TeeVee Casualty: “Wednesday” does not cheapen The Addams Family legacy
Netflix’s (partially) Tim Burton-helmed “Addams Family” reboot is a lot better than you want to admit. And by the way, The Cramps would appreciate the attention they’re getting!
Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams: “I own y—” (Dammit1 We’ve already used that caption! Several times!)
A pal of mine was part of a group of people who hung out with Phil Spector at his Hollywood manor on a regular basis back in the ‘80s. In between drinking copious amounts of top shelf liquor and spinning scratchy old 45s, there was an ongoing dialog on every topic under the sun. Somehow, the subject of highbrow vs. lowbrow art came up. The man who produced “Be My Baby” (and yes, who shot Lana Clarkson) settled the matter Socratically.
“We all like The Three Stooges, right?” Everyone nodded in assent.
“We all like The Marx Brothers, right?” Again, no one disagreed.
Then he dropped the other shoe: “We all understand the difference, right?”
Most of us gathered here can also use this method to settle that eternal Beatles vs. Stones argument that rages around The Munsters and The Addams Family. (But not the Beatles vs. Stones argument – no one can be fucking rational about that shit!) Both horror-themed sitcoms premiered within days of one another on rival networks – The Munsters on CBS, with ABC hosting The Addams Family – in September 1964. The Munsters’ characters were based on Universal’s beloved gothic horror films of the ‘30s and ‘40s, while ABC’s show brought to life the darkly witty cartoons drawn by Charles Addams for The New Yorker. Both series ran two seasons, and seemingly a thousand million years more in syndication. Ours’ and several generations hence grew up on these two shows.
As Wikipedia puts it, The Addams Family took “the unnamed characters in the single-panel gag cartoons and (gave) them names, back stories, and a household setting.” Meanwhile, the creative team behind Leave It To Beaver upended the typical American sitcom by naming Dr. Frankenstein’s creature Herman Munster, marrying him to Count Dracula’s daughter, giving them a werewolf for a child and a blonde bombshell niece (cleverly named “Marilyn” for a certain iconic 1950s celluloid fleshpot), and placing them in the ‘burbs. Both were utterly subversive ideas, products of the times. Remember: Another popular sitcom of the day, Hogan’s Heroes, followed the wacky hijinks of spies in a Nazi POW camp during WWII! ‘Tis likely the only sitcom in history to use the running punchline, “We’re sending you to the Russian front!”
But back to The Addams Family and The Munsters.
We all grew up on these shows. It feels like we should love them equally. But fan worship is usually sharply drawn between the two. Admittedly, while I like both, The Addams Family has always had the edge for me. The Addamses were proud of being misfits, wearing their freak status as a badge of honor, forcing the world to either accept them on their terms or go suck an exhaust pipe. In contrast, the denizens of 1313 Mockingbird Lane were grasping, scheming, not understanding why they did not fit it and desperate to do so.
In other words, if you require validation and relatability from your televisual entertainment, The Addams Family feels like a sitcom for non-conformists the world over.
All that said, what’s your freakin’ problem with Wednesday?!
Wednesday’s iteration of the Addamses: “The whole thing got started/When Uncle Fester farted!”
I am mostly speaking to a number of my friends and their social media posts regarding this reboot. The critical reaction has overall been positive, and three weeks after its release, Netflix reported that Wednesday was the streamer’s second-most watched English language series. It netted two Golden Globe nominations, and was renewed for a second season this past January.
Everyone in the world seems to like it, except maybe 2/3rds of my pals.
Odd, because you’d think this would be no-brainer. Tim Burton is part of the team behind it. He directed the first four episodes, after having to pass on directing the first cinematic adaptations and a planned stop-motion animated film. The entire series feels like a Tim Burton production, even when he is not directing, down to little touches like a Danny Elfman score. And Burton indicated he finally accepted the job after reading the pilot script.
“It just spoke to me about how I felt in school and how you feel about your parents, how you feel as a person,” he told Empire magazine writer Sophie Butcher. “It gave the Addams Family a different kind of reality. It was an interesting combination.”
There’s probably two different things at play here, as to why there’s a Wednesday backlash. There’s a lot of people out there who can get very precious about things connected to their childhood. And whether it’s the original TV series or the ‘90s films, there’s a few generations here who have grown up with The Addams Family. Hearing the finger-clicking theme song feels like a grilled cheese sandwich and a warm mug of tomato soup on a frigid day. So there’s some out there who probably feel their childhood defiled watching this show.
