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Wednesday - New Tim Burton Series Based Off Addams Family Character

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Man, Jones is awful as Morticia. Even Hannah put more effort in. Honestly the Fester actor is the only one that actually has any energy to him.
Overall the show was surprisingly much better than I feared, even enjoyable (albeit yet another high school teens thing). Morticia and Gomez were quite awful though, Catherine Zeta-Jones really phoned it in… like she showed up for a day of shooting and they gave her a brief summary of things, costume and makeup, and recorded what they could.
 

gradient

Resident Cheap Arse
Gomez's casting and characterization is awful. Genuinely some of the worst I've seen in recent memory.
Zeta Jones just doesn't seem to get the character of Morticia and doesn't do the role any kind of justice.
Pugsly and Lurch are not great.
Fester is okay.
Wednesday is actually well cast and plays the role very well. Seems to be the only one of the Addams cast that has really put any effort into the character and their role.

Overall it was an enjoyable series. Her roomate proved surprisingly likable and worked, but they did lean a bit to heavily into the who Hogwarts for Horror monsters idea.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Gomez's casting and characterization is awful. Genuinely some of the worst I've seen in recent memory.
Zeta Jones just doesn't seem to get the character of Morticia and doesn't do the role any kind of justice.
Pugsly and Lurch are not great.
Fester is okay.
Wednesday is actually well cast and plays the role very well. Seems to be the only one of the Addams cast that has really put any effort into the character and their role.

Overall it was an enjoyable series. Her roomate proved surprisingly likable and worked, but they did lean a bit to heavily into the who Hogwarts for Horror monsters idea.
Yeah, I did find Fester and Pugsley good enough, especially Fester. Her roomate was channeling “Anne with an E” main actress a lot, but was a good support cast performance.
 

sobaka770

Banned
This TV series is a bizarre whiplash of competent filmmaking, some funny jokes, interesting characters and quite an engaging story overall marred by absolutely horrid messages it sends to the audience.

I’m not even going to go into the whole female empowerment angle here, because of course Wednesday is super-capable at everything, hot and all the boys pine after her. This leads to an awful love triangle between Wednesday and two (three if we count the bee-nerd?) loser boy-archetypes. But let’s wave that as female-centric teenage modern story tropes.

What I’m talking about is how this show has absolutely awful messages to it’s (teen?) audience.

To summarize the premise, Wednesday is sent to school of outcasts and investigates mysterious prophecy and murders happening around the school. In the process she makes a few friends, has a school-queen rival and of course romance. I’ll spoil the rest as it’s important for my point.

The most baffling message of this movie is “not to apologise (for who you are)”. Wednesday’s roomie literally proclaims how she adores that Wednesday is proud of who she is and doesn’t take shit from everyone. It's not a bad message but there is a nuance...

There is a major difference between not apologising for yourself and not apologising for horrible things you do. And Wednesday is not just a cooky, spooky, sarcastic girl who is into bugs and autopsies. No - Wednesday is a full-blown psychopath without consideration for others’ feelings, manipulative and self-centered. Moreover, by being who she is - every boy at school is in love, every girl is jealous - she is almost perfect. Why would she need to apologise for "who she is"?

If you want a character arc for Wednesday to mellow-out a bit (which is what happens at the end of the story) - she should definitely learn to fucking apologise for all the horrible ACTIONS that she keeps doing and getting away with it. In fact that is the whole character arc set up considering how wrong Wednesday is all the time. I blame it on Hollywood writers refusing female characters to appear weak or failing in any aspect (apart from the perfunctory things like fencing bout that leads nowhere).

Instead, what we get is that Wednesday alienates all her friends and still succeeds despite:
  • All her conclusions being wrong - she accused all the wrong people, leading them to be jailed or dead while the final solution was provided by Deus ex machina waking up at a right time to literally give her the answer. She earns no credit for her investigation and only made things much worse.
  • She manipulates her roomie and other friends into doing everything for her without any reciprocation and when they turn her back on her - she doesn’t care and gets other people to help her out of nowhere.
  • Let me just say that the new-Hollywood trope of “I led you to a situation where we could all easily die but we got away and therefore it’s ok” is absolutely vile trash. It’s insidious and exactly the same as manipulating people to sex without consent “but you did enjoy it at the end, right?” Why is the former so glorified and discarded by one phrase?
  • She makes friends for no reason - her arch-rival is available to help when everyone else abandons her without any rationale why the two would ever bond. In fact, Wednesday is the school best-buddy while being a horrid person the whole time which is bizarre.
This whole show should have someone yelling "SHE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT!" after final credits because that's how it feels.

