Ga Ga for "Wednesday"

"Wednesday" has racked up 341.23 million viewing hours on Netflix since its November 23 premiere. And broken all Netflix viewing streaming records. And there's a reason why.

This past week, I had the pleasure of attending the Massachusetts Conference for Women for the first time. For those unfamiliar with the forum, it’s a community whose mission is tied to amplifying women voices in the workplace and beyond. In addition to awe-inspiring speeches delivered by the likes of Viola Davis and Reese Witherspoon, the 2-day event, offers attendees the opportunity to meet new people, learn about women-friendly companies, and attend career development seminars.

Reese Witherspoon’s call or rally was around how vital it is that female stories be told on screen are and ideally, females are the ones architecting those stories. I surface all this by way of my fascination and others’ (as the current rankings support), with the hit Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Nightmare before Christmas, Beetlejuice, Alice in Wonderland, etc) creation, Wednesday on Netflix starring Jenna Ortega in the lead role of Wednesday Addams. Think about that for a second. The most popular show on the platform puts a “goth girl” at the center of a story. Scratch that. It puts a “girl” at the center of the story, in which not only is the series named after her, but it’s all about her, her agency, her choices, her strengths and her vulnerabilities.

For those unfamiliar with the Addams Family from which our Wednesday emerges, they are the macabre, dysfunctionally relatable family that based on the theme song, are “creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky, and all together ooky” (I don’t believe this is an actual word but it rhymes).

The OG Addams Family (per the picture below) was fashioned as a 60’s sitcom with an amorous Gomez and Morticia Addams who were pretty chill parents; two kids, Wednesday, a precocious girl preoccupied with death; her brother Pugsly, who in later adaptations of the franchise, was often on the receiving end of Wednesday’s sometimes cruel experiments; and a lovable Uncle Fester who always made you just the right amount of uncomfortable. There was also the butler Lurch and a random detached hand, called “Thing.”

Wednesday grows up in the 2022 reboot. She has to deal with navigating the social echelons of Nevermore Academy.

Fast forward from the 60’s to the 90’s when we had a series of films which brought the family into a more modern context, which was catapulted to fame with The Addams Family (1991) film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Raul Julia, Angelica Huston, Christina Ricci, and Christopher Lloyd. In this film and the following ones we start to see a more mature Wednesday Addams develop and her values come out more - her inability to stand others’ cruelty, her fierce protection of her family, and her vigilante justice emerge. Wednesday’s personality is divisive and at odds with society around her. But she’s generally right and you’re generally rooting for her over the status quo. She’s also quick to sniff out evil or mal intent.

From the 90’s vault where Wednesday (Christina Ricci) in “Addams Family Values,” who plays Pocahontas in the pageant, does not stick to the script. Instead of worshipping the pilgrims, she demolishes her "privileged" fellow campers' racist Thanksgiving myth and sums up centuries of mistreatment of this country's native population with a handful of incisory, flawlessly delivered lines of dialogue. And then she burns her fellow campers at the stake and roasts their counselors on a spit.

As Wednesday, Christina Ricci’s childhood career was cemented. It’s impossible to think of another role she occupied with such purely iconic oomph. She was a badass. And inarguably, Wednesday both inspired and was inspired by other female, goth, cynical, wiser-than-their-years, anti-social female archetypes. Take Lydia (Winona Ryder) from Beetlejuice (likely a source of inspiration for the 90’s movies) or Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or even Janis Ian from Mean Girls. And who can forget, 90’s MTV icon Daria Morgendorffer.

When Daria meets Wednesday. Credit: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/773774779705516107/

So what does the latest incantation of a Wednesday Addams’ spell look like in the woke decade of the 2020’s? If 90’s films were indicative of the decade of people mocking all the classist, ”norm” values vs “outcast” values in the not-so-great-for-women times during Bill Clinton’s path to impeachment (the conniving and murderous Debbie Jellinsky (Joan Cusack) as a stand in for Linda Tripp?), the current adaptation veers away from the politics of the day, but still pokes fun at the bear. This time calling out ingroups vs outgroups on which the show is firmly grounded. It also casts Latino actors in both the roles of Wednesday and Gomez for the first time. And despite it being really hard to visualize Luis Guzmán as Gomez after watching a handsome and debonnaire Raul Julia in the role, Guzmán is definitely a departure in character and form, but his good humor and comedic timing is there.

Which do you prefer as Gomez Addams?

In Wednesday, Jenna Ortega (Stuck in the Middle, Scream, Yes Day) as Wednesday, plays a high schooler who has been kicked out of one too many schools. At the latest school, she let loose a school of piranhas on the boys’ swim team after they bullied and shamed her brother, Puglsey, which she discovers through one of her “visions” in which she can see things that either happened or are about to happen.

The Two Wednesdays, together.

This power serves her at her new school, Nevermore Academy (think Hogwarts but with a student body comprised of vampires, “furries” or werewolves, sirens, shapeshifters, and gorgons) an esteemed private school for “outcasts” (“outcasts” = “Non-Normies”). There, she’s expected to “fit in” and also she’s a second generation student there, trying to live up to the high bar her mother set while attending the school as a peer of the present headmaster, Weems (Gwendoline Christie, Game of Thrones, Brienne).

Her roommate, Enid Sinclair is the perfect foil for Wednesday. She’s cheery, full of color, life, socially-directed, and a good friend to Wednesday. Eventually Wednesday comes around to Enid, which is probably the best #relationshipgoals on the show or as fans have shipped, “Wenclair.” In other themes on the show: There’s a dash of romance, complicated mother-daughter relationships, and townie vs outcasts in the midst of a mystery from centuries ago and one more recent involving Wednesday’s parents. Nancy Drew, it’s not, but it has a little of that teenage detective tribe vibe going on.

Instead of telling you all the reasons you should watch, I’ve decided to show you. Mostly because I’ve spent a lot of time on the Addams backstory here, and hints of the reason(s) to watch/ highlights reels can be found in these clips.

Official Trailer:

Rolling Stones on the cello, the best instrument on the planet:

Jenna Ortega cements her status as newly minted Goth Girl, taking over the reins from Christina Ricci, who also stars in the series.