It is clear that ‘Wednesday’ is one of the last great premieres of Netflix in 2022, largely due to the popularity that ‘The Addams Family’ has maintained for decades, the success of the two animated films aimed at a family audience being still quite recent. With the series starring Jenna Ortega everything pointed to a somewhat more adult entertainment that did not avoid at any time the black humor characteristic of these characters.
A few days ago I gave you my first impressions of ‘Wednesday’, which were quite positive, mainly because of how much I had enjoyed its first episode. Unfortunately, then each chapter has been liking less than the previous one, to the point of not having anything clear that he wants a second season if the formula used is going to continue being this.
losing the spark
If I expect something from a series about Wednesday Addams, it is that it be the absolute protagonist of the show and also that the character is recognizable at all times. The first thing can be said to be true in this Netflix production, to the point that the interest gap is notable in the few moments when attention is focused on other characters, but the latter is much more doubtful.
I have always been a defender that any adaptation has to find its own voice to justify its existence, but in the case of ‘Wednesday’ something curious happens, and that is that the protagonist evolves in such a way that her most characteristic features are losing strength, which causes everything that could make it a unique series to fade away. In fact, there comes a point where what we find here ends up looking more like a slightly dark version of Nancy Drew than Wednesday Addams.
That leads to the fact that the comic spark of the series also languishes. Initially, you will more or less like the chosen approach, but the touch of macabre humor is undeniable and goes perfectly in line with Ortega’s inevitable restrained performance. What happens later is that this is losing more and more presence to the point of ending up being forced at the specific moments in which the series recovers it. Almost as if it were a procedure for those responsible to remind us that it is the series of the Addams daughter.
There have been quite a few who have compared ‘Wednesday’ with a series on The CW, something quite logical, but not so much if it is used as a purely negative reference when several more than defensible titles came out of that chain. Here, at first, the hand of Tim Burtondirector of the first four episodes, but don’t expect anything at the level of his best work, since everything is normalizing a bit at that point of balance between carrying out a showy series with a dark dot.
it accommodates
In fact, there comes a point at which the series settles both technically and visually to no longer offer anything particularly exciting. Yes, it is true that he always maintains an unquestionable solvency, but it is as if ‘Wednesday’ did not want to go further and is satisfied with going shelling the great mystery that it proposes.
The problem is that its most suspenseful part is never memorable and it’s not developed in such a way that it provokes the need to know what’s going on in the peculiar Nunca Más academy, either. That takes so much packaging away from the grand conclusion that it ends up feeling like a mere way station in the life of Wednesday Addams instead of something truly memorable.
It also doesn’t help that the rest of the characters end up being condemned to be mere accessories, even when the series seems to want to give its own plots a little more scope, thus exposing its limitations. For example, Emma Myers He fits very well against Ortega, but everything about his problems developing his skills hits a bone.
It gets to a point where even guest appearances like a successful Fred Armisen as Fétido animate the show enough -not to mention how inane a plot in which Gómez comes to the fore is-. It is a pity that a proposal like this stays in so few episodes, because let’s remember that the first season consists of only eight.
In short
‘Wednesday’ is a clear example of a series that goes from more to less, spending its first bullets in the first episode and then losing its appeal, first little by little and then more and more evidently, until it is exhausted at the end. Not even Ortega’s good work makes up for it, because until there comes a time when those responsible for her do not seem to be clear about what to do with her, although it is fair to admit that he does not get bored with her. Desperate for what she promised and then it is not, a little yes. Pity.
In Espinof: