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While some would say that Lady Gaga “makes” season two of Wednesday (between her cameo and the song she provided for it, “The Dead Dance”), there’s no denying that what spared it from the problems of season one was none other than Thing. More specifically, the gradual unfurling of his (or “its”) backstory as it relates to a newly introduced character, Isaac Night (Owen Painter) a.k.a. Slurp. That latter nickname being what Pugsley Addams (Isaac Ordonez) gives to him after being the one responsible for reanimating his corpse in the wake of hearing a “ghost story,” of sorts,” about him on his first night at Nevermore Academy, joining Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) there for his inaugural year (which Wednesday is none too enthused about).
As Ajax Petropolus (Georgie Farmer) recounts the tale of Isaac (in a very “submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society” kind of way), a ninety-second flashback sequence—that took Tim Burton and co. eight months to create—shows how the former Nevermore student went from being a “normal” human to a cold and ambitious mad scientist. The black and white flashback that illustrates this transition is one of the standout moments of the season, drawing easy comparisons to Burton’s earlier work, including Frankenweenie, Vincent and even The Nightmare Before Christmas. And, as Burton himself said of making the sequence, “We needed to pretend like I’m back in my student days and do it like I did it in the beginning.”
So it is that the story of Isaac’s transformation from mere “mortal” (by Nevermore standards) into a boy with a clockwork heart (for he invents a heart-shaped mechanism to replace his real heart “so that his body could keep up with his dazzling mind”) leaves an indelible imprint not just on Pugsley, but also the viewer. As does the mention of how Isaac died while conducting yet another one of his diabolical experiments, electrocuted and ejected from the window of Iago Tower. At the end of the story, Ajax baits the youths of Caliban Hall with the mention that only the bravest have ventured out in the middle of the night to try and listen to the tick of his clockwork heart buried beneath the Skull Tree (this obviously having some very strong shades of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Telltale Heart”). So it is that Pugsley, feeling like a loser (and not in an “embracing it” sort of way à la Tame Impala and Beck) and wanting to prove himself in some way, predictably goes to the tree.
Unfortunately, Wednesday isn’t one for paying much attention to her brother in general, let alone when she has her own additional problems to deal with—namely, trying to stop a premonition of her roommate (and, to her dismay, best friend) Enid Sinclair’s (Emma Myers) death. This unwanted vision occurring at the end of season two’s first episode, “Here We Woe Again.” Along with Pugsley going to the Skull Tree with a shovel. However, before he can do something stupid like dig up the grave, he does something even stupider by getting scared by a bat that flies out of one of the tree’s “eyes.”
This shock causes him to fall and, in turn, shock the ground with his powers of electrokinesis. So it is that Isaac’s corpse is “miraculously” reanimated, albeit initially in zombie form, emerging almost instantaneously from beneath the ground. This sets a key “subplot” off for the rest of the season, with “Slurp” (as he’s initially branded by Pugsley) slowly but surely regaining his human form—thanks to the steady consumption of various people’s brains. Confiding only to his roommate, Eugene Ottinger (Moosa Mostafa), the secret of his new “best friend,” who he hides in a shed…chained up, of course.
In “Call of the Woe,” the matter of Thing’s general neglect by the Addams family of late (including everyone forgetting his birthday like he’s Samantha Baker [Molly Ringwald] in Sixteen Candles) is brought up right away, with Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) commending Gomez (Luis Guzman) for being able to get an apparent masseuse named Stassa (Neri Zaccardelli) to rub him down, as it were. A small reconciliation for all the bullshit Thing constantly has to put up with. Including, in this particular episode, having to go along on a camping trip. The first one of its kind put on by Nevermore, courtesy of the overzealous new principal, Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi). The replacement for the now disgraced Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie), who manages to stick around for season two by conveniently becoming Wednesday’s new spirit guide. With “Call of the Woe” reverting to leaning into that Harry Potter/Hogwarts Academy aura it radiated so strongly in season one (along with some overt nods to Charmed, Gilmore Girls and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), it’s an obvious “filler episodes” with its most significant plot point being Slurp’s capture at the camp after he devours the brain of Ron Kruger (Anthony Michael Hall, once again playing a part that goes against his original dweeb typecasting, which Burton helped undo by making him the bully in Edward Scissorhands), a scoutmaster who leads the competition between his Phoenix Cadets and the Nevermore students after a double booking of the campsite leads them to “fight” for it.
