By: Alex Tilton
You can tell a lot about a show from its poster.
Aside from obvious visual indicators about production value there’s the style of the art, the writing of the taglines, the title and the names of the stars. As an indicator of overall quality, it’s not perfect, but it’s not bad either. Unless you’re talking about Netflix, a company that has perfected the art of concealing a crappy product with good looking cover art. Consequently, I didn’t know what to think when I first saw ‘Wednesday’ in the Netflix queue.
It looked decent, but then again so did Gunpowder Milkshake and a whole lot of other McNetflix shelf filler garbage. But, I was sitting on my parents couch in Arizona having run out of things to do the day before Thanksgiving, so I suggested watching it. And my family responded with a resounding cry of, ‘Ok, sure.’
It did not hook me instantly. But part of that was my prejudice. It looked and smelled an awful lot like a ‘Young Adult’ title and it took two episodes for the show to convince me that it was an honest effort at a campy, family-friendly dark comedy horror series. My overall verdict is that it’s very worth watching, but it’s far short of amazing. Tailor your expectations accordingly.
The first problem the show has is that it takes a while to define its world. Does the general public know about the supernatural crowd or don’t they? The show eventually clarifies this but it’s confusing for a while until it sinks in. The next problem they have is some mildly cringy dialogue and teen stereotypes. But this too stops being a problem once you get it through your head that the campiness is self-aware and intended to be fun.
By the end of the third episode, they’d done enough worldbuilding that I was acclimated and I felt comfortable with it and I was fully hooked. But it was iffy for a while there. They needed to do a better job introducing their world and making you give a damn about the characters. Slow-burn is a legitimate way to go, but this was too slow.
As for the casting I have no real complaints. Jenna Ortega is a strong lead and she carried the show very well. It’ll be a career making role for her and she deserves it. Catherine Zeta-Jones did a fine job as Morticia, but I felt like she needed to pick a lane rather than treading the line between motherly and threatening. Eventually I warmed up to it though. I didn’t like Luis Guzman’s interpretation of Gomez, but it wasn’t a terrible stylistic choice. Just not the one I enjoyed. I was particularly pleased at both the writing and acting of the Sheriff character. He manages to do what the plot needs him to do without coming off like a tired cliché. He’s a foil for Wednesday, but he’s not a villain. He doesn’t overact just to be a jerk and when the situation changes he reacts intelligently and believably.
The supporting cast is a mixed bag. They all did a fine job but some of them didn’t have much to work with. I feel a little bad for Emma Myers, who plays Wednesday’s roommate Enid. Her character is just way, way too much of a stereotypical boy-crazy high school girl. Growing out of that does seem to be part of her character arc, but it was still eye rolling to watch for the first few episodes. Then again, this is a show aimed at families and I am a deeply cynical middle-aged man.
Continuing on the subject of character arc, Wednesday has a good one. It’s not shockingly original, but it does work well. She’s sent to a new school, hates it at first, hates it later, continues hating it, and then eventually finds her place and decides to stay. And there was one thing in particular that I liked about how they handled her development. While Wednesday is working on figuring out the big mystery, she makes a number of wrong conclusions and bad accusations. And this doesn’t get hand waved or ignored later. The people she screwed over hate her for it, and it takes some real effort to get past it.
So, Wednesday does seem to be a winner overall. The buzz in the media is that it’s one of Netflix’s most popular English language series ever so a second season feels like a safe bet. All in all, I was satisfied.
Image source: whats-on-netflix.com