WEDNESDAY Spoilers
Monday, November 28th, 2022 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioThe time stamp of Saturday's entry was 8:49PM. I got done writing and proofreading it around 11PM. But my vacation wasn't quite over, was it?.. I still had the rest of a Saturday night... and a whole Sunday!
Despite my poverty, I'm still paying for both Disney Plus, and Netflix, so... around 11PM, Saturday night, I decided to see what this new, Wednesday show, was all about, over on Netflix.
I did not know this show was coming, or that it had been released last Wednesday, when my vacation began.
I just started seeing a million TikToks with the same footage of Jenna Ortega in black braids and a victorian black dress doing a cool dance to, Goo Goo Muck by The Cramps.
But then I started seeing a few TikToker reviews of the show... saying they were disappointed and it wasn't very good.
But it still kept going more and more viral as the week went on... and I AM a fan of Wednesday Addams, so... I figured I'd watch the first episode or two, to kill some time on a Saturday night, and see if it was any good.
Next thing I knew, it was five in the morning, and I'd watched six episodes in a row!
--<>--
On Sunday, I made sure to get everything done early... shaving and showering... the laundry, litter boxes, and garbage... so that I could re-watch Episode 6, and then see the final two... with time to spare before bed!
I REALLY LOVED THIS SHOW!
--<>--
I think this is a good example of how, amateur reviewers, like you find on TikTok, get it wrong... when they focus too hard on what they already know, and don't see what they're actually watching.
They were comparing it to Harry Potter, and Riverdale... and one woman, who normally only reviews Marvel shows, said the plot was too convoluted and she couldn't keep it straight.
I can't speak to Riverdale, but it was nothing like Harry Potter, other than it took place at a school! I'd say the academic setting was closer X-Men... in that it was more of a safe place for kids with random powers, or who morphed into things... than a damn wizarding school!
But I feel like they borrowed from, and gave nods to, a huge range of past IPs from old CW shows like Smallville, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to Heroes, to Scooby Doo and Murder She Wrote!
It was the same kind of mass-referencing that Stranger Things has done over it's four seasons... and Wednesday, did it just as competently, and produced a product that was equally unique in it's own right.
I really liked how the school was a massive victorian style mansion with the tall mansard roofs! It was an obvious choice, and a perfect fit for an Addams Family IP, but... nobody's ever done it like that before!
------------{=0=}------------
Jenna Ortega was an absolutely brilliant Wednesday Addams, who completely stole, and carried the show!
Wednesday, the character, turns sixteen over the course of this season... something that isn't spoken outright, but that you can deduce from a conversation she has with a teacher.
And we've never seen a Wednesday this old before. In the original comics, the old 60s TV show, and the 90s movies... she was always more like nine or ten, tops?
And, of course, Wednesday's always been just a creepy side character... like, oh, lets spend a minute with their creepy little girl and see what scary shit she's up to today!
So I think both the writers, and Ortega did a phenomenal job, creating an older, fully three-dimensional Wednesday, out in the world, and worthy of being the main character.
--<>--
Having her be a teen sleuth, I think was a stroke of brilliance! But they did it without compromising the things we already loved about her, like her deadpan affect, morbid sensibilities, black & white color palette, and aggresively victorian style.
She writes a novel on an ancient typewriter. She doesn't own a smart phone or speak in modern teen vernacular.
She's a loner, and a throwback... but not to the point of being a caricature. She interacts believably with the modern people and world around her... often having a keener insight into their motives and hang-ups than they do of hers.
------------{=0=}------------
Morticia and Gomez Addams were, I think... a bit awkwardly cast. I mean, I did like that the whole family, this time around, was played by latino actors, but...
I felt like Luis Guzman was way too fat for Gomez, and too... kinda lispy? Gomez is supposed to be pretty animated, and poetic. And Guzman seemed to be struggling in his portryal.
Catherine Zeta-Jones... I think seemed like a great Morticia on paper, but... something was off.
It doesn't really matter, however, since this is Wednesday's story, so we didn't see much of them.
Pugsley, played by Isaac Orodonez, was, arguably the best Pugsley I've ever seen, however! For as few scenes and lines as he had... he made me care about Pugsley.
Lurch ONLY appears in the background, standing by the car... and has no lines, but I still think George Burcea was pretty great, in that limited role!
Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester was an absolute DELIGHT! My only complaint was... he was too skinny!