With all that going on the message is still - never apologise because Wednesday for sure never does! Her roomie literally leaves her to live with another girl, then comes back multiple times “to pick up remaining things” and then comes back and tells Wednesday that “they just work” so she’ll stay with her. WHAT. THE. BLOODY. HELL. This is some serious “beaten housewife” stockholm syndrome right there. Wednesday manipulated her several times into horrible ordeals, never came to her rescue, almost got her killed and she's grateful? Without even an apology? I'll let you decide whether that's a great message for gen-Z teenagers.

Her school boyfriend has the same arc. Wednesday falsely stalks and accuses him of murders leaving the poor guy in jail and in the end not only he rushes to help her but also never gets any apology. He doesn't even ask for one, like any normal would. Instead he asks lustingly whether she’ll be back for next semester. Oh, you poor beta-male artist boy. She'd never date a person who wouldn't have the balls to walk away from all the shit she put you through.

The whole Wednesday arc is undermined by the trope of female-lead-cannot-do-bad. And even if they do it’s skirted away by them just ignoring things or never mentioning them. By all logic the arc of Wednesday should be - she made terrible mistakes, all her friends either abandoned her or are in jail - she should repent, apologise profusely and admit that without them she is lost. Then they all come back together and defeat Mr Bad.

But it’s not what happens here - Wednesday doesn’t apologise to her roomie or school artist boyfriend. Instead, they basically tell her how awesome she is, and they are so happy that she’s in their lives. Let me remind everyone that Wednesday is a narcissistic psychopath in this show. Her lowest point when she “dies” is not a moment of revelation or internal realisation - she just lets her ancestor spirit heal her and that’s all the resolution we get. Just another plot development. And even when we are shown in the end that Wednesday has become a nudge more accepting - it feels very unearned.

This is some fucked-up shit in my opinion. What’s worse - the seeds for a solid simple character growth are all there. The show just deliberately avoided them all in the last 2 episodes in favour of a stoic supergirl character who even whe does wrong - still gets everything.

Let women characters fail and grow from time to time goddamn it!

If you like that style of trash women-empowerment - make sure to check Sabrina and Enola Holmes with exactly same ideas of what an empowered modern woman should be - manipulative, often wrong and dangerous to people around her but never apologising cause that's weak.
 

Kimahri

Banned
I find the woke messaging in this really weird. It's like it's just shoved in here and there because they had to, not because they wanted to.

So you get these randomly inserted words that feels forced and out of place.

Pure projecting here, but it's almost as if Burton didn't want to waste time on that, but had some quota he needed to fill, so he shoved it in wherever it was minimally intrucive.

Really weird.

I mean, how woke can a show about someone like Addams really be? It feels very out of place.
 

mxbison

Member
I really liked Wednesday but all the other characters were either forgettable or straight up bad. Catherine Zeta Jones as Morticia was probably the worst.

They should do a different location with new and better characters for the next season and it has good potential I think.
 

Irobot82

Member
This TV series is a bizarre whiplash of competent filmmaking, some funny jokes, interesting characters and quite an engaging story overall marred by absolutely horrid messages it sends to the audience.

I’m not even going to go into the whole female empowerment angle here, because of course Wednesday is super-capable at everything, hot and all the boys pine after her. This leads to an awful love triangle between Wednesday and two (three if we count the bee-nerd?) loser boy-archetypes. But let’s wave that as female-centric teenage modern story tropes.

What I’m talking about is how this show has absolutely awful messages to it’s (teen?) audience.

To summarize the premise, Wednesday is sent to school of outcasts and investigates mysterious prophecy and murders happening around the school. In the process she makes a few friends, has a school-queen rival and of course romance. I’ll spoil the rest as it’s important for my point.

