time I love it with my whole heart. Because it is flawed on a high level, but it nails everything in the details.