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Wednesday Season 2 Is a Supernatural Veronica Mars

Wednesday Season 2 Is a Supernatural Veronica Mars
Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste

In the first four episodes of Wednesday Season 2, Jenna Ortega’s titular teen sleuth delivers wry one-liners, is deeply protective of her best friend, feuds with local officials, and has a dad who gets her out of police questioning.

Wednesday, who grew from a character in cartoonist Charles Addams’ The New Yorker strip about a family who derives pleasure in making normies confront the macabre, is a champion of outsiders even as she’s suspicious of them (because she’s suspicious of everyone). The major theme for this season, which is broken up into two parts with the second half dropping September 3, is that our heroine must crack her jawbreaker exoskeleton to allow room in her heart for … shocking as it may seem to her … people who look up to her and actually want to be her friend.  She also gets into battles of wits with the eccentric personalities who both go to her school, Nevermore, and live in the nearby town of Jericho. Stunt casting is involved, as former child stars like Heather Matarazzo and Haley Joel Osment get some fun screentime.

Wednesday is, essentially, Veronica Mars. And, thus, Wednesday the show is Veronica Mars, but about people with supernatural abilities. Kristen Bell’s prickly heroine from that cult favorite series, which premiered in 2004 on UPN, was memorably described as a “marshmallow” in its first episode: hard outer coating with a gooey center. The show’s fans, which in the pre-streaming days never came close to amassing as large a following as Wednesday’s legions, adopted this as a moniker; our jaded attitudes and eye rolls were performative defense mechanisms, and we didn’t, like, really hate you. Wednesday attempts to intimidate adults with lines like “if you can’t kill them with kindness, try lethal injection” and explaining that she has “FOBI: Fear of Being Included.” But her major missions during the first four episodes of the season concern saving her bubbly roommate Enid (Emma Myers) from a doom that Wednesday prophesied in a vision and vindicating society’s so-called Outcasts like the sirens, werewolves, and gorgons who go to her school.

This is the dichotomy of Wednesday and Wednesday. Wednesday the character hates all human interaction and professes to love cruel and unusual punishments. If we actually listen to and believe what Wednesday is saying, her only gripe about Enid’s potential death is that she doesn’t get to drop the hatchet. Wednesday should also both want her mother, Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Morticia, dead and be wary of her affections. Because the Addamses are both delighted by all kinds of war and fiercely protective of one another. If normies were to hurt a family member, the Addams family would feel both fury and glee in exacting vengeance. 

But for Wednesday the show to work, Wednesday the character must be a marshmallow. Audiences must want her to be an underage April Ludgate and to actually be a motivated protector. Audiences must also accept that this is a world where Outcasts are known and prevalent, as opposed to the Addamses being the sole oddballs who, in turn, think everyone else is odd. But then does Wednesday the series go against the intent of Wednesday the character and her family? Kinda, yeah.

This isn’t to say that Wednesday is a drag (although, if you’ve followed the logic of this 5D chess game long enough, you might wonder if thinking her show is a drag is exactly what Wednesday Addams would want). Ortega and Zeta-Jones are perfect jousting partners, both on and off the court. And the addition of Joanna Lumley as Morticia’s mother this season only adds to the mother-daughter tension that the characters want you to hate-to-love-to-hate. In the grand tradition of teen dramas’ secondary characters becoming fan favorites (see also: Adam Brody, Joshua Jackson, Dylan O’Brien), there’s more time and backstory given to Thing, the disembodied hand portrayed by Victor Dorobantu.

Also, it’s obvious that series creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and their writers, are having fun with the introduction of new characters and settings. Evie Templeton joins the cast as ultimate Wednesday fan-girl Agnes DeMille (presumably a not-so-subtle nod to the late choreographer). Wednesday’s brother, Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), uses his powers of static electricity to resurrect a Nevermore student, whom he keeps as a pet zombie named Slurp; a name that has lineage in Addams lore. And how many roles can Fred Armisen play in this TV show? (He already appears as Wednesday’s Uncle Fester).

Shakespearean imagery is also everywhere in the lead-up to the presumed reveal of Morticia’s sister Ophelia, with Wednesday dedicatedly playing composer Sergei Prokofiev’s “​​Montagues and Capulets” on the cello to buildings named Caliban Hall and Iago Tower. 

But if we take away these references and wordplays, what are we left with? Would a project like this have gotten this far or become such a ratings and awards smash if it weren’t rooted in intellectual property and executive produced by noted lover of the strange and unusual, Tim Burton? Or does it feel like a marshmallow that’s been toasting too long on the fire; sticky and gooey but without much substance?

Wednesday Season 2, Part 1 premieres August 6 on Netflix.


Whitney Friedlander is an entertainment journalist with, what some may argue, an unhealthy love affair with her TV. A former staff writer at both Los Angeles Times and Variety, her writing has also appeared in Cosmopolitan, Vulture, The Washington Post and others. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, daughter, and cats.

 
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