The most baffling message of this movie is “not to apologise (for who you are)”. Wednesday’s roomie literally proclaims how she adores that Wednesday is proud of who she is and doesn’t take shit from everyone. It's not a bad message but there is a nuance...

There is a major difference between not apologising for yourself and not apologising for horrible things you do. And Wednesday is not just a cooky, spooky, sarcastic girl who is into bugs and autopsies. No - Wednesday is a full-blown psychopath without consideration for others’ feelings, manipulative and self-centered. Moreover, by being who she is - every boy at school is in love, every girl is jealous - she is almost perfect. Why would she need to apologise for "who she is"?

If you want a character arc for Wednesday to mellow-out a bit (which is what happens at the end of the story) - she should definitely learn to fucking apologise for all the horrible ACTIONS that she keeps doing and getting away with it. In fact that is the whole character arc set up considering how wrong Wednesday is all the time. I blame it on Hollywood writers refusing female characters to appear weak or failing in any aspect (apart from the perfunctory things like fencing bout that leads nowhere).

Instead, what we get is that Wednesday alienates all her friends and still succeeds despite:
  • All her conclusions being wrong - she accused all the wrong people, leading them to be jailed or dead while the final solution was provided by Deus ex machina waking up at a right time to literally give her the answer. She earns no credit for her investigation and only made things much worse.
  • She manipulates her roomie and other friends into doing everything for her without any reciprocation and when they turn her back on her - she doesn’t care and gets other people to help her out of nowhere.
  • Let me just say that the new-Hollywood trope of “I led you to a situation where we could all easily die but we got away and therefore it’s ok” is absolutely vile trash. It’s insidious and exactly the same as manipulating people to sex without consent “but you did enjoy it at the end, right?” Why is the former so glorified and discarded by one phrase?
  • She makes friends for no reason - her arch-rival is available to help when everyone else abandons her without any rationale why the two would ever bond. In fact, Wednesday is the school best-buddy while being a horrid person the whole time which is bizarre.
This whole show should have someone yelling "SHE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT!" after final credits because that's how it feels.

With all that going on the message is still - never apologise because Wednesday for sure never does! Her roomie literally leaves her to live with another girl, then comes back multiple times “to pick up remaining things” and then comes back and tells Wednesday that “they just work” so she’ll stay with her. WHAT. THE. BLOODY. HELL. This is some serious “beaten housewife” stockholm syndrome right there. Wednesday manipulated her several times into horrible ordeals, never came to her rescue, almost got her killed and she's grateful? Without even an apology? I'll let you decide whether that's a great message for gen-Z teenagers.

Her school boyfriend has the same arc. Wednesday falsely stalks and accuses him of murders leaving the poor guy in jail and in the end not only he rushes to help her but also never gets any apology. He doesn't even ask for one, like any normal would. Instead he asks lustingly whether she’ll be back for next semester. Oh, you poor beta-male artist boy. She'd never date a person who wouldn't have the balls to walk away from all the shit she put you through.

The whole Wednesday arc is undermined by the trope of female-lead-cannot-do-bad. And even if they do it’s skirted away by them just ignoring things or never mentioning them. By all logic the arc of Wednesday should be - she made terrible mistakes, all her friends either abandoned her or are in jail - she should repent, apologise profusely and admit that without them she is lost. Then they all come back together and defeat Mr Bad.

But it’s not what happens here - Wednesday doesn’t apologise to her roomie or school artist boyfriend. Instead, they basically tell her how awesome she is, and they are so happy that she’s in their lives. Let me remind everyone that Wednesday is a narcissistic psychopath in this show. Her lowest point when she “dies” is not a moment of revelation or internal realisation - she just lets her ancestor spirit heal her and that’s all the resolution we get. Just another plot development. And even when we are shown in the end that Wednesday has become a nudge more accepting - it feels very unearned.

This is some fucked-up shit in my opinion. What’s worse - the seeds for a solid simple character growth are all there. The show just deliberately avoided them all in the last 2 episodes in favour of a stoic supergirl character who even whe does wrong - still gets everything.

Let women characters fail and grow from time to time goddamn it!

If you like that style of trash women-empowerment - make sure to check Sabrina and Enola Holmes with exactly same ideas of what an empowered modern woman should be - manipulative, often wrong and dangerous to people around her but never apologising cause that's weak.
Saved me a click (or watching the show) Thanks mate!
 

