Wednesday Season Two, Part Two Review: A Satisfying Second Half.

Well, I got around to reviewing this late, didn’t I?
I thought that the first part of Wednesday’s second season was a good beginning, and I began the second half with fingers crossed that the quality would continue.
Thankfully, by the end I was satisfied.
That is not to say the last four episodes do not have their downsides though.
Part Two picks up with Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) in a coma, where she learns that Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie) is her new spirit guide.
Upon awakening, Wednesday now has to deal with her, the escaped Tyler Gaplin (Hunter Doohan), and her vision of her best friend Enid Sinclair’s incoming death.
For starters, I will say it was good to see Gwendoline Christie again.
Sure, it is pretty convenient for her to be a distant relative of Wednesday, but any excuse to have her back is good enough for me.

Kind of wish they did not spoil her return in the trailer though.

One of my big criticisms of Season Two’s first half was the lack of focus on Enid, considering Wednesday’s entire goal was to save her.
It felt weird that most of Enid’s time was spent on a romance with a character who is so boring his name escapes me.
Unfortunately, that relationship is still there.
Fortunately, the focus is brief and Enid’s friendship with Wednesday takes center stage again.
This is best shown through a body swap episode, which gives both the acting of Jenna Ortega and Emma Myers time to shine.
They do excellent jobs of portraying polar opposite characters trapped in the other’s body.

Emma Myers does an especially good job of depicting Wednesday’s mannerisms.

However, while I was glad to see Enid and Wednesday’s friendship receive focus again, I did not really like how the second half of the season developed Wednesday’s vision of her death.
It felt kind of handwaved, with the prophecy switching at multiple points throughout the season to the point that it felt of little consequence.
Still, for all the negatives of this half of the season, there are plenty of positives.
The Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi) storyline unfolds nicely, the humor still gets a laugh, and there is even a dance scene to rival Wednesday’s in Season One, this being between Enid and Agnes (Evie Templeton).

Who would have thought after the first half of the season that Enid and Agnes would share a dance?

Agnes remains a highlight, with her receiving plenty of development, making her by far my favorite addition of the season.
Also improved from the first season are the twists, with them being unexpected and lacking annoying red herrings.
This makes Season Two easily better than the first for me, overall.
While there was still an annoying love triangle, it did not take as much of the focus, and the mysteries were not incredibly transparent.

After seeing both halves, I definitely prefer Season Two.

The upgrade makes me hopeful the show will continue to improve with its third season, especially because Season Two seems to be leading into it well because of a few cliffhanger storylines.
Although, as I mentioned in my review of the first half, the inevitable long wait will be annoying.

Wednesday Season Two, Part One Review: Let’s Play Dolls.

I quite enjoyed the first season of Wednesday.
The season told its story well, for the most part, holding everything together with great humor and a fantastic performance from Jenna Ortega as the titular Wednesday Addams.
And then we had to wait three years for Season Two.
Yeah, the long wait between shows is really starting to get annoying.
It makes sense for shows like Arcane, where there is a lot of animation to be done, but it feels like it should have been easier for Wednesday’s second season to release quicker.
Now that we do have it, the season has been split in two, which is equally annoying.
At least Season Two improves upon many of the criticisms I had of the first season.
The story picks up with Wednesday returning to Nevermore Academy for the year.
She is not alone this year, however, being joined by her mother Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), father Gomez (Luis Guzman), and younger brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez).

Wednesday’s return to Nevermore is a family event.

Things predictably take a turn for the darker, when a new series of murders are committed, and Wednesday experiences a vision of her best friend Enid (Emma Myers) dying because of her.
Desperate to stop this vision from happening, Wednesday works to uncover the mystery behind the murders.
Starting with the positives for this season, Jenna Ortega once again does a great job as Wednesday, bringing a lot of dark humor to the table.
This dark humor persists throughout the season, with a lot of sequences leaving me chuckling.
One of these is Pugsley’s storyline, which sees him teaming up with Eugene (Moosa Mostafa) in a plotline that I am interested to see where it goes in Part Two of the season.

Pugsley and Eugene make a surprisingly fun duo.

