Hey, I think I like the Addams Family! I had a big old crush on Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams when I was 3 years old! I have hazy, bizarrely twisted yet fond toddler memories of the 1991 movie. I heard this Netflix show was good enough. Why not?

The Premise

Wednesday is a coming-of-age supernatural horror comedy drama about Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) at age 16. She gets expelled from school and her parents Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) decide to enroll her at Nevermore Academy, their alma mater, overseen by Principal Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie). The school enrolls, like, werewolves and shapeshifters. Wednesday’s talent is being off-putting, but she also has psychic abilities that she inherited from Morticia, apparently.

Wednesday has a hard time making friends at first, which is exactly the way she wants it. While she kept entangled in a murder mystery, she starts becoming closer to the people around her in more ways than one hubba hubba. But not really. Twists and turns abound until it is revealed that the real villain of the season is Christina Ricci (spoiler alert).

Christina Ricci in an Addams Family production?? Preposterous!

My Half-Baked Thoughts

Wednesday teetered too closely to the edge of typical CW Network genre fiction for me to be 100% invested. I don’t know what you can expect from a supernatural show featuring twentysomethings playing teenagers, though, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. That said, the show was very enjoyable and the acting didn’t annoy me too badly, so chalk it up to a net win. I do have my criticisms, though!

Starting with the positives, Jenna Ortega nailed it as Wednesday. The saving grace of the show. Alternating between a believable cold exterior and moments of vulnerability fleshed out what is usually a one-dimensional character. Always the smartest one in the room, she spits out one-liners left and right that always landed for me. “I don’t bury hatchets, I sharpen them. “I brought my pocket mace. The medieval kind.” “If you hear me screaming bloody murder, there’s a good chance that I’m enjoying myself. “Sometimes I act like I don’t care if people like me. Deep down, I secretly enjoy it.” Trust me, it looks lame on paper but Ortega’s deadpan delivery makes these quotes POP OUT AND SHINE. Usually the titular character isn’t the best part of his or her own TV show (I’m looking at you Jerry “Seinfeld”), but it’s absolutely so in this case. Christina Ricci even praised Ortega’s performance, and considering Ortega did all of her research on Ricci’s Wednesday, this is the HIGHEST of both compliments and flattery. She even perfected the no-blink stare, which I noticed right away.

Return with caution my unblinking gaze.

The mood of the show was just the right amount of serious and silly. Nevermore is a glorified Hogwarts. The plot followed your typical X-Files meets Buffy monster-of-the-week (in this case, the season) formula with some side plots. It was all good enough for one season, but if every following season of Wednesday is going to stick to the same formula then I’m going to lose interest fast. I wasn’t invested in the Wednesday/Tyler/Xavier love triangle at all. Did not give a shit. I didn’t like either of them anyway. Tyler had a very Dean from Supernatural vibe which I didn’t like, and Xavier was ugly and whiny. If she was going to date anyone, it was going to be Enid. Ha! I also didn’t much care for Wednesday’s psychic abilities as a plot-forwarding device. Apparently inherited from Morticia, who I thought was supposed to be some sort of witch? Isn’t that a bit of characterization from the original ’60s Addams Family series? What’s with the psychic abilities? It wasn’t enough to be an outcast in a school for outcasts, but throw some psychic abilities in the mix? Sorry, I don’t like it!

Catching fish with grenades. Nature’s perfect bait.

If I had to bitch about one thing in particular, it’s the Addams Family themselves as a group wasn’t explored enough. Gomez, Morticia, and Pugsley are barely even in this show. Uncle Fester shows up once. I was expecting some level of involvement of the rest of the family throughout the season, but they only show up twice. Once to drop Wednesday off at Nevermore, then again during Parents’ Weekend at Nevermore. With Luis Guzmán and Catherine Zeta-Jones and Gomez and Morticia, respectively, there was a lot of potential that was sadly somewhat wasted. I would have loved to see more sibling dynamics between Wednesday and Pugsley, but they only share one major scene where he says he misses her and they throw grenades in the pond together to kill fish (“Your favorite bait” she tells him as he smiles ruefully). The family works better as a family, since they’re all an incredibly functional unit of bizarre outcasts that play off each other well. Instead, the show plops Wednesday into an environment full of cookie cutter teenage characters who are supposed to be outcasts themselves. But they’re all fairly normal kids? I mean, they’re werewolves and vampires sirens, but they’re normal kids. They’re nice and they try so hard to wrest Wednesday out of the cloistered, antisocial shell of her own making. I didn’t like that either! These kids are supposed to be appalled by Wednesday’s behavior at every turn! Not empathetic and understanding!

Morticia and Gomez are just as nauseating as ever, by the way.

What the hell is this show?! Maybe I hated it!

Worth the Watch?

Yeah! No, it’s good enough. I plowed through the season in about a week, which is fast for me. Like I said earlier, Jenna Ortega’s performance makes this worth it. Some of the issues need to be tightened up for Season 2, but I’m not going to to hold my breath about that. I’ll get to it eventually.