As the episode draws to a close, more cornball-ness takes hold as Wednesday delivers a voiceover that repurposes Robert Frost’s overused “The Road Not Taken” to say that she needs to keep investigating the goings-on at Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital, where Tyler Galpin a.k.a. the Hyde (Hunter Doohan) of season one is being held captive. And, now, as the end of this episode shows, so is his master, Marilyn Thornhill/Laurel Gates (Christina Ricci). Of course, her grand return is short-lived, with Tyler turning against her in the episode that follows, “If These Woes Could Talk,” which also acts as the “Part One” finale, ergo plenty of “scintillating” details at last revealed. Like the fact that Judi Spannagel (Heather Matarazzo, at last getting some deserved acting work), executive assistant to Dr. Rachael Fairburn (Thandiwe Newton), is the one behind a nefarious program called Lois—which, naturally, Wednesday had previously assumed to be a person.
But no, it’s an acronym for Long-term Outcast Integration Study, a program started by Judi’s father, Augustus Stonehearst. The purpose of the experiments? To remove outcasts’ powers and reassign them to normies (this providing plenty of meta commentary on how “weirdness” is increasingly commodified—particularly since Burton’s 90s heyday, with Gap grafting grunge for its own products, and now, with Burton’s “style” itself being ripped by AI). Or, as Judi tells it to Wednesday and Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen), who “broke into” Willow Hill by doing his “insane” shtick, “[My father] loved outcasts. He wanted to be one. Imagine being able to extract their abilities and share it with normies.” Wednesday immediately cuts in, “You mean steal them and exploit them. This is a basement bargain attempt at Dr. Moreau.”
But Judi does well to remind Wednesday that the experiment wasn’t an “attempt”—her father succeeded. For she then confesses that she was born a normie too, but now, thanks to Augustus’ work, she’s an Avian, therefore possessing the gift of being able to control birds. In this case, of course, opting to wield crows to do her evil bidding throughout the first four episodes, particularly one “lead” crow. Identifiable as the “red-eyed” or “one-eyed” crow. And while the unveiling of who the Avian really was might have been enough to sate the audience for now, there are those who still have lingering questions about who the red-eyed crow really is, because that part of the plot sort of just fell off. However, a through line that remains consistent—by becoming retroactively visible—is the way that Isaac and Thing are mysteriously “connected.” This first made slightly apparent at the end of “If These Woes Could Talk,” when, after everyone breaks out of the asylum, Isaac catches a glimpse of Thing amidst the chaos and casts it a look of simultaneous longing and recognition. One that the viewer doesn’t think much of, especially since it’s quickly broken by Isaac being shot multiple times (not that it has an effect on him).
Still “at large” at the start of “Part Two” of the second season, “Hyde and Woe Seek,” other dangerous escapees include Tyler a.k.a. the Hyde and the woman we find out is his mother, Françoise Galpin (Frances O’Conner), formerly Françoise Night. As in, that’s right, Isaac’s sister. So it is that this macabre family reunion is an integral part of the episode, along with the reintroduction of Principal Weems as Wednesday’s new spirit guide (who first shows up while Wednesday is in a coma). Which means plenty of interjecting and needing to allow Wednesday a Dexter Morgan amount of time to respond to people since she’s so in her head talking to someone who isn’t there. At least not to others. All as she hatches yet another scheme designed to avert the premonition she had of Enid’s death. This time, it involves trying to become Tyler’s new master, now that Thornhill is dead (killed by none other than Tyler himself).
