A pair of goth icons find themselves trapped in a generic supernatural teen drama in Netflix's Wednesday. Both director Tim Burton and The Addams Family daughter Wednesday Addams get lost in this plot-heavy series set at a boarding school for "outcasts." It's a bit Gossip Girl and a bit Harry Potter, along with decades' worth of forgettable The CW series, held together mainly by Jenna Ortega's pitch-perfect performance as the title character.
Wednesday herself remains distinctive, but nearly everything else about Wednesday could fit in a series that has nothing to do with The Addams Family. There was a lot of buzz about the casting of Luis Guzmán and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Wednesday's parents Gomez and Morticia, but they only show up in two of Wednesday's eight episodes, and Fred Armisen makes just one appearance as Uncle Fester. The Addams with the most screen presence aside from Wednesday is Thing, the disembodied hand who becomes Wednesday's trusty sidekick as she investigates strange goings-on at the rural Nevermore Academy.
An essential part of the appeal of the Addams family, whether in the 1960s TV series, the 1990s movies from director Barry Sonnenfeld, or the recent animated movies, is the way they stick together, presenting a united front against the world. Wednesday almost immediately breaks them up, as 15-year-old Wednesday is expelled from her latest school after she lets piranhas loose in the pool. Her parents decide to send her to Nevermore, a Vermont enclave where Gomez and Morticia first met when they were students. Wednesday resents being expected to follow in her parents' footsteps, and she's no more comfortable among the oddballs at Nevermore than she was in a mainstream school.
While the Addamses were always known for being "creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky," they've generally existed in a heightened version of the real world. Wednesday changes all that, making Nevermore home to vampires, werewolves, sirens, and other supernatural creatures and giving Wednesday psychic visions that allow her to see the future. Those visions place her right in the middle of an investigation into mysterious monster attacks that have been happening near Nevermore and the adjacent town of Jericho.
The overarching supernatural mystery on Wednesday is mildly engaging at best, and creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville, The Shannara Chronicles) limit the comedy to occasional one-liners that Ortega delivers with a perfectly withering deadpan. The rising scream queen (X, 2022's Scream) makes for a worthy successor to '90s Wednesday portrayer Christina Ricci. Ricci shows up here in a largely unremarkable role as Marilyn Thornhill, the only "normie" teacher at Nevermore. Gwendoline Christie, as Nevermore principal Larissa Weems, gets the showier adult role, positioned as an adversary for Wednesday.
Burton, whose goth-cute aesthetic perfectly matches Sonnenfeld's movies, directs the first four episodes, but his impact is so minor that the shift to different directors is almost impossible to discern. Wednesday is better than Burton's previous take on a YA-style story about a school for misfits, 2016's dreadful Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, but it's equally generic -- Ortega's presence aside. Burton's regular collaborators Danny Elfman and Colleen Atwood serve as composer and costume designer, respectively, for the first episode, giving it a bit of Burton's signature ornate style, but they share credits with others in subsequent episodes, and the style becomes less distinctive.
The genius of cartoonist Charles Addams' original conception of Wednesday is evident in the largely bland supporting cast of fellow Nevermore students and other teens, including a pair of potential love interests for Wednesday. Emma Myers makes the strongest impression as Wednesday's preternaturally perky roommate Enid, an unusually upbeat werewolf who's having trouble with her lycanthropic transformations. Subplots about Wednesday's classmates mostly feel like filler, padding out the episodes in order to prolong the mediocre mystery until the finale.
There are occasional references to past Addams Family productions, including a double snap to open a secret passageway and one of Wednesday's suitors asking "You rang?" like the Addams butler Lurch when she summons him. Jericho is home to colonial-themed attraction Pilgrim World, which offers Wednesday the chance for some dark observations about American history, as in the most memorable scene from Sonnenfeld's Addams Family Values. These superficial touches are no substitute for appearances from the core Addams family members, though, and they come off like perfunctory fan service.
For all the characters' emphasis on the idea that Nevermore students are weird, Wednesday is disappointingly conventional. There's nothing weird about the familiar beats of the serialized mystery or the relationships among the teens at Nevermore. The weirdest moment that Burton offers is a throwaway bit at a school dance when Wednesday finally cuts loose and moves to the music in a kind of retro groovy manner. It has nothing to do with the plot or the worldbuilding, but it's stylish and wry, as Wednesday's stone-faced expression contrasts with her fluid dance moves. That's the kind of morbid goofiness that an Addams Family adaptation should be filled with.
The eight-episode first season of Wednesday premieres Wednesday, Nov. 23 on Netflix.