You really can’t do anything today. Just release some piranhas into the poolwhere the water polo team that bullies your brother is training and before youknow it, the parents of a player who was bitten in the private parts will sueyou for attempted murder and you will have to change schools.
Stephen WerbrouckFriday, November 25, 202212:00
It happens to Wednesday Addams, the main character in the new comedy horrorseries ‘Wednesday’. After her improper use of the voracious fish, the teenagegirl is taken from Nancy Reagan High School by her parents and taken to theboarding school where they once spent their days: Nevermore, a creepy buildingsurrounded by forests that includes young vampires, werewolves and otheroutcasts receive an education. ‘Here you are among equals who will understandyou,’ her father says cheerfully when they drop her off. “Who knows, you mighteven make friends!”
‘Wednesday’ is a new spin-off of ‘The Addams Family’, a series of cartoonsfrom Charles Addams about a socially maladjusted family who appeared inThe New Yorker magazine and were cast in a sitcom in the 1960s and two moviesin the 1990s. In this series, for the first time, the story revolves notaround mother and father Addams, but around the daughter, who is no longer arebellious child but a rebellious teenager, blessed with a very sharp tongueand a cynical look that even Niels Destadsbader would silence. ‘Wednesday’was therefore made for an audience that was far from born when the films cameto the cinema and that therefore has no message that Christina Ricki – atthe time, thanks to her portrayal of Wednesday, grew into a child star – has asupporting role. For those viewers Jenna Ortega who broke through as ateenager on the Disney Channel, is perhaps the most famous name in the cast.
Ortega is also excellent as the title character and from the first scene – theone with the piranhas – portrays Wednesday with a perfect mix of mildlypsychopathic detachment and amused worldliness. She is helped in this by thescreenwriters, who have clearly enjoyed their efforts to give the girl aslurid a sense of humor as possible. For example, when Wednesday is asked whatpeople should think of her when they learn that she has attempted murder onher conscience, she coldly replies, “That would be terrible, because everyonewould know I failed.” And when the black-and-white teenager arrives atNevermore and sees her ‘roommate’ Enid’s colorful room, she dryly states that’it looks like a rainbow has vomited here’.
The performances (with Ortega and Ricci also Gwendoline Christie as theheadmaster of Nevermore and Catherine Zeta Jones as mother Morticia) andthe witty dialogues are also the great assets of ‘Wednesday’, along with ofcourse the visual genius of Tim Burton , who – his debut for TV – directedfour of the eight episodes. It is clear that the man behind ‘EdwardScissorhands’ or ‘Alice in Wonderland’ has been given the necessary money toindulge himself, because a teen series rarely looked so beautiful: the scenein which the statue of the founder of Jericho, the In fact, the town whereNevermore lies, goes up in flames while Wednesday plays the cello, grinning,is one of the most impressive things I’ve seen on television lately. TheAchilles’ heel of the series, however, is the story, or rather the differentstories that the makers try to tell together.
‘Wednesday’ starts as a series about a girl who, with the help of apsychologist, tries to find her place in the world, but soon becomes amysterious thriller full of supernatural elements. After all, as an amateurwriter of detective novels, the teenager takes a more than healthy interest insome strange murders in the woods around Nevermore and during herinvestigation she comes across a dark past in which her own family and theinhabitants of Jericho played a role. The tension is built up efficiently inthe first season and because of the many twists and turns and revelations itnever gets boring, but you gradually get the feeling that you are seeing thatpart – the secret societies, the cruel monsters, the people who are not whothey seem – more often. have seen. Perhaps a version of ‘Wednesday’ that onlyrevolved around the title character would have been a better series.