It’d been a while since anything Addams family-related came out but given the sheer number of reboots/revivals happening it was understandable that I’d be apprehensive about this one, especially when it’s more of a side-story more focused around one of the side-characters instead of the family as a whole.
As always I went in with an open mind knowing that people were raving about it, and to be honest, there’s a lot to like about it. As always, spoiler-free comments first to help you decide if you should watch it or not.
Story-Spoiler-free Comments
Writing is very good
They nailed:
- individual character lines and related dialogue that highlighted each character’s personality. In particular, Wednesday’s quips
- the overarching story going through all the episodes and the slow release of information pertaining to it
- no side-arcs or filler episodes
- every episode has its own particular arc and ‘feels’ reasonably self contained
There is one questionable aspect about the writing that I’d attribute to something like “Oh we initially wrote for 12 episodes but had to cram it down to 10”, but I won’t expand on any more detail than that here – scroll down to the spoiler section for details!
Faithfulness to caricatures
One possible expectation some might have is a faithfulness to the traditional (or comic) caricatures of each of the Addams family members, of which I can quite simply say: Expect some character traits to remain, but essentially it’s a more realistic imagining of what the Addams family might look in a ‘more normal’ environment.
One that always sticks in my mind is how in the Addams family cartoons Morticia always looks like she’s gliding across the floor, but the amount of ground traversed would not necessarily match the stride of her steps, as she always maintained a figure that looked like her legs were permanently glued together at the thighs. In Netflix’s Wednesday they strike a nice balance between having a realistic stride but also something that looks like it’d have a gliding effect if one isn’t watching too closely.
I did see some internet commentary on Gomez apparently not being faithful to the cartoon version, but moreso to the original source before the cartoon version. Either way, the mannerisms are still there, and this didn’t bother me too much.
Acting
Jenny Ortega (as Wednesday) is very solid. For everyone else, let’s just say perceived age is an appropriate indicator of their perceived level of acting.
Bingeable?
There are some cliffhanger elements at the end of some episodes that tempts one to immediately watch the next episode but as someone who generally doesn’t binge-watch stuff these days I ended up watching at most two episodes per day, usually over lunch (and the second episode during dinner).
In my opinion, it can be enjoyed either way: daily gap between episodes, or watching a whole bunch in one go. However there are definitely some elements that might be offputting to some if experienced too much in a single viewing.
Overall
Honestly if the series didn’t charm you within the first two episodes, feel free to drop it. There are some legitimate perspectives of which, viewed in that light, the series does not make for ‘good’ watching through those lenses.
However, the overall sentiment I’ve seen on my side of the internet is that the majority of people loved it, so you’re probably going to like it, or find a lot to like about it regardless of your prior knowledge about the Addams family.
It’ll definitely be something to remember given the lack of media about the Addams family in general, but not something I’d watch again.
Okay now onto the spoiler-full commentary. You have been warned. Do NOT read past this point if you haven’t seen it!
Cello playing
I’m a cellist, of course I’m going to nitpick on this. In summary: Ortega’s acting is excellent and she clearly made a genuine effort with cello lessons to replicate the music being played. However, whoever did the editing together of the music with Ortega’s playing is clearly not a cellist. Three instances:
- Early on, when Wednesday is playing outside on the balcony. My only gripe here is that the sheet music displayed did not appear to be consistent with any part of the playing/melody.
- Elgar’s Cello Concerto 1st Mvt, unaccompanied. Everything was good until the last bit where the playing was not at all consistent with the music being played.
- Vivaldi’s Winter. Wednesday’s playing was consistent with the music, BUT the music played was the full string orchestra version. The scene itself showed Wednesday being the only visible musician playing, so there’s a clear mismatch between what would be the solo cello part of Vivaldi’s Winter and what was actually playing.
Diversity
Purposely putting it here (instead of in the non-spoiler section) to avoid any knee-jerk political discussion. That said, I enjoyed the diversity of not just the actors but also the spread of characters types/monsters as well. What I really liked was how there was some insight into the individual issues of each monster and how they were addressed/treated by different people.
Werewolves having their first howl
Enid Sinclair as a werewolf had a very delayed first howl (i.e. the first moment that they shapeshift into a werewolf) of which she mentions being alienated from her tribe if it never occurred. Her mother was quite keen to hasten the process of assimilation, while her father was pretty chill, and at some point Enid declares that she’s just going to go at her own pace.
Let’s just say, coming from an Asian family but being very atypical in nature, there are definitely some parallels there that resonated with me.
Sirens wearing a pendant to avoid controlling others with their voice, but still having to deal with the underlying stigma that they couldn’t be trusted
I really liked how this one played out here in terms of the siren characters having to deal with this kind of frustration and getting others to trust them. Bianca played her role well and I liked the tie in with the MLM (multi-level marketing) that her mother tried to convince Bianca into joining, as well as getting Bianca to come back to her tribe.
There are probably a few others I could touch on, but in my opinion it was a great (but not-so-subtle) nod to having a diverse population within a school, but still highlighting and acknowledging individual struggles as a result of ‘being that different’.
High school environment
In hindsight this should’ve been more obvious that with Wednesday being of high-school age, she would undoubtedly be in a high-school environment, of which there’d be normal high-school things happening.
It’s hard for me to comment on how well the ‘typical high-school dramas’ was executed here and how realistic these lines were, because my first impression was that the writing seemed pretty canned and the acting wasn’t very convincing for me, BUT in my opinion the overall balance was just right. There was not too much leaning on high school drama, there was an appropriate number of high school related events of which to flavour the environment with.
Nonetheless I did see some internet commentary on high some people were a bit taken aback at the high-school setting (and perhaps expected something….else?), so I figured it’s something I’d address here.
Pacing
The last episode probably few in too many twists in the story & reasoning in order to lead up to the conclusion, hence my comment about “Oh we initially wrote for 12 episodes but had to cram it down to 10”,
Wait wtf that’s Gwendoline Christine
If there was one person’s acting who impressed me it was Gwendoline Christine as Principal Weems. I’d recognised her face from somewhere but her character here was much more different and controlled that I actually had trouble recalling that she was in Game of Thrones.
I sincerely hope she becomes another one who can easily ‘disappear’ into a lot of varied roles much like Gary Oldman over her acting career.
Subversion humour is the best
People closer to me will know that I get a kick out of subverting peoples’ expectations, so no doubt that Wednesday’s quips had me belly laughing at times. Very honestly as someone who’d want to be able to do improv comedy at some point in my life, being able to pull these off on the fly is definitely a future dream for me.
There’s probably more I could write but there’s only so much time in the world that I can put aside for myself to detail my thoughts before I move onto the next thing I want to write about. Nonetheless, thanks for reading!
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