Wednesday Season One Blu-Ray Review

 

Full Disclosure Notice:  Warner Bros. Discovery sent me this Blu-Ray for free so I could review it.  If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, we may receive an affiliate commission.

 

It seemed like streaming might kill of physical media, the studios had slowed or completely stopped the production of DVD’s for the television shows in hopes that you would sign up for their streaming services.  But it seems like as streaming has yet to turn profitable, those studios are missing that revenue stream from physical media.  That return to physical media is creating some strange bedfellows.  Wednesday is a Netflix original produced by Amazon MGM Studios, and is being distributed by Warner Bros. Discovery.

 

Wednesday also seems like something that could have only happened during the streaming era.  Watching the show, you can just feel the Netflix executives looking at the streaming numbers for CW shows like Riverdale and trying to figure out how they can get their own Riverdale.  It turns out the Addams Family IP was available and they got the Smallville creators to do the show.  But of course, being streaming, they had to have a much higher budget and bigger names so they got budding star Jenna Ortega to play the titular character and Tim Burton to direct the first four episodes (the duo is re-teaming this summer for the Beatlejuice reboot which could explain why it has been a year and a half since the series premiere and the second season has yet to start filming).  Then frequent Burton collaborator Danny Elfman was brought in to do the score which includes a cello version of Paint it, Black which just adds to the prestige of the show.

  

There is also an impressive adult cast.  Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzman, and Fred Armisen pop up as Morticia, Gomez, and Uncle Fester respectively.  Though, these are mostly just cameos because the show is about Wednesday being sent off to the Nevermore Academy, a private school for monstrous outcasts that her parents went to.    Thing is the only member of the family to stick around, and then steals most scenes it is in.  The staff there includes Brianne of Tarth herself; Gwendoline Christie playing the principal and former Morticia roommate at the academy.   The nineties version of Wednesday Addams, Christina Ricci plays the schools den mother… and its horticulture teacher… and its librarian. She is also the school’s first “normie” teacher (which is not suspicious at all).  The rest of the high school aged cast look, and act, like they were plucked from central CW casting.  Though Emma Myers as Wednesday’s extremely peppy werewolf roommate is a standout.  It is the perfect mix of annoyingly perky and likeable.

 

Considering every other iteration of The Addams Family was about them interacting with normal people, it is weird that Wednesday sees the family’s only daughter going to a school filled with vampire, werewolves and sirens.  Though, even in a school full of outcast weirdos, Wednesday manages to be the biggest outcast.  Still, the CW-ification of the character is strong besides the high school setting.  Despite being an outcast in a school full of outcasts, Wednesday yet somehow finds herself in the middle of a bizarre love triangle with a classmate and a townie.    And of course there is now a murder mystery that has to be solved because there always has to be a mystery now.  But hey, all the money Netflix pumped into the show does enhance the show over your run of the mill CW crap.  Burton’s direction does give it a very stylish look.

 

The Blu-Ray includes all 8-episodes on two disks and… that is about it.  If physical media is going to make a comeback, studios need to add a little something to entice fans to buy it.  Look at the music industry which is almost all streaming now.  But a lot of the physical albums released  now are deluxe editions with disks of B-sides, outtakes, and / or even full concerts.  If we are going to bring back Blu-Rays, bring back the extras.  Where are the deleted scenes, outtakes, audio commentaries, featurettes, or even special packaging?  If you want someone to buy a physical copy of your show or movie, give the people something to display.  But if you were interested in Wednesday, but not enough to sign up for Netflix, now is your chance to watch the show, which logged 6 billion minutes of viewing in its first five days and remains Netflix’s most popular English TV series of all time with 252.1 million views, at about the price of a month or two of the service.

 

Wednesday Season One is now available to purchase online and in-store from major retailers on Blu-Ray and DVD.