--<>--
But, by far, the single best choice they made, when it came to the larger Addam's Family still being part of this solo Wednesday story... was including THING as her sidekick at school!
Oh my god! I can't believe there isn't more talk about Thing, going on, right now!
------------{=0=}------------
Giving Christina Ricci a major supporting role, was another stroke of genius! And nobody's talking about the fact that her character's name is Marilyn, right?... because she's the only normie at the freak school?
Marilyn was the Munster's normie daughter! And yes, Munsters was just a rip off of the Addams Family... using characters further ripped off from Universal Studio's monsters, but... I dunno... I thought naming her character Marilyn was a nod to the Munsters.
Emma Myers, I think did a great job as Enid, Wednesday's room mate! The two had a great, oddball-couple chemistry.
The love triangle... which so many people are complaining about right now... I think was actually done well... simply because of how these two guys are both so convinced Wednesday is into them... when she gives neither one ANY SIGNAL AT ALL EVER!
This is the most deadpan, independent, asexual, borderline autistic girl ever, and yet both guys are like, "I thought we had something here! What's with all the mixed signals, Wednesday?"
That was funny, but SO WAS... the fact that Wednesday ended up getting one of them thrown into prison in chains!.. and then tortured the other one with a TASER, and was just about to drive a metal stake into his kneecap with a mini-sledge hammer before the cops arrived!
Like... boys... THIS is what you signed up for... thinking Wednesday Addams would make a nice little, goth girlfriend!
--<>--
People also had a problem with Wednesday being a bit at odds with her mother... as this is not supposed to be how things are with the Addams Family.
But all three of the leads, Wednesday, Enid, and the siren, Bianca... were all at odds with their mothers!
I just took that for being a standard theme in female-centric stories of this genre, where the leads are all younger women, coming of age.
Wednesay, Enid, and Bianca could not be more different from one another in their personalities... and even ethnicities... being latino, white, and black, respectively... yet they share a generational drive to be more independent and self-possessed than their mothers.
------------{=0=}------------
But speaking of motherhood... Two questions;
Birthday first!.. Wednesday says in the first episode that she was not born on Wednesday... but rather on Friday the 13th. And then later in the season, her damn birthday becomes a huge plot point!
She is thrown a surprise birthday party in Crackstone's crypt... that she doesn't much enjoy. She uses her birthday as an excuse to get Enid and Tyler to join her investigating the old Gates' house...
And Marylin Thornhill (Christina Ricci) gives her a copy of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein for her birthday... mentioning that Shelly got it published at the age of 19... to which Wednesday replies that she is on a mission to match that record... and has two years & 364 days left to do so!
That's how we know Wednesday had just turned 16... but can we deduce her actual birth date?
Well, if she's 16, then she was born in 2006. And in 2006, there were only two Friday the 13ths... in January, and October.
Given that this show takes place in New England... it is definitely NOT January! But there are all kinds of leaves on the ground and seems very much like late fall so... her birthday has to be October 13th!
She's a Libra!
Makes sense for her character... but she's close enough to Scorpio that... maybe we can forgive Tyler and Xavier for thinking she was down to F?
--<>--
The bigger mystery, however is... how is Wednesday Addams a direct blood descendant of Goody Addams, from the 1600s?
Is, Addams, Goody's maiden name?.. or her married name?
Goody has to have had children... to have a direct blood descendant centuries later... but we're given no indication that she was married... or that Addams was her married name.
We also have the fact that Morticia Addams has visions... same as Wednesday is now having in the show. And for all the world it sounds like Wednesday inherited this ability from her mother.
So... is Addams, Morticia's maiden name?
How can that be, if she's married to Gomez Addams?
It seems like the writers just didn't think about this at all... because either Goody should've had a different last name... or Gomez should be the one who passed the vision power to his daughter...
UNLESS...
Surnames are handed down MATRILINEALLY in the Addams family!
In other words... Morticia Addams is a direct descendant of Goody Addams... and when Gomez married Morticia... he took HER last name!
If this is what they MEANT to imply... I like it!
And it DOES make sense!
Goody and the other outcasts of her day were seen as demonic freaks by the pilgrims, so, it would make sense she was a matriarch who handed down her surname to her descendants, and that all Addams women have married men who took their wives name, down to Gomez himself.
This would imply that in Wednesday's case, she shouldn't have quite as much of a problem with her Mother than Enid or Bianca... because Morticia's not playing second fiddle to her husband the same way the other Mom's are to theirs.