JCK75

Member
I'm finding myself pretty entertained by it TBH.. way better than I thought it would be..
casting is amazing except Gomez.. yes I know he was fat and ugly in the comics but and while I usually love Guzman he just does not work.
 

Methos#1975

Member
Jenna Ortega as Wednesday, Enid as Wednesday's foil, Thing, and the dance in episode four are the good bits.

Everything else, not so much. My impression was that the whole point of the Addams Family was that they had no idea they were in any way unusual, so having them accept being 'outcasts' would already seem to misunderstand a big part of the main joke. Having the school be a Poundshop Hogwarts, filled with werewolves and vampires etc, was also not only pointless when Wednesday is set up as not initially fitting in (why wouldn't she in such a place?) but the whole premise would have been far more robust had it taken place in a regular school. Also, why is she doing kung-fu?
That's my biggest issue with this show, it's like Burton had zero understanding of the characters
 

squallheart

Member
This TV series is a bizarre whiplash of competent filmmaking, some funny jokes, interesting characters and quite an engaging story overall marred by absolutely horrid messages it sends to the audience.

I’m not even going to go into the whole female empowerment angle here, because of course Wednesday is super-capable at everything, hot and all the boys pine after her. This leads to an awful love triangle between Wednesday and two (three if we count the bee-nerd?) loser boy-archetypes. But let’s wave that as female-centric teenage modern story tropes.

What I’m talking about is how this show has absolutely awful messages to it’s (teen?) audience.

To summarize the premise, Wednesday is sent to school of outcasts and investigates mysterious prophecy and murders happening around the school. In the process she makes a few friends, has a school-queen rival and of course romance. I’ll spoil the rest as it’s important for my point.

The most baffling message of this movie is “not to apologise (for who you are)”. Wednesday’s roomie literally proclaims how she adores that Wednesday is proud of who she is and doesn’t take shit from everyone. It's not a bad message but there is a nuance...

There is a major difference between not apologising for yourself and not apologising for horrible things you do. And Wednesday is not just a cooky, spooky, sarcastic girl who is into bugs and autopsies. No - Wednesday is a full-blown psychopath without consideration for others’ feelings, manipulative and self-centered. Moreover, by being who she is - every boy at school is in love, every girl is jealous - she is almost perfect. Why would she need to apologise for "who she is"?

If you want a character arc for Wednesday to mellow-out a bit (which is what happens at the end of the story) - she should definitely learn to fucking apologise for all the horrible ACTIONS that she keeps doing and getting away with it. In fact that is the whole character arc set up considering how wrong Wednesday is all the time. I blame it on Hollywood writers refusing female characters to appear weak or failing in any aspect (apart from the perfunctory things like fencing bout that leads nowhere).

Instead, what we get is that Wednesday alienates all her friends and still succeeds despite:
  • All her conclusions being wrong - she accused all the wrong people, leading them to be jailed or dead while the final solution was provided by Deus ex machina waking up at a right time to literally give her the answer. She earns no credit for her investigation and only made things much worse.
  • She manipulates her roomie and other friends into doing everything for her without any reciprocation and when they turn her back on her - she doesn’t care and gets other people to help her out of nowhere.
  • Let me just say that the new-Hollywood trope of “I led you to a situation where we could all easily die but we got away and therefore it’s ok” is absolutely vile trash. It’s insidious and exactly the same as manipulating people to sex without consent “but you did enjoy it at the end, right?” Why is the former so glorified and discarded by one phrase?
  • She makes friends for no reason - her arch-rival is available to help when everyone else abandons her without any rationale why the two would ever bond. In fact, Wednesday is the school best-buddy while being a horrid person the whole time which is bizarre.
This whole show should have someone yelling "SHE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT!" after final credits because that's how it feels.

With all that going on the message is still - never apologise because Wednesday for sure never does! Her roomie literally leaves her to live with another girl, then comes back multiple times “to pick up remaining things” and then comes back and tells Wednesday that “they just work” so she’ll stay with her. WHAT. THE. BLOODY. HELL. This is some serious “beaten housewife” stockholm syndrome right there. Wednesday manipulated her several times into horrible ordeals, never came to her rescue, almost got her killed and she's grateful? Without even an apology? I'll let you decide whether that's a great message for gen-Z teenagers.