Along with the old characters, there are also a lot of good new ones.
With Principal Weems dying last season, Nevermore gets a new principal, Barry Dort, played by Steve Buscemi.
He is pretty much a ruthless version of the “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme, which makes for quite an entertaining character.
My favorite new character though is definitely Agnes DeMille (Evie Templeton), who is basically Wednesday’s number one fan, although more in the Annie Wilkes Misery fashion.

People online have described Agnes as “an evil version of Luna Lovegood.” Honestly, that is the perfect description for her.

Another positive for Season Two is that it fixes some of my negatives from Season One.
My primary criticism of the first season was that the mystery’s answer was so obvious it made the red herrings infuriating.
Thankfully, Season Two’s mystery is hidden a lot better, and I actually enjoyed its surprises.
That being said, we still have another half of a season to go, so who knows how the remaining mysteries will be answered.
My second big criticism of Season One was the focus on a love triangle between Wednesday and two other characters.
My hope was that Season Two would focus more on her friendships and investigations.
Fortunately, the season did exactly that.
Unfortunately, the love triangle plotline was transferred from Wednesday to Enid.
Aside from one pretty good joke, this subplot was a complete bore, not helped by one of Enid’s love interests being as blank as a piece of white paper.
What makes this more bizarre is that Wednesday’s motivation this season is to solve the mystery to stop Enid from dying.
Yet Enid’s storyline mostly focuses around which boy she is dating.

Enid is weirdly out of focus, when saving her life is the main character’s goal.

Hopefully, she will have more importance to the story in Part Two.
Overall, though, I would say that so far Season Two has been an improvement over the first one.
Jenna Ortega’s performance is still great, as is the humor, and the mysteries are handled a lot better.
I hope Part Two can keep the quality up we get it in September.

Scream 6 Review: The Most Brutal Ghostface Yet.

I got back into the Scream franchise a few months after the fifth installment released.
Ever since then, I had been eagerly anticipating Scream 6, to the point that I did not watch any trailers, except for the first one, so I would be going in blind.
However, despite my excitement, I was still prepared for disappointment, considering this would be the first Scream film without Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott.
Her absence in this movie is because of a pay dispute and to that I say she should have been paid what shewas owed as the face of this franchise.
Although, as Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) says in this movie, Sidney deserves a happy ending.
So, if the last we ever see of Sidney Prescott is her surviving in Scream 5, then I will be satisfied with her story.

Sidney’s absence is also explained well enough.

As for Scream 6‘s story, it follows the sisters Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) who have moved to New York following the events of Scream 5, along with siblings Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown).
However, when a new series of Ghostface killings begin, the four are left wondering who to trust, with numerous suspects including the returning Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere), Detective Wayne Bailey (Dermot Mulroney), his daughter and the Carpenter’s roommate Quinn (Lianna Liberato), their neighbour Danny (Josh Sergerra), Mindy’s girlfriend Anika (Devyn Nekoda), and Chad’s roommate Ethan (Jack Champion).
Alongside this large cast comes an even larger body count, with this Ghostface being the scariest in the entire franchise.

Ghostface is absolutley brutal in this movie.

I am so glad that I did not watch any of the trailers after the first because it made for more terrifying surprises.
Speaking of surprises, Scream 6 has by far the best opening scene, since the first one.
It was such a shocking opening and left me wondering just where this film was going.
The film builds from adrenaline rushing scene to anxiety inducing scene, until we finally reach the big third act, which has plenty of great reveals and character development.
I especially enjoyed the development of the Carpenter sisters with Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega doing an excellent job as the characters.

The resolutions to Sam and Tara’s arcs in this movie was great.

As for flaws, there is one very obvious red herring that made me roll my eyes a bit.
Also, the film does stretch believability at times with how many characters survive what should be fatal wounds.
More importantly though, I was not really a fan of Gale’s role in this movie.
She does have some awesome moments but it the way she is presented here went entirely against her ending in Scream 5.
Along with this, it kind of felt like her ending in this movie may have been rewritten, although that’s just a suspicion.

The way Gale is presented as a character in this movie really bothered me.

Other than those few issues, however, Scream 6 is a great time.
It has solid character development and callbacks, as well as some incredibly intense scenes with what has to be the scariest Ghostface of the franchise.
I am already eagerly anticipating Scream 7.