The only kink in this theory is that the Sheriff, Principal, Mayor, and Coroner all knew Gomez before he married Morticia and... never mention him as having had a previous surname in school... at the time he was accused of killing the Gates boy.
But... nothing a little retconning couldn't fix!
------------{=0=}------------
As for the TikTok reviewer who said the plot was too convoluted to follow... it absolutely was NOT!
I watched this whole season DRUNK, to a greater or lesser degree... and I could follow the plot just fine! Every single B-plot was tied up into the main plot and paid off at the end!.. except for one.
The one exception was Bianca and the Mayor's son kinda talking about... starting over and trying to be better or something. But it was such a MINOR B-plot that it didn't distract from anything, or waste any real run time.
EVERYTHING ELSE... from the bee keeper kid in a coma for three episodes... to the psychology lady... to the Sheriff and his son... the Mayor, Principal, and Coroner... Enid the roommate, and Marylin Thornhill... the seemingly throw-away goofy nice botany teacher... got tied into the main plot, and paid off at the conclusion!
In that sense, it was a CLASSIC whodunnit!
I mentioned, Murder She Wrote, at the start and... yeah!... I mean, just like Jessica Fletcher, Wednesday is an author here... who is writing a murder mystery... and who is also investigating one in real life... doing all the things that such author/sleuths do...
like butting heads with the Sheriff, and the Principal... and confronting suspects, and making accusations... laying out the evidence of their guilt.
If you can't follow a plot like that?..
You've been watching WAY too many Marvel movies, and not enough of anything else!
------------{=0=}------------
As for actual spoilers... I DID suspect that Christina Ricci was gonna be the villain... but I really WAS thrown off again and again. I really did not see exactly where it was gonna go until the final episode.
I didn't think the monster would be a Hyde, as in Jekyll and Hyde. I didn't think Tyler would be the Hyde. I didn't think the Hyde would be controlled by a normie master. I didn't see the actual resurrection of Crackstone coming the way it did!
It was good fun, thorugh and through!
------------{=0=}------------
I hope Wednesday has a second season... and I think it will, given how much attention it seems to have gotten the past week.
They could even take this version of Wednesday all the way to post-graduate adult life as a sleuthing author or private eye in the big city, in my opinion!
But... that's all years away now.
Suffice it to say for now, that I did end my Thanksgiving Vacation by binge-watching this Netflix show of the moment... and had a great time!
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
Despite my poverty, I'm still paying for both Disney Plus, and Netflix, so... around 11PM, Saturday night, I decided to see what this new, Wednesday show, was all about, over on Netflix.
I did not know this show was coming, or that it had been released last Wednesday, when my vacation began.
I just started seeing a million TikToks with the same footage of Jenna Ortega in black braids and a victorian black dress doing a cool dance to, Goo Goo Muck by The Cramps.
But then I started seeing a few TikToker reviews of the show... saying they were disappointed and it wasn't very good.
But it still kept going more and more viral as the week went on... and I AM a fan of Wednesday Addams, so... I figured I'd watch the first episode or two, to kill some time on a Saturday night, and see if it was any good.
Next thing I knew, it was five in the morning, and I'd watched six episodes in a row!
On Sunday, I made sure to get everything done early... shaving and showering... the laundry, litter boxes, and garbage... so that I could re-watch Episode 6, and then see the final two... with time to spare before bed!
I REALLY LOVED THIS SHOW!
I think this is a good example of how, amateur reviewers, like you find on TikTok, get it wrong... when they focus too hard on what they already know, and don't see what they're actually watching.
They were comparing it to Harry Potter, and Riverdale... and one woman, who normally only reviews Marvel shows, said the plot was too convoluted and she couldn't keep it straight.
I can't speak to Riverdale, but it was nothing like Harry Potter, other than it took place at a school! I'd say the academic setting was closer X-Men... in that it was more of a safe place for kids with random powers, or who morphed into things... than a damn wizarding school!
But I feel like they borrowed from, and gave nods to, a huge range of past IPs from old CW shows like Smallville, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to Heroes, to Scooby Doo and Murder She Wrote!
It was the same kind of mass-referencing that Stranger Things has done over it's four seasons... and Wednesday, did it just as competently, and produced a product that was equally unique in it's own right.
I really liked how the school was a massive victorian style mansion with the tall mansard roofs! It was an obvious choice, and a perfect fit for an Addams Family IP, but... nobody's ever done it like that before!