Her school boyfriend has the same arc. Wednesday falsely stalks and accuses him of murders leaving the poor guy in jail and in the end not only he rushes to help her but also never gets any apology. He doesn't even ask for one, like any normal would. Instead he asks lustingly whether she’ll be back for next semester. Oh, you poor beta-male artist boy. She'd never date a person who wouldn't have the balls to walk away from all the shit she put you through.

The whole Wednesday arc is undermined by the trope of female-lead-cannot-do-bad. And even if they do it’s skirted away by them just ignoring things or never mentioning them. By all logic the arc of Wednesday should be - she made terrible mistakes, all her friends either abandoned her or are in jail - she should repent, apologise profusely and admit that without them she is lost. Then they all come back together and defeat Mr Bad.

But it’s not what happens here - Wednesday doesn’t apologise to her roomie or school artist boyfriend. Instead, they basically tell her how awesome she is, and they are so happy that she’s in their lives. Let me remind everyone that Wednesday is a narcissistic psychopath in this show. Her lowest point when she “dies” is not a moment of revelation or internal realisation - she just lets her ancestor spirit heal her and that’s all the resolution we get. Just another plot development. And even when we are shown in the end that Wednesday has become a nudge more accepting - it feels very unearned.

This is some fucked-up shit in my opinion. What’s worse - the seeds for a solid simple character growth are all there. The show just deliberately avoided them all in the last 2 episodes in favour of a stoic supergirl character who even whe does wrong - still gets everything.

Let women characters fail and grow from time to time goddamn it!

If you like that style of trash women-empowerment - make sure to check Sabrina and Enola Holmes with exactly same ideas of what an empowered modern woman should be - manipulative, often wrong and dangerous to people around her but never apologising cause that's weak.
Great write up. As soon as I saw the trailer I knew I was going to hate this show xD
 

bitbydeath

Gold Member
I enjoyed it overall, especially the cello scenes but some of the writing doesn’t work for me.

We start with the opening scene of Wednesday getting kicked out of a school for what is basically attempted murder, no real punishment beyond that which is odd, but moving on, the show and Addams family in general has lots of quips about murder/torture like it’s nothing (as expected), but later in the story a large part is focused around the “shock” of her father Gomez possibly murdering someone in the past.

You can’t have it both ways, it should have been expected that he had many victims prior, because that’s just how the Addams family are or the only other option would be to take away that dark side of them but then they wouldn’t be the Addams family.

It needed more time in the oven, Jenna played a fantastic Wednesday, I don’t think she ever blinked once which must have been hard to shoot.
 
Last edited:

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Season 2 Episode 3 GIF by Leroy Patterson
Keanu Reeves Matrix GIF by PeacockTV
matrix GIF
 

Faust

Perpetually Tired
Staff Member
christina ricci thad powell GIF


This should have led the show. I am deathly afraid of how they will butcher the characters next.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
I enjoyed it overall, especially the cello scenes but some of the writing doesn’t work for me.

We start with the opening scene of Wednesday getting kicked out of a school for what is basically attempted murder, no real punishment beyond that which is odd, but moving on, the show and Addams family in general has lots of quips about murder/torture like it’s nothing (as expected), but later in the story a large part is focused around the “shock” of her father Gomez possibly murdering someone in the past.

You can’t have it both ways, it should have been expected that he had many victims prior, because that’s just how the Addams family are or the only other option would be to take away that dark side of them but then they wouldn’t be the Addams family.

It needed more time in the oven, Jenna played a fantastic Wednesday, I don’t think she ever blinked once which must have been hard to shoot.
I loved the cello scenes, if nothing else this show introduced me to classical covers of modern songs.
They do walk a fine line and often step over it with regards to the Addams family being, for want of a better word, evil, but at the same time being also 'good' people. But all the best jokes come from there so you just have to accept it.
I hated the love triangle, it's completely pointless anyway, and is such a lame YA trope. Other than that I liked the writing, it was nicely anchored by Wednesday's character preventing it from getting too angsty.
 