Another key part of the story is anchored in Pilgrim World’s (yes, that throwback to Addams Family Values returns) Los Spooky Noches!, an expectedly appropriative “celebration” of Day of the Dead. It’s the site where Pugsley reunites with an increasingly human-looking Isaac, and chooses to set him free despite all the carnage he continues to leave in his wake. Something Gomez bears witness to, only to have Pugsley lie to him about not seeing the former “Slurp” anywhere. A lie that Pugsley confesses to in the Freaky Friday-inspired episode that follows, “Woe Thyself.” Needless to say, it’s Wednesday and Enid who end up swapping bodies, which is why the first scene is of a literally color-allergic Wednesday outfitted in pastels and makeup while dancing to the tune of Blackpink’s “Boombayah” before actually deigning to go out into the quad area so that everyone at Nevermore can see her like this. From the outset, it’s plain to see that Enid’s influence is somehow at play. Though it takes a bit longer for the viewer to find out that Lady Gaga—in the role of a now-dead ex-Nevermore teacher named Rosaline Rotwood—is responsible for Enid’s, let’s call it, pull over “Wednesday’s” choices.
And while Wednesday and Enid deal with their Lindsay Lohan/Jamie Lee Curtis issues, Thing decides to attend a support group held by the detached head that is Professor Orloff (Christopher Lloyd, who played Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values), called “Some of Your Parts,” a play on, what else, “the sum of your parts.” A phrase that comes up in a stirring speech he gives to the appendages in attendance, all of whom want to know from what body they originally came from. To this, Orloff says, “We may never know who we were attached to. You can’t see yourself as an appendage, but as a whole person, worthy of love and respect. We are more than just the sum of our parts. But sometimes, the parts are greater than the whole.”
It’s a statement that, in many regards, applies to how Thing is the part that’s often greater than the whole of Wednesday. Serving as, for all intents and purposes, their family dog, it is his story that turns out to be the most jarring and compelling plot twist of all—that Isaac was the whole body he once belonged to. Of course, that unexpected revelation doesn’t arrive until the finale, “This Means Woe.” After the humiliation of Principal Dort that occurs in the previous episode, “Woe Me the Money,” wherein Wednesday’s grandmother, Hester (Joanna Lumley, looking a lot like Jane Fonda), also cruelly insults Gomez for having no “abilities,” deriding him as a useless normie.
This is something Wednesday makes Hester pay for—literally—by the end of the fundraising gala (when Enid and Wednesday’s invisible stalker/groupie, Agnes DeMille [Evie Templeton], find their moment to engage in some choreo for “The Dead Dance”). That’s when Hester and Morticia both realize Dort made Bianca (Joy Sunday) siren them into doing things they otherwise wouldn’t have. In Hester’s case, donating her entire fortune (from being, what else, a mortuary mogul) to Nevermore and insisting no normies shall ever be allowed to attend again. Wednesday couldn’t agree less, changing her tune from the second episode, “The Devil You Woe,” when she condemns Judi for championing Fairburn’s book, Unlocking the Outcast Mind. Judi, as Dr. Fairburn’s assistant, is naturally sycophantic about it, prompting Wednesday to ask whether Dr. F is even an outcast. Judi says no, but what does that matter? Wednesday replies, “It’s like a vegetarian writing a book on cannibalism.” Just as it’s like Daria dressing up as Quinn, at times, to watch Wednesday’s emotions shine through so often in season two. Though, mercifully, not half as often as in season one, wherein that notorious kiss was shared between her and Tyler.
Ortega seemed to understand (too late) that such behavior did not align with the character whatsoever, later reflecting, “Everything that Wednesday does, everything I had to play [in season one], did not make sense for her character at all. Her being in a love triangle? It made no sense.” Hence, the ousting of Percy Hynes White’s character, Xavier Thorpe, in season two. And besides, any residual traces of mawkishness (including the Freaky Friday conceit) are made forgivable by Thing’s incredible journey to understand “who” (not what) he is. Or, more precisely, who he comes from. And, just as any human discovering their true family origins, Thing comes to realize that maybe life really does boil down to nurture over nature. Or, from the Addams family’s perspective, un-nurture over nature.
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Genna Rivieccio
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