Jenna Ortega was an absolutely brilliant Wednesday Addams, who completely stole, and carried the show!
Wednesday, the character, turns sixteen over the course of this season... something that isn't spoken outright, but that you can deduce from a conversation she has with a teacher.
And we've never seen a Wednesday this old before. In the original comics, the old 60s TV show, and the 90s movies... she was always more like nine or ten, tops?
And, of course, Wednesday's always been just a creepy side character... like, oh, lets spend a minute with their creepy little girl and see what scary shit she's up to today!
So I think both the writers, and Ortega did a phenomenal job, creating an older, fully three-dimensional Wednesday, out in the world, and worthy of being the main character.
Having her be a teen sleuth, I think was a stroke of brilliance! But they did it without compromising the things we already loved about her, like her deadpan affect, morbid sensibilities, black & white color palette, and aggresively victorian style.
She writes a novel on an ancient typewriter. She doesn't own a smart phone or speak in modern teen vernacular.
She's a loner, and a throwback... but not to the point of being a caricature. She interacts believably with the modern people and world around her... often having a keener insight into their motives and hang-ups than they do of hers.
Morticia and Gomez Addams were, I think... a bit awkwardly cast. I mean, I did like that the whole family, this time around, was played by latino actors, but...
I felt like Luis Guzman was way too fat for Gomez, and too... kinda lispy? Gomez is supposed to be pretty animated, and poetic. And Guzman seemed to be struggling in his portryal.
Catherine Zeta-Jones... I think seemed like a great Morticia on paper, but... something was off.
It doesn't really matter, however, since this is Wednesday's story, so we didn't see much of them.
Pugsley, played by Isaac Orodonez, was, arguably the best Pugsley I've ever seen, however! For as few scenes and lines as he had... he made me care about Pugsley.
Lurch ONLY appears in the background, standing by the car... and has no lines, but I still think George Burcea was pretty great, in that limited role!
Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester was an absolute DELIGHT! My only complaint was... he was too skinny!
But, by far, the single best choice they made, when it came to the larger Addam's Family still being part of this solo Wednesday story... was including THING as her sidekick at school!
Oh my god! I can't believe there isn't more talk about Thing, going on, right now!
Giving Christina Ricci a major supporting role, was another stroke of genius! And nobody's talking about the fact that her character's name is Marilyn, right?... because she's the only normie at the freak school?
Marilyn was the Munster's normie daughter! And yes, Munsters was just a rip off of the Addams Family... using characters further ripped off from Universal Studio's monsters, but... I dunno... I thought naming her character Marilyn was a nod to the Munsters.
Emma Myers, I think did a great job as Enid, Wednesday's room mate! The two had a great, oddball-couple chemistry.
The love triangle... which so many people are complaining about right now... I think was actually done well... simply because of how these two guys are both so convinced Wednesday is into them... when she gives neither one ANY SIGNAL AT ALL EVER!
This is the most deadpan, independent, asexual, borderline autistic girl ever, and yet both guys are like, "I thought we had something here! What's with all the mixed signals, Wednesday?"
That was funny, but SO WAS... the fact that Wednesday ended up getting one of them thrown into prison in chains!.. and then tortured the other one with a TASER, and was just about to drive a metal stake into his kneecap with a mini-sledge hammer before the cops arrived!
Like... boys... THIS is what you signed up for... thinking Wednesday Addams would make a nice little, goth girlfriend!
People also had a problem with Wednesday being a bit at odds with her mother... as this is not supposed to be how things are with the Addams Family.
But all three of the leads, Wednesday, Enid, and the siren, Bianca... were all at odds with their mothers!
I just took that for being a standard theme in female-centric stories of this genre, where the leads are all younger women, coming of age.
Wednesay, Enid, and Bianca could not be more different from one another in their personalities... and even ethnicities... being latino, white, and black, respectively... yet they share a generational drive to be more independent and self-possessed than their mothers.
But speaking of motherhood... Two questions;
- What is Wednesday's birthday?
- How exactly is she related to Goody Addams?
Birthday first!.. Wednesday says in the first episode that she was not born on Wednesday... but rather on Friday the 13th. And then later in the season, her damn birthday becomes a huge plot point!
She is thrown a surprise birthday party in Crackstone's crypt... that she doesn't much enjoy. She uses her birthday as an excuse to get Enid and Tyler to join her investigating the old Gates' house...
