Wednesday is dreadfully boring

Despite the abundance of werewolves, sirens and gorgons, there is no Frankenstein’s monster Wednesday. But the show itself is a disgraced corpse horribly assembled from pieces of undead media: fans of teen fantasy will recognize pieces of everything from Veronica Mars And the mean girls to me Harry Potter And the evil, with a slice of Gilmore Girls Good barometer.

But the effect you won’t find anywhere is, ironically, Addams family.

For more than 80 years, Charles Addams’ 1930s comics have been adapted into numerous live-action, animated films, and TV series (not to mention a Broadway musical and a few video games). With this Netflix spin-off, Clearly playing opposite fans of Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1991 film and its sequel, creators Alfred Goff and Miles Millar become perennial favorites thanks to their dry wit, clever gags, and stellar cast.

These movies also work because they are about the whole family The Addams and Their Gothic Mansion of Comedy Horror. Sure, part of the fun is watching these gothic strangers interact with the mundane suburbanites. But it’s more about the fun of seeing them play each other. Despite their homicidal tendency, they are one of the most loving and practical families in all of pop culture. In other words, there is no Adams Island.

WednesdayThe first mistake many make is separating the title character from her family almost immediately. After a series of expulsions, Gomez and Morticia (Luis Guzmán and Catherine Zeta-Jones) send their daughter to study at their alma mater, Nevermore. The boarding school is a discounted Hogwarts school located on the edge of New England in Stars Hollow, complete with a café lounge. In short, the writers make the perplexing choice of turning Wednesday into a teenage detective investigating a string of mysterious murders.

The hilariously slow version of “Witches” and “Stealers” are “The Outcasts” and “The Mores”; And no more, writers remind us again and again, is a haven for the former. While taking her for a ride, Wednesday’s kindly roommate Enid (Emma Myers) tells her it’s a school for “outcasts, freaks, monsters — fill your favorite marginalized group here.” And sure, their classmates are vampires, werewolves, fortune tellers, and the like — but they sure aren’t weirdos, let alone marginalized. No, Nevermore is populated by wealthy, mostly white kids who are just as outcast as the students at any normal high school. For example, one of the teens feels weird about the fact that Wed’s clothes are… monochromatic?

Over the course of eight frosty episodes, Wednesday He investigates the horrific deaths committed by a bug-eyed (and bad CGI) monster. Along the way, she gets caught up in a love triangle, makes friends, and melts the ice around her black heart.

We don’t know about you, but the last thing we want to see is Wed Adams becomes an emotionally enlightened philanthropist; We come to this character for casual sadism. Instead, we watch her unite Queen Bee (Joy Sunday) and Nerd (Mousa Mostafa) under common cause, navigating a love triangle with trust fund Bad Boy (Percy Haynes White) and townsfolk Nice Guy (Hunter Doohan). ).

The show’s dialogue is flavorless at best and funny at worst. (See bullying taunts like “Check out that greedy little stranger” and “What are you? Alto, soprano, or just dactylic?”) And we get the sense that neither Gough nor Millar spoke to a teenager several decades ago; Children still routinely read the Articles About school gossip. (Welcome to 2005, we think?)

The writers also take tantalizing liberties with history: Nevermore’s most famous alum is Edgar Allan Poe (because… “The Raven”?), who, IRL, went to boarding school in London. But this is nothing compared to the classic mystery series of terrorizing the pilgrim colonists else Colonists who “live in harmony with the natives”. (No original characters appear on screen.)

Even though she doesn’t have anything to work with, Ortega’s favorite horror flick does what she can with her character, nailing the deadpan delivery that Christina Ricci perfected in ’90s films. She’s got a few good lines for the series, dropping quick anecdotes about hibernation with grizzlies and the death of her pet scorpion. But the actress can’t make up for the fact that this Wednesday edition is the epitome of what fan circles call the “Mary Sue”: everyone she meets becomes instantly enamored with her, and she’s adept at whatever she tries — cello, martial arts, swordsmanship, writing. novels, shooting, and botany, to name a few.

Speaking of Richie, she plays a side role Wednesday—one of the many big names on the series who, who have nothing to do with boring material, don’t do much of anything. In sharp contrast to the live-wire spark between Anjelica Huston and Morticia and Gomez’s Raúl Julia, Zeta-Jones and Guzmán didn’t have an iota of chemistry between them. Others caught in this tweak include Gwendolyn Christie, Riki Lindhome, and Fred Armisen. Moreover, horror legend Tim Burton directed half of the season’s episodes. But the visual language of the show is so flat that you’d never know it.

Gough and Millar have a long history with boilers of the teen genre: They plunged into the world of superheroes with their high school drama Superman SmallvilleAnd the that ran for a whopping 10 seasons. Then, they took a stab at fantasy with MTV and Spike’s Shannara Records. These shows were formulaic in their own way; But they do not hold candlesticks to not the deep origin of Wednesday.

Wednesday Premieres November 23 on Netflix.