Wednesday Review: Jenna Ortega Murders It.

The Addams Family are pop culture icons who have been around since the 1930s, appearing in sketch cartoons, movies and TV series.
Despite knowing of them, I have never had any previous exposure to their stories before, at least not to my knowledge.
All I knew about them was what I had heard, which was that they are a macabre family with quite a few deathly interests that creep out everyone else around them.
Having never personally seen anything Addams Family related before, this put me in an interesting position when watching the new Netflix series Wednesday, since I had no idea what to expect going in, apart from what the trailers had shown.
Having finished the show, I can say that this I believe this be a good introduction to the Addams Family, if you have not seen any of their movies or shows before, like me.

The show does a good job of highlighting each member of *The Addams Family’s* crazy personalities.

With the first four episodes directed by Tim Burton, Wednesday follows the titular daughter of the Addams Family who, after being expelled from her school for quite literally neutering a school bully using piranha, is sent to Nevermore Academy, a school for supernatural teenagers.
However, upon arriving, Wednesday quickly learns that the school is being haunted by a murderous monster, and by that I don’t mean Wednesday herself.
The series then follows Wednesday’s journey to uncover the mystery of Nevermore Academy, a mystery which is pretty predictable, to be honest, although I will get to that later.
For now, just like pretty much every person who has reviewed this show, I want to heap praise on Jenna Ortega for her fantastic performance as Wednesday.
She is delightfully morbid, with plenty of excellent instances of deadpan humor.
Even her movements match the character, with one dance scene she has being the best scene in the show, in my opinion.

Wednesday’s dance is a lot of fun, as the dance alone tells you pretty much everything you need to know about her character without dialogue.

The rest of the Addams Family are also quite likeable, with Gomez (Luiz Guzman) being the center of his own mystery, and Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) constantly being at odds with Wednesday.
It is also pretty endearing to see how protective Wednesday is of her brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) as his sole tormentor, and how one of the few times she genuinely smiles in this show (other than when she attempts murder) is when she greets her Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen).
The award for best bond Wednesday has with a family member definitley goes to her interactions with Thing.
Thing is a sentient severed hand who Wednesday uses as a servant and sometimes reluctant advisor and it is often morbidly humorous to see her talking with him.
What is less fun is the love triangle Wendesday goes through this season.
Two characters, Xavier (Percy Hynes White) and Tyler (Hunter Doohan), are after her affections, yet I never felt like Wednesday was truly interested in either of them romantically.
To be honest, I was much more invested in Wednesday’s friendships with Enid (Emma Myers), her roommate and polar opposite in every capacity, and Eugune (Moosa Mostafa), a confident bee keeper.

This excellent shot alone tells you how different Wednesday and Enid are.

The rest of the cast, including Gwendoline Christie, Joy Sunday, and Christina Ricci, who has also played Wendesday in the past, are very good in their roles, as well.
It is Jenna Ortega who really steals the show, however, as she is clearly giving everything she has to absolutely murder this role.
If they had not got Wednesday right, the show would have faltered because, honestly, the whole mystery is really not that mysterious, or at least for me it was not.
It is here where I will get into my biggest issue with Wednesday, but this does come with a slight spoiler warning because, while I do not say what exactly happens, my wording does indicate it.
So if you have not watched the show and don’t want to be spoiled then I would stop reading this review and just go watch it because it is really good.
Now, for my big problem with Wednesday, which is the red herrings.
I honestly cannot remember the last time I encountered such obvious and frustrating ones.
The red herrings in Wednesday are such apparent distractions, yet the writing keeps beating you over the head with them, trying to convince you that they are the culprits, when the real ones are so blindingly obvious.

The red herring characters are clearly that right from the get-go. Never once did I believe they were actually guilty.

I was literally shouting at the screen whenever Wednesday kept insisting she had solved the mystery, while it was so evident that she had not.
Despite this, and a few other issues, like the love triangle, Wednesday is a good show that has a lot of good morbid humor and a standout performance form Jenna Ortega.
I would definitley watch a second season and, if it gets the green light, hopefully it will have a better mystery.