Really, though? I know for a fact many of my friends’ dislike is due to one scene, and one scene only:
Yep. Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams performed a beautifully awkward dance to The Cramps’ 1981 rendition of “Goo Goo Muck,” from their second LP Psychedelic Jungle. Somehow, this is a criminal act.
Punk rockers, I swear. Nothing from our world is supposed to become popular. The minute that happens, and the normies get ahold of it, it’s somehow no longer pure, no longer ours’. Now they are “ruining” The Cramps. If this is the case, are they also ruining Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams?” Or Edith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette rien?” Both are also featured on the soundtrack.
I interviewed Lux Interior and Poison Ivy. Twice. I guarantee you they’d be thrilled about the attention Wednesday has focused upon The Cramps. Don’t believe me? Let me quote Lux from my interview:
“Y’know, I don’t think any of those old rockabilly guys we like ever said, ‘I think I’d like to sell just a few records, and be a kind of a cult act….’”
‘Nuff said.
Honestly, the whole enterprise is beautiful, a perfect reboot of The Addams Family as a darker update of a nostalgic comic strip for teens and young adults that can still be appreciated by old adults, a la Riverdale or The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina. And it does so by expanding upon those freaks-versus-normies values at the root of the original.
In short, the basic plot concerns Wednesday Addams (Ortega) getting expelled from her umpty-umpth school, for defending her baby brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) from the bullies on the boys' water polo team. Seems retaliation ain’t kosher, when it’s dumping live piranhas into the school's pool as the water polo team practices.
So Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and Morticia Addams (Catherine Zeta-Jones) enroll Wednesday at their high school alma mater Nevermore Academy, a private school for outcasts and misfits on the outskirts of Jericho, Vermont. Her cold, emotionless personality and defiant nature places her outside her outsider schoolmates and equally puts off Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie), the school's principal. But it soon becomes apparent Wednesday’s inherited her mother's psychic abilities, enabling her to solve a local murder mystery.
There’s a lot to unpack from there. For one thing, the casting is impeccable. I’ve heard more complaints about Guzmán as Gomez Addams than are merited, and you’re talking to someone who’s gonna tell you that you can’t top John Astin in the role. But Guzmán is perfect. For one thing, alongside Ortega, this brings out the unspoken subtext that at least the Addams’ paternal side is Hispanic. Which, of course, brings in even more subtext. And how genius is it, having Fred Armisen play Uncle Fester for one episode? He hands down is the best Uncle Fester, more so than Jackie Coogan, the role’s originator.
And Ortega might be the ultimate Wednesday Addams, even more so than the late Lisa Loring or Christina Ricci, who slides into Wednesday as Marilyn Thornhill, Nevermore Academy’s botany teacher and Wednesday’s dorm mother. Ortega both amps up Wednesday’s cruelty to a comical degree and invests her with enough warmth, humanity and vulnerability to tell us she’s the ultimate misunderstood, confused teenager. The writers and Ortega’s portrayal invest Wednesday with an emotional range encompassing more than ennui or anger – she even falls in love as the season rolls along. Posters of Ortega as Wednesday are surely currently decorating the bedroom walls of every youth who identifies as punk, gothic, or merely dresses in black, sitting on their balcony at midnight to saw “Paint It Black” on a cello.
Overall, the whole enterprise is worthy. Wednesday feels like a Tim Burton brainstorm, even on the episodes he does not direct. It does not cheapen The Addams Family legacy – it deepens it. Just adjust your brainpan wide open. And click your fingers twice.
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The Clash was FAR from "milder." And the Elvis and Wednesday posts are certainly a part of the aesthetic in this space. Which is extremely into the Sex Pistols, New York Dolls, etc. But I appreciate you enjoying my Substack. You are absolutely welcome here. And I appreciate your perspective. Thank you. 🙂
I was a Munster's kid. I think only because it came on immediately before or after another show I watched after school (Maybe Gilligan's Island?). As an adult, I would likely watch The Addams Family but probably not The Munster's. I thought Wednesday was very enjoyable and I'm looking forward to the next season. Not being much of a punk music listener I didn't recognize the music or have any idea who recorded it but I was intrigued enough to check out the credits to see who it was.