What do you think of the rhyming title? That’s just a practice run. My aim is to write a 20,000 word article fully in verse.
Narrator (Gasps in horror) : ¡Ay, caramba! Five things I would rather do than read a badly rhyming article by this author.
- Buy a Mitutoyo MF-A1010D MF Series Measuring Microscope to measure the daily growth of nails. Start with each finger of right hand, measure daily growth, plot growth vs time graphs, vary for summer, monsoon and winter. Repeat for left hand.
- Stare at the wall for 10 straight hours, no breaks. Repeat for all walls. Then repeat for doors. And windows.
- Buy 1 kg sugar. Examine each sugar grain under the recently bought Mitutoyo MF-A1010D MF Series Measuring Microscope and measure its dimensions. Calculate volume of each grain and plot as a function of humidity, temperature, and any other variable you can think of. Repeat for all known brands. Twice.
- Watch a kettle boil while keeping the heat on minimum.
- Read one word of War and Peace everyday. It will take 1643 years to finish. (Snoopy actually did that!)
So I binged on Wednesday. I have not seen any of the previous movies or series. This was my first encounter with the Addams Family. It takes almost no imagination to conclude that Wednesday is heavily influenced by Harry Potter. Just google the two names together.
So Nevermore is Hogwarts and Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) is Harry Potter. In keeping with the history of the Addamses, Nevermore is populated by hydes and werwolves instead of wizards and witches and has a distinctly gothic touch. Although the word ‘magic’ is not mentioned frequently, there is plenty of evidence of it. And the last fight between the hyde and the werwolf is straight out of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie.
Getting inspired by a famous work of art can be a double edged sword. The trick is to have enough original content so that the work does not seem like a pale copy. In this, Wednesday totally succeeds. The writing is brilliant and manages to keep you in the edge of your seat the whole time. The dialogue is witty (“Ted Bundy’s Pinterest”) and the homage to the king of macabre Edgar Allen Poe is intelligent and creative, while reference to Dickens’ Uriah Heep is a nice touch. Wednesday Addams has a rich, layered, quirky personality with much depth (“I don’t hold séances very often. I can barely tolerate the living; why would I want to commune with the dead?”), not surprising because the character has been in development since its first appearance in the 1964 TV series The Addams Family.
Jenna Ortega as Wednesday steals the show, bringing out the complex and layered character of Wednesday with conviction. She is ably supported by Emma Myers who plays Enid Sinclair. Enid reminds me of Luna Lovegood. Cameo by Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams was a delight; it would have been great to watch the family dynamic at home.
The unwelcome side effect of getting inspired by a great work of art is the inevitable comparison with the original. I consider myself lucky that I was a witness to the Harry Potter phenomenon, along with the Gen Z kids who were growing up – the midnight book releases, the crazy lines in front of the bookshops like the ones you see when a new iPhone is launched – when was the last time people, especially kids, were that crazy for books? In seven books, J. K. Rowling created an alternate universe filled with such minute details – from exotic classes (transfigurations, anyone?) to the game of Quiddich – that the Gen Z kids wanted to leave whichever boring school they were at and enroll at Hogwarts. Makes total sense. Why study Spanish grammar when you could be transforming a pencil into a frog? ¿No es obvia?
There are two ways to create a classic TV show. First, base it on a classic book, Game of Thrones style. George R R Martin built such a solid foundation in his books that majority of the work for the writers was already done. Second alternative is much more taxing on the writers. To create a script out of thin air. For this to become a classic, you need a visionary like Vince Gilligan, who created Breaking Bad and followed it up with equally amazing Better Call Saul.
Wednesday does not reach the heights it is capable of because it does not have the time. Eight episodes don’t allow you to go into details. So Nevermore never feels like a real school. We are shown only one class which resembles the Herbology class of Ms Sprout and there seem to be no exams. A school where students are not fretting over exams is like a bar with no drunks. (Narrator goes into anaphylactic shock after reading this analogy, an analogophylactic shock, if you will.) We never meet other teachers, and the four houses that are introduced in the beginning never get to sharpen their rivalries, save the rowing race.
What this does is severely limit the potential of the series. The writing is amazing; I am sure writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar would have done wonders if they were assured a leeway of a 24 part series. Instead of diving straight into the plot, they could have developed the atmosphere of Nevermore to make it as interesting as Hogwarts. One of the advantages of Breaking Bad was that it had over two days – 48 hours – to develop the story and its characters.
Wednesday was the second highest watched show on Netflix. Stranger Things, Avatar : Way of Water, House of the Dragon – fantasy as a genre is here to stay.
