‘Wednesday’ Season 2 Episode 3 Recap: “Call Of The Woe”

Wednesday does a lot of things really well. Really really well, in some instances. Better than they have any reason to in others.

Case in point. This is a summer-camp episode of Wednesday, although it takes place in the fall. Tthose plucky Nevermore Outcasts are playing a color-war game against the ep’s equivalent of the evil rich kids’ camp from across the lake, or in this case a militarized scouting troop led by an American fascist type played by Anthony Michael Hall.

There aren’t a lot of rules to the game, but what rules they are aren’t terribly intelligible if you just hear someone rattle them off. So instead, the show uses animation, with little figures representing the Outcasts and the Normies running around a map of the campground. This didn’t need to be animated, no more than the backstory of Slurp the Teenage Zombie needed to be animated a couple episodes back. But animating it makes it both easier to follow and more fun to watch. So why not, right?

I certainly can’t argue with the costuming either. (Well, a little: Wednesday in oversized tees and hoodies feels weird. She shouldn’t dress like a normal goth teenager, she should dress at all times like the kind of person normal goth teenagers wish they could dress like at all times. Anyway!) Overseen by actual GOAT costume designer candidate Colleen Atwood, who co-designs with Mark Sutherland, these fits go fucking hard.

Catherine Zeta-Jones in particular is resplendent in this episode, showing up to the campground in a sort of S&M pantsuit and hat. Later, she and Jenna Ortega put on heir fanciest black fencing togs, wrap silk blindfolds around their beautiful faces, and duel until the victor shatters their opponent’s glass heart, affixed to their breast. Even Luis Guzmán’s Gomez gets in on the act, with some kind of camping-slash-driving suit that makes him look like a menswear blogger’s strange erotic nightmare. 

And there are guest attractions galore. Foremost among them is Evie Templeton, who I can virtually guarantee is about to be very famous, as Wednesday’s invisible stalker, Agnes Demille. Appearing out of thin air, all red hair and convex eyeballs, she and her shapeshifting friend Josephine (Ceola Dunne) fangirl out to Wednesday to a degree that borders on the submissive. “The more you push me away, the more I’ll want to please you,” Agnes gushes. “She’s even crueler in person!” Josephine marvels, both girls’ eyes wide and fixed on their idol. Look, man, I don’t write it, I just report it.

Meanwhile, Emma Myers’s Enid continues what’s turned out to be a surprisingly realistic and thoughtful account of a teenage breakup. Confronted by her one-time love interest Ajax, she’s forced to admit that her feelings have changed, that things with her werewolf crush Bruno have escalated quickly, and that she should have been honest with the gorgon sooner. This is a better handling of this situation than I think I’ve ever seen on any teen drama ever?

Bianca’s storyline is interesting as well. We learn now that she’s keeping her mother Gabrielle (Gracy Goodman) hidden in a nearby hotel while the cult-slash-grift run by her husband Gabriel is raided by police. (This is apparently set back before the Trump Administration, which is itself a cult-slash-grift, legalized cults-slash-grifts.) 

There’s also a zombie that breaks down Gomez’s “rustic shower stall” door with an axe and licks his wet shoulder with an extended tongue while the oblivious Addams Family patriarch sings along “Bésame Mucho,” playing on a vinyl record player he brought into the locker room for just such a musical moment. Later, Slurp eats Anthony Michael Hall’s brains, I mean slurps them right up, you can see it silhouetted through the tent wall, it’s gross. And Christina Ricci is back in the bargain. Who could complain?

Me, that’s who, and not just about Ricci’s wig, which is maybe the worst I’ve seen in all my years of watching television. (Outside of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, I mean.) It’s not despite this episode’s strengths that it illustrates Wednesday’s weaknesses, but because of them. Once you’ve seen how good this show could be, your body starts to reject what you’re getting instead.

Unfortunately, the problems are all foundational to the show that Wednesday is. For whatever reason, Luis Guzmán was cast as Gomez, and the die was cast with him. Guzmán is a talented and delightful actor, and that shouldn’t be in dispute. But casting him in this role is like casting Dan Hedaya or Jon Polito. M. Emmett Walsh IS Gomez Addams! Guzmán and Zeta-Jones have the romantic and sexual chemistry of a reusable grocery bag that the milk spilled in. 

Meanwhile, I can’t for the life of me figure out why the makers of this show — Miles Millar, Alfred Gough, Tim Burton, the Netflix C-suite, literally any of them — saw Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams and thought “Let’s make her the well-meaning but overbearing mother that teenage Wednesday rebels against” was a concept that had any gas in it at all. Fellas. Fellas. She’s Catherine Zeta-Jones, playing Morticia Addams. She is the coolest possible mother to have in this or any universe. 

And since literally all of Wednesday’s interests are Morticia’s as well, their conflict doesn’t even make any sense. Already on shaky ground when the idea was that Wednesday hated her mom for being so in love with her dad, t’s been reduced now to “wah wah, my mother won’t let me use the spellbook that is going to give me a massive brain embolism because it’s enabling me to abuse my psychic powers, parents just don’t understand.” How can anyone be rooting for Wednesday in these circumstances, beyond the kneejerk allegiance to teen rebellion the creators are counting on, no matter how underwritten that rebellion might be?

So yeah, random animated sequences? Jenna Ortega and Catherine Zeta-Jones doing their best Uma Thurman/Lucy Liu impression? Horror comedy centered on a Luis Guzmán shower scene? Christina Ricci getting dragged before Thandiwe Newton in chains? It would be churlish to deny the show’s pleasures. But it would be foolish to deny the many ways it hobbled itself right out of the gate.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.