Addams Continued

Last night I had Laura Palmer's favourite dinner, potato pancakes and cream corn, while I properly watched Wednesday season 2, episode 4. I said yesterday I'd gotten to episode 4 but only a brief part of it when I woke up after sleeping through episode 3. I'm glad I went back and watched it properly because it's an amazing episode.

It has a lot to praise. Joanna Lumley is amazing, sharp and funny, and Christina Ricci is going full steam as a wacko, being much more captivating than she ever was in season one. Generally, the impression I get is of everyone saying, "Oh, shit, people are actually watching this!"

The winner, though, has gotta be Fred Armisen's Uncle Fester who seemed like an afterthought in season one. Here, he's integral. The makers of the show realised what made the character so good in Addams Family Values, that he's basically indestructible and loves pain.

Oh, and there's that adorable new stalker character. Wednesday choosing to exploit her instead of fight her actually feels genuinely Wednesday Addams-ish. There seems to be a genuine attempt to make the protagonists immoral, which I appreciate.

I loved the action scenes in the asylum which Burton put together really well--episode 4 is the second to be directed by Burton this season, after the first episode. The makers of the show (I'm careful not to say the writers because the jump in quality makes me question who's creatively responsible) are good at considering how the superpowers of the different "Outcasts" play off each other, getting me to think this team would be perfect for creating an iteration of X-Men before I realised, "Oh, this is X-Men." A boarding school for people born with special abilities, shunned and misunderstood by normal society. No wonder it doesn't feel like The Addams Family. I'm sure I'm not the first to point it out.

The episode uses a bit of music from the Vertigo soundtrack. I guess whoever chose to do so doesn't remember Kim Novak taking out a full page ad to accuse The Artist of rape when that film used a bit of the Bernard Herrmann score. Or maybe they just didn't care. As for me, it didn't bother me as much as its use in The Artist, maybe just because Wednesday is a better product altogether. I will say it's confusing. It's a very short excerpt, when Fester kisses Louise at the end of the episode. Not everyone would recognise the music--I'm sure most viewers don't. But they went to the trouble of securing the rights to the music (presumably) so it must have had some meaning. I really don't know what it could be, though.

Wednesday is available on Netflix.