“Wednesday” wrought with weakness

If you have opened the internet at any time in the past month, then you most likely have noticed the buzz about Netflix’s show, “Wednesday.” Inspired by the Addams Family, “Wednesday” follows Wednesday, the Addams family’s sadistic daughter, Wednesday through her escapades in a new school. After being expelled from her high school, her parents decide that she should be sent to Nevermore Academy, their own alma mater. Nevermore Academy is known to be a school for “outcasts,” as the series calls them, and holds many sinister things in its walls. The most prominent in the show is a series of murders that occur in the forests surrounding the school and nearby town, Jericho, as Wednesday Addams turns into a much darker version of Nancy Drew. 

The show definitely has its high points—Jenna Ortega has been praised highly for her performance as Wednesday, and that is rightfully deserved, and the styling of the characters and show are superb. However, it is my opinion that the show got “Netflixed;” the show is enjoyable to watch, but the plot and characters all fall flat in order to gain a big audience (also the CGI sucks but like that’s not that big of a deal). 

“Wednesday” is a teen show, and it does its job of appealing to teens quite well. But in the desperate attempt to be appealing, the show often lost the attention to detail in characters and plot in favor of snappy one liners and relatability. Writers and directors of teen shows rely on these methods commonly to draw teens into watching—into creating moments that are easily tweetable or can be made into a TikTok sound—and the overreliance of this technique makes the show forced and unnatural. Sometimes adult’s attempts to write teens is laughable, and “Wednesday” is unfortunately no different. 

Furthermore, I think that as the show progresses, the character of Wednesday gets lost. What makes her recognizable, her cynicism and sinisterness, is pushed into the background as she is made into any other teen drama main character. The love triangle that develops throughout the series feels very unnatural and pointless. Her character in some points makes no sense—her disapproval of the idea of her father as a murderer, her strong sense of justice—these points in the plot, very large parts of the plot, don’t really make sense to Wednesday’s character as they are a complete juxtaposition to what her character is made out to be in the show and source material.  

If I’m not wrong, which I don’t think I am, the show is supposed to really be about accepting and respecting differences, but I felt like the show’s handling of Wednesday sent a counter message. Her loss of character and her morphing into any other main character seem to send a message that there really only is one way to fit in. There are some moments in the show that I think the message of accepting differences rings true, like Enid (Wednesday’s roommate) and Wednesday’s reconciliation and acceptance of each other, but there aren’t many other moments that stuck out to me where the other characters really got that message. Tim Burton’s involvement in the show also contradicts the message of inclusivity in light of his adamant exclusion of people of color in his work.

I mentioned the lack of attention to characters above, and “Wednesday” is a show where I had little sympathy or care for any other character than Wednesday. The show tries hard to make you care about other characters, but it’s hard to. The characters, other than Wednesday, don’t change throughout the show—at the end most people stay the same and their own personal arcs are obscure: they may be mentioned in an episode or two—-maybe even have a couple of scenes—but other than that, the problems that these characters have seem to not exist. Wednesday is a good character (despite my own qualms) because she is very fleshed out, but no other character got the same attention and the growth that she did. They were just there. 

“Wednesday” is unfortunately just like any other show right now, with the addition of some recognizable characters, but I think that it does have a lot of potential. The writers and directors just need to make more of an effort to make it clear that the show is different from every other show out there right now. They need to rely on Wednesday and her quirkiness as a character, instead of trying to erase her personality from the show in favor of views.