‘Wednesday’ – Gothic fun and guest stars in the hit series’ second season

When it premiered, the second season of the hit series “Wednesday” had much to live up to. Its first season in 2022 was Netflix’s most watched English-language show of all time, with more than 250 million views. It’s a revamping of the 1960s Gothic black comedy “Addams Family” series based on characters created by Charles Addams in the “New Yorker” magazine, and the two spinoff movies made in the 1990s.
Critics were divided on the first season, seeing it as formulaic teenage romance and mystery, but other applauded its dark humor and the visual flair of its Goth production design, as well as Tim Burton’s direction. Jenna Ortega won universal praise as the dour cello-playing Wednesday with her deadpan humor. She and the series were nominated for Emmys.

Woe, gee
In the original series, Wednesday was strange but good-natured. Now in “Wednesday,” she’s stoic, cold, emotionless but fiercely intelligent and defiant despite her general disdain for life. She was expelled for attempted murder by releasing live piranhas on water polo jocks bullying her brother Pugsley. She is sent to Nevermore Academy (a Goth psychedelic version of Hogwarts), which her parents attended, in the town of Jericho, Vermont. It’s a private school for outcasts, misfits, and monsters, seeking refuge from the world of “normies.”

Her roommate is Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers), a perennially cheerful optimist who is also a werewolf. Wednesday has inherited her mother Morticia’s psychic ability, as she attempts to solve a local murder mystery with the help of the ever-handy disembodied but always expressive Thing.

One of her love interests, Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), a barista, turns out to be a Hyde monster, who’s murdering the townsfolk. She defeats him and he, along with his ‘master,’ botany teacher Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci, Wednesday in the ’90s films), are sent to an insane asylum. Wednesday is celebrated as the savior of Nevermore, fame she deeply resents.

Only the Woe-ly
The second season (“woe-centric”) after a three-year hiatus, sees Wednesday returning to a new semester at Nevermore along with her brother Pugsley (Isac Ordonez) who befriends a pet zombie Slurp. The series now has a darker, sharper edge to it, though it retains some of its off-kilter sarcasm, when in the first scene voiceover, Wednesday observes, “It’s been an eventful summer. I was tied up in a serial killer’s basement, pursuing my favorite passions: torment and humiliation. Who said that nightmares don’t come true?”

This season has larger roles for her parents Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Gomez (Luis Guzman). Last year’s headmaster, Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie) died in season 1 is now Wednesday’s ghostly spirit guide. New Dean Barry Dort, mysterious and duplicitous, is played by the brilliant Steve Buscemi at his quirky menacing best. Groupie, Agnes DeMille (Evie Templeton), often invisible, is obsessed with, and stalks, Wednesday. Dort asks Morticia to recruit financial donors to Nevermore and organize the annual gala. He expects her to elicit a large donation from her wealthy mortuary-mogul mother Grandmama Hester Frump (Joanna Lumley).

Wednesday tries, based on a premonition (her psychic visions produce black tears), to stop the death of her roommate Enid, but we get much more backstory about the Addams family, including Thing, and unearthed secrets about her parents’ dubious past. There’s friction between Morticia and Wednesday, while Morticia is barely on speaking terms with Grandmama (she never accepted her marriage to Gomez) who becomes Wednesday’s sound-boarding ally.

The fun electrifying criminal Uncle Fester Addams (Fred Armisen) is a welcome return (He may be getting his own spinoff series). Oh yes, there’s a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo performance by Lady Gaga as veteran teacher Rosaline Rotwood, who gives an essential clue to Wednesday. Gaga’s bigger gift is a new song “Dead Dance” written specifically for the series.

Time to woe
The best episode of the season is a Goth “Freaky Friday” rip-off where because of a curse, Wednesday and Enid switch bodies, which has Ortega shocking her classmates by dancing on the campus steps to the K-pop hit “Blackpink,” seemingly out of character. The sizzling tension between Enid and Wednesday was the highlight of season 1 and, outside of this new episode’ has been downplayed to the series’ detriment. Social media speculation of a relationship between the two roommates has been squashed by the writers, dashing hope of a Sapphic romance.

Part of the series’ charm is that it defies classification. It’s been described as a supernatural whodunit mystery “coming-of-goth-age” dark teen comedy. There’s sardonic humor (i.e. Wednesday: “I only sign my name in blood, but I never said it was my own.”) but plenty of horror, though even the Hyde monsters don’t look that terrifying, their cartoonish look reminiscent of the Abominable Snowman in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

 “Wednesday’s” first season focused on her front and center character spouting sarcastic put-downs featuring her culture clash against the world. In the second season, plot overwhelms character. Too many storylines, and too many ancillary undeveloped cast members, like the siren cult narrative, seem irrelevant. It’s also odd that there are so few classroom scenes in a story set in a school. The Pugsley character pales in comparison to Wednesday and his scenes with Slurp are a borderline drag.

The guest characters shine in “Wednesday,” especially Armisen’s Uncle Fester, who lights up the screen with his kooky and delightful sociopathic antics. But the real jewel is Lumley’s Grandmama, resurrecting the lurid ghastly side of her debauched diva Patsy Stone in “Absolutely Fabulous.” Give this woman a guest Emmy for comedy.

Zeta-Jones has a much bigger presence this season and she’s fine, especially in her poignant scenes with Ortega, yet one wonders if this Oscar-winning actress wakes up in the middle of the night screaming to husband Michael Douglas, “Is this what my career has come to?”

The series is first and foremost centered around Ortega, who gives an effortless macabre tour de force in a spooky charismatic role she seems born to play.  You can’t keep your eyes off her. It’s made her a star, but she’s so identified with Wednesday, one wonders if it won’t limit her in future roles, which would be a shame.

Despite the myriad subplots and annoying digressions, the series’ momentum is brisk and keeps your attention. The good news is the series has been renewed for a third season, but the bad news is we might not see it till 2027.

For LGBTQ viewers, the series is an uplifting parable on the delights and perils of being an outcast and reveals the restorative healing power of community and being with one’s own kind. The series marries the grotesque with campy humor. Despite its formulaic missteps, it’s still a grave ghoulish delight that still manages to zing the audience when you least expect it with its impeccably balanced sinister and scornful aesthetic.
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