And Marylin Thornhill (Christina Ricci) gives her a copy of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein for her birthday... mentioning that Shelly got it published at the age of 19... to which Wednesday replies that she is on a mission to match that record... and has two years & 364 days left to do so!
That's how we know Wednesday had just turned 16... but can we deduce her actual birth date?
Well, if she's 16, then she was born in 2006. And in 2006, there were only two Friday the 13ths... in January, and October.
Given that this show takes place in New England... it is definitely NOT January! But there are all kinds of leaves on the ground and seems very much like late fall so... her birthday has to be October 13th!
She's a Libra!
Makes sense for her character... but she's close enough to Scorpio that... maybe we can forgive Tyler and Xavier for thinking she was down to F?
The bigger mystery, however is... how is Wednesday Addams a direct blood descendant of Goody Addams, from the 1600s?
Is, Addams, Goody's maiden name?.. or her married name?
Goody has to have had children... to have a direct blood descendant centuries later... but we're given no indication that she was married... or that Addams was her married name.
We also have the fact that Morticia Addams has visions... same as Wednesday is now having in the show. And for all the world it sounds like Wednesday inherited this ability from her mother.
So... is Addams, Morticia's maiden name?
How can that be, if she's married to Gomez Addams?
It seems like the writers just didn't think about this at all... because either Goody should've had a different last name... or Gomez should be the one who passed the vision power to his daughter...
UNLESS...
Surnames are handed down MATRILINEALLY in the Addams family!
In other words... Morticia Addams is a direct descendant of Goody Addams... and when Gomez married Morticia... he took HER last name!
If this is what they MEANT to imply... I like it!
And it DOES make sense!
Goody and the other outcasts of her day were seen as demonic freaks by the pilgrims, so, it would make sense she was a matriarch who handed down her surname to her descendants, and that all Addams women have married men who took their wives name, down to Gomez himself.
This would imply that in Wednesday's case, she shouldn't have quite as much of a problem with her Mother than Enid or Bianca... because Morticia's not playing second fiddle to her husband the same way the other Mom's are to theirs.
The only kink in this theory is that the Sheriff, Principal, Mayor, and Coroner all knew Gomez before he married Morticia and... never mention him as having had a previous surname in school... at the time he was accused of killing the Gates boy.
But... nothing a little retconning couldn't fix!
As for the TikTok reviewer who said the plot was too convoluted to follow... it absolutely was NOT!
I watched this whole season DRUNK, to a greater or lesser degree... and I could follow the plot just fine! Every single B-plot was tied up into the main plot and paid off at the end!.. except for one.
The one exception was Bianca and the Mayor's son kinda talking about... starting over and trying to be better or something. But it was such a MINOR B-plot that it didn't distract from anything, or waste any real run time.
EVERYTHING ELSE... from the bee keeper kid in a coma for three episodes... to the psychology lady... to the Sheriff and his son... the Mayor, Principal, and Coroner... Enid the roommate, and Marylin Thornhill... the seemingly throw-away goofy nice botany teacher... got tied into the main plot, and paid off at the conclusion!
In that sense, it was a CLASSIC whodunnit!
I mentioned, Murder She Wrote, at the start and... yeah!... I mean, just like Jessica Fletcher, Wednesday is an author here... who is writing a murder mystery... and who is also investigating one in real life... doing all the things that such author/sleuths do...
like butting heads with the Sheriff, and the Principal... and confronting suspects, and making accusations... laying out the evidence of their guilt.
If you can't follow a plot like that?..
You've been watching WAY too many Marvel movies, and not enough of anything else!
As for actual spoilers... I DID suspect that Christina Ricci was gonna be the villain... but I really WAS thrown off again and again. I really did not see exactly where it was gonna go until the final episode.
I didn't think the monster would be a Hyde, as in Jekyll and Hyde. I didn't think Tyler would be the Hyde. I didn't think the Hyde would be controlled by a normie master. I didn't see the actual resurrection of Crackstone coming the way it did!
It was good fun, thorugh and through!
I hope Wednesday has a second season... and I think it will, given how much attention it seems to have gotten the past week.
They could even take this version of Wednesday all the way to post-graduate adult life as a sleuthing author or private eye in the big city, in my opinion!
But... that's all years away now.
Suffice it to say for now, that I did end my Thanksgiving Vacation by binge-watching this Netflix show of the moment... and had a great time!
°¦}
