At the Close of the Day

Finishing the disappointing second season of Wednesday last night, I got to thinking what a rare and ephemeral thing genuine creative achievement can be. I suspect Wednesday collapsed under too much polish and too many cooks in the kitchen.

I maintain that the fourth episode is good. Uncle Fester is unquestionably the high point of the season and it's a shame he didn't hang around for the succeeding episodes. After the lame body swap episode, I expected things to pick up in the final two episodes directed by Tim Burton. However, it was no longer '90s Burton but dull, corporate treadmill Disney Burton. The new dance sequence perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with this season.

There's nothing bad about the dance. Two pretty girls dance in a creatively choreographed sequence tied into the plot with a competent new song from Lady Gaga. It's a well made dance scene. Much like the writing this season, which lacks the glaring logistical flaws of season one. Some things may not make sense, like the way the characters behave in the body swap episode, or the fact that Agnes runs to Enid for help in the final episode despite Enid needing to stay in a cage due to a critical problem with her werewolf transformation. One subliminally understands that the characters have to interact because they're the main characters, that it's a limitation of the writers' imaginations or possibly the show's budget rather than the fever dream ridiculousness of the character actions and disjointed timelines of season one.

Perhaps it was the atmosphere of accident and haste that produced the good qualities of season one as well as the bad. The great thing about season one, as Grace Randolph put it, was seeing Wednesday "out of her comfort zone" dealing with romance. In a word, the character exhibited vulnerability. In season two, Jenna Ortega put her foot down and insisted that Wednesday would never, ever engage in a romantic plot. This is despite Wednesday's romantic subplot in Addams Family Values, the piece of Addams Family media arguably most influential on Wednesday.

The tension in Wednesday season one was between Wednesday's tightly controlled demeanour and the ever lingering possibility of her losing control. There's no sense of a loss of control anywhere in season two. The awkwardly inserted reaction shots of Jenna Ortega in the dance scene have much the tone of her appearance in the whole season. It's somehow as though Wednesday the character isn't truly there, as though she were added in post-production. The dance sequence in season one was captivatingly messy. There was the unexpected use of "The Goo Goo Muck", a much more arrestingly strange song than the bland new piece from Lady Gaga. There was the surprise in the very fact that Wednesday was capable of or willing to dance at all and the further unexpected fact of her odd and awkward grace.

Season 2 has fewer mistakes and it took fewer risks. The thing is, if an artist doesn't take risks or allow herself to be vulnerable, it's rare she'll ever produce anything interesting. Partly this is because, and certainly in a teen drama, the viewer is watching the characters to see how they deal with their own vulnerabilities. We all have vulnerabilities in life and art is useful when it reflects that.

Wednesday is available on Netflix.