Already breaking records and being seen by hundreds of thousands of people, Netflix’s new show Wednesday has quickly become more mainstream than the original Addams Family. Directed by Tim Burton and starring Jenna Ortega, Wednesday came out with plenty of star power behind it, no doubt helping with its popularity. It also helps that the show is pretty good, with its gothic vibe and decently interesting mystery leading to an incredibly entertaining watch. While it’s not perfect, as the show is too predictable, Wednesday is a fun show that most people will be able to enjoy.

The easiest thing to like about this show, unsurprisingly, is Jenna Ortega’s fantastic performance on Wednesday. She does perfectly playing the classic character, with her deadpan delivery and the infinite amount of little things (like how she never blinks) that add so much to her character. Her dedication to playing Wednesday carries the show, as she can sell the audience on the insane situations, while also being able to have compelling relationships with nearly all of the other characters. 

Keyword, nearly all the other characters. This is where the show’s problems start, with the characters that aren’t Wednesday. Some are great, mainly the people that are Wednesday’s friends, like Enid, Tyler, Thing, or Eugene. While somewhat shallow, all of these characters are interesting enough to keep the audience’s attention. This is not the case for all of the characters, sadly, as many of the people against Wednesday are typically not that interesting and are only really there to be suspects or obstacles. Some of these characters do get some backstory and have their things going on, but the show drops all of the subplots as soon as they start so it can focus more on Wednesday. So while some of the characters are good, most don’t have enough going on to warrant the screen time they have. 

While characters are probably the most important thing about this show, there is also a decently interesting mystery. It doesn’t take long for the mystery to reveal itself to the characters, which helps the pacing as the show wastes no time getting to the interesting parts of it. And while the mystery is fun, the biggest problem of the whole show is how predictable it is. For some, this isn’t a big deal, as they only want to watch this show for the people in it, but for me, this mystery is fun enough to keep you watching but so predictable that it feels like you’re waiting for the show to catch up with its own story. This could easily be a personal problem with the show, however, I think that most people will be able to accurately guess what’s going on in the story by the fifth episode. For me, I was decently sure I had the twist figured out by the fourth episode, but by the fifth, all of my ideas were confirmed to be true by the show. Again, this is a very subjective thing, but if you’re good at figuring out mysteries in movies then this show doesn’t have any real surprises.

Again, this isn’t that big of a deal. Most people are watching this show for the characters and the overall gothic vibe. And in those cases, the show is fantastic. However, it is impossible to rate a show based solely on its vibes, so while I would recommend this show to almost everyone, its predictable story does make it weaker overall.

7.5/10