Younger grownup comedies are finest when the distress of highschool is paired with different excessive kinds of terror — a airplane crash, a supernatural thriller, vampires. “Wednesday,” Netflix’s Addams Household sequence, did simply that and extra when it premiered in 2022, combining sardonic wit, sensible casting and homicide in a fantastically macabre setting influenced by producer and director Tim Burton. Jenna Ortega stars because the Addams’ dark-hearted daughter. Her deadpan supply and zombie promenade dance solidified “Wednesday” as one of many 12 months’s finest and liveliest funerary comedies.
The second season of “Wednesday,” Half 1 of which debuts Wednesday adopted by Half 2 on Sept. 3, finds the present’s namesake again at Nevermore Academy, the place she’s confronted with challenges acquainted to final season. She should navigate the idiocy of her highschool friends whereas fixing a metaphysical homicide thriller.
However there’s a brand new twist that threatens to undermine the unflappable protagonist, and it’s a young person’s worst nightmare — even for a lady who enjoys evening terrors. Wednesday’s bizarre household is headed to highschool together with her. Brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) is a Nevermore freshman and her dad and mom Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Gomez (Luis Guzmán) are serving to with fundraising and such. Oh the horror.
Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams “dance dance dances with her hands, hands, hands” in “Wednesday” Season 1.
(Netflix)
Season 2 follows most of the similar formulation, replete with eviscerating comebacks from Daddy’s Little Viper. When her new highschool principal, Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi), asks if she’d like a Nevermore Academy spirit sticker, she responds, “Only if you have one that says ‘Do Not Resuscitate.’” And when describing her underachieving brother’s shortcomings, she says, “He’s got the brains of a dung beetle and the ambitions of a French bureaucrat.”
Nevertheless it’s unattainable to recapture the magic of the primary season, and “Wednesday” Season 2 isn’t fairly as crisp or shocking. Within the first 4 episodes made out there for overview, Wednesday’s zingers aren’t as wickedly sharp as they as soon as have been. And since we all know she’s going to be aggravated by her classmates, reminiscent of perky werewolf roommate Enid (Emma Myers), the dynamic will not be as morbidly charming.
The bond between Addams members of the family, nonetheless, is extra deeply explored and their dysfunctional interactions add a brand new layer of contemptuous humor to the combination. The connection between Wednesday and Morticia is strained, and never simply as a result of standard disgust teen daughters have towards their moms. “When do I get to read your novel?” asks Morticia of her daughter’s work in progress, “Viper de la Muerte.” Wednesday’s interior voice solutions, “When the sun explodes and the Earth is consumed in a molten apocalypse.” Her exterior voice? “Soon, Mother. Soon.”
Morticia is nervous about Wednesday’s growing use of her psychic powers as a result of comparable skills drove one other member of the family mad. Her daughter is displaying troubling indicators reminiscent of black tears streaming from her eyes every time she has a psychic episode — although it’s look, particularly for these considering their subsequent Halloween costume.
We fortunately see much more of eccentric Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen owns this position) as he helps Wednesday clear up her newest case, generally utilizing the good thing about his telekinetic powers. Christina Ricci, who performed Wednesday within the 1991 movie, can also be again. The deranged villain from Season 1 is now a deranged inmate.
Welcome new additions embrace Grandmama Hester Frump (performed by Joanna Lumley of “Absolutely Fabulous”), Morticia’s immaculately coiffed mom and rich mogul who owns Frump Mortuaries. She’s chilly, conniving and glad to trigger a deeper rift between her granddaughter and daughter. And in an ideal casting transfer, Christopher Lloyd, who performed Fester within the movie, seems as a disembodied head in a jar who teaches on the academy.
Factor, the lone hand performed by Romanian magician Victor Dorobantu, maybe has essentially the most display screen time of anybody. Season 2 opens with the stitched-up appendage beating the hell out of a serial killer. It’s directly satisfying and stupidly hilarious.
As for the plot, it’s a lot the identical as final season. There’s one other thriller to resolve, however this time it entails killer surveillance crows, a hooded stalker and a minimum of just a few visits to an insane asylum. There’s additionally a strolling lifeless character added to the combination, so anticipate gore within the type of goo, brains and bugs.
Nevertheless it’s actually the performances, casting and inventive prospers that make “Wednesday” a ghoulish delight. A brief ghost story a few boy with a clockwork coronary heart buried beneath the Cranium Tree is advised by way of Burton claymation, in black-and-white, within the spirit of “Frankenweenie.” It’s stunning, candy and sorrow-filled. “Wednesday” isn’t what it was and that’s OK. It nonetheless works as spooky comedy a few woman and her severed hand.