Moneal

Member
I liked it for the most part. The Guzman as Gomez was barely bare able. Jones as Morticia was terrible. Yes there were the random woke bits. Thankfully, they were unimportant and usually quick quips. As sobaka770 sobaka770 mentioned Wednesday's character growth felt wrong. She got there in the end but without the outside pressure she deserved.

We start with the opening scene of Wednesday getting kicked out of a school for what is basically attempted murder, no real punishment beyond that which is odd, but moving on, the show and Addams family in general has lots of quips about murder/torture like it’s nothing (as expected), but later in the story a large part is focused around the “shock” of her father Gomez possibly murdering someone in the past.
You can’t have it both ways, it should have been expected that he had many victims prior, because that’s just how the Addams family are or the only other option would be to take away that dark side of them but then they wouldn’t be the Addams family.
This is Wednesday's view of her father. She sees him as a lovesick man child basically. I think she even says so at one point. Both him and pugsley as too incompetent to kill anyone. It's usually her, Morticia, or Fester doing the real evil stuff.

As for the punishment for the piranhas, the Addams family is supposed to be very wealthy, so you know money can solve many problems.
 

Rockondevil

Member
I liked it. I really enjoyed Ortega as Wednesday.
I generally like Guzman but he didn’t do it for me in this role. Wouldn’t have hated Johnny Depp, but I expect a lot of people wouldn’t want him.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
Gomez needs to be recasted for season 2 - he's absolutely horrible. Other than that it's a good show and not super woke like you'd expect from Netflix.
 
This TV series is a bizarre whiplash of competent filmmaking, some funny jokes, interesting characters and quite an engaging story overall marred by absolutely horrid messages it sends to the audience.

I’m not even going to go into the whole female empowerment angle here, because of course Wednesday is super-capable at everything, hot and all the boys pine after her. This leads to an awful love triangle between Wednesday and two (three if we count the bee-nerd?) loser boy-archetypes. But let’s wave that as female-centric teenage modern story tropes.

What I’m talking about is how this show has absolutely awful messages to it’s (teen?) audience.

To summarize the premise, Wednesday is sent to school of outcasts and investigates mysterious prophecy and murders happening around the school. In the process she makes a few friends, has a school-queen rival and of course romance. I’ll spoil the rest as it’s important for my point.

The most baffling message of this movie is “not to apologise (for who you are)”. Wednesday’s roomie literally proclaims how she adores that Wednesday is proud of who she is and doesn’t take shit from everyone. It's not a bad message but there is a nuance...

There is a major difference between not apologising for yourself and not apologising for horrible things you do. And Wednesday is not just a cooky, spooky, sarcastic girl who is into bugs and autopsies. No - Wednesday is a full-blown psychopath without consideration for others’ feelings, manipulative and self-centered. Moreover, by being who she is - every boy at school is in love, every girl is jealous - she is almost perfect. Why would she need to apologise for "who she is"?

If you want a character arc for Wednesday to mellow-out a bit (which is what happens at the end of the story) - she should definitely learn to fucking apologise for all the horrible ACTIONS that she keeps doing and getting away with it. In fact that is the whole character arc set up considering how wrong Wednesday is all the time. I blame it on Hollywood writers refusing female characters to appear weak or failing in any aspect (apart from the perfunctory things like fencing bout that leads nowhere).

Instead, what we get is that Wednesday alienates all her friends and still succeeds despite:
  • All her conclusions being wrong - she accused all the wrong people, leading them to be jailed or dead while the final solution was provided by Deus ex machina waking up at a right time to literally give her the answer. She earns no credit for her investigation and only made things much worse.
  • She manipulates her roomie and other friends into doing everything for her without any reciprocation and when they turn her back on her - she doesn’t care and gets other people to help her out of nowhere.
  • Let me just say that the new-Hollywood trope of “I led you to a situation where we could all easily die but we got away and therefore it’s ok” is absolutely vile trash. It’s insidious and exactly the same as manipulating people to sex without consent “but you did enjoy it at the end, right?” Why is the former so glorified and discarded by one phrase?
  • She makes friends for no reason - her arch-rival is available to help when everyone else abandons her without any rationale why the two would ever bond. In fact, Wednesday is the school best-buddy while being a horrid person the whole time which is bizarre.
This whole show should have someone yelling "SHE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT!" after final credits because that's how it feels.

With all that going on the message is still - never apologise because Wednesday for sure never does! Her roomie literally leaves her to live with another girl, then comes back multiple times “to pick up remaining things” and then comes back and tells Wednesday that “they just work” so she’ll stay with her. WHAT. THE. BLOODY. HELL. This is some serious “beaten housewife” stockholm syndrome right there. Wednesday manipulated her several times into horrible ordeals, never came to her rescue, almost got her killed and she's grateful? Without even an apology? I'll let you decide whether that's a great message for gen-Z teenagers.

Her school boyfriend has the same arc. Wednesday falsely stalks and accuses him of murders leaving the poor guy in jail and in the end not only he rushes to help her but also never gets any apology. He doesn't even ask for one, like any normal would. Instead he asks lustingly whether she’ll be back for next semester. Oh, you poor beta-male artist boy. She'd never date a person who wouldn't have the balls to walk away from all the shit she put you through.

The whole Wednesday arc is undermined by the trope of female-lead-cannot-do-bad. And even if they do it’s skirted away by them just ignoring things or never mentioning them. By all logic the arc of Wednesday should be - she made terrible mistakes, all her friends either abandoned her or are in jail - she should repent, apologise profusely and admit that without them she is lost. Then they all come back together and defeat Mr Bad.

But it’s not what happens here - Wednesday doesn’t apologise to her roomie or school artist boyfriend. Instead, they basically tell her how awesome she is, and they are so happy that she’s in their lives. Let me remind everyone that Wednesday is a narcissistic psychopath in this show. Her lowest point when she “dies” is not a moment of revelation or internal realisation - she just lets her ancestor spirit heal her and that’s all the resolution we get. Just another plot development. And even when we are shown in the end that Wednesday has become a nudge more accepting - it feels very unearned.

This is some fucked-up shit in my opinion. What’s worse - the seeds for a solid simple character growth are all there. The show just deliberately avoided them all in the last 2 episodes in favour of a stoic supergirl character who even whe does wrong - still gets everything.

Let women characters fail and grow from time to time goddamn it!

If you like that style of trash women-empowerment - make sure to check Sabrina and Enola Holmes with exactly same ideas of what an empowered modern woman should be - manipulative, often wrong and dangerous to people around her but never apologising cause that's weak.
🤢🤮

That sounds absolutely terrible.
 
I mildly enjoyed it overall, but the show is incredibly uneven. I agree with others here that Wednesday's character arc felt incomplete. She made it to the destination for the most part, but some key decisions she made did not yield the appropriate repercussions - in terms of both the story and her character growth.

Thing and Wednesday's actress carried the show - Jenna Ortega being the only exceptional aspect. I thought Gwendoline Christie was pretty good too, but underutilized. I think they could have done way more with her character. At the end of the day, it's really a mediocre show with a few bright spots.

6/10
 

6502

Member
Me.

I thought it was pretty good. CGI for the hyde was a bit too comic book looking for my tastes but otherwise the show was visually striking.

Its a show for teenagers, so the storylines and interactions lack the depth of the best adult shows, but my kids enjoyed it - I was glad to have something we could all watch together.
 

Lasha

Member
I am glad I watched the first episode. There was enough quality and humor to fill an hour or so of an evening. The plot hooks failed to interest me enough to continue with the series. High school drama is a turnoff and I have zero interest in seeing Wednesday learn anything.
 
They've been scouting locations in Europe for months. No longer filming in Romania because the production there was a trainwreck.
 

NickFire

Member
I'm only a couple episodes in. But I'm really liking this show. The lead is perfect for the role, and I catch myself LOL'ing at least a couple times per episode.
 

Melon Husk

Member
American Hogwarts, the show. It doesn't make "sense" but it's fun to watch and competently made. Buffy The Vampire Slayer tier plot. I agree with the critics here. Wednesday fighting boys twice her size with ease was the most unrealistic part of this show (unless she has superpowers that I don't know of. It didn't look like that).
 
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Patrick S.

Banned
I could see the twists and revelations from ten kilometers away, but overall I enjoyed the show quite a lot. And it was one of those rare shows the family was willing to sit and watch together with me, which is a nice bonus.
 
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