This Thanksgiving season was an exciting one. Not just because of the delicious apple pie and sweet potato casserole, but because there was a new television series coming out that I had waited for with great anticipation. The new Netflix series Wednesday was released on Nov. 23. It is a spin-off of the great franchise, “The Addams Family”. It received great praise with a 72% approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes. There is an amazing cast with Jenna Ortega as titular character, Wednesday Addams, Gwendoline Christie as Principal Weems, Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams, Catherine-Zeta Jones as Morticia Addams and former Wednesday actress Christina Ricci as Ms. Thornhill. This spooky and kooky show gave me goosebumps through every turn.

The show begins with Wednesday’s expulsion from her old school. Her parents enroll her in Nevermore Academy, a school for ‘freaks and outcasts’ as many people in the small town of Jericho, Vermont put it. The plot of the show revolves around Wednesday solving the mystery of who the monster is that is murdering students of Nevermore and citizens of Jericho. With the addition of Thing, a disembodied human hand with his own thoughts and feelings, and many friends from Nevermore, Wednesday eventually solves the mystery, the plot moving in a direction I did not anticipate.

The show’s director and producer, Tim Burton, originally came up with the idea for the show. The show definitely has the signature Tim Burton feel that many of his other movies like “Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Corpse Bride” have, such as gothic elements and a dark tone. There is one line in the show that Wednesday says as she talks to her mother, “And for someone like me? A person who sees the world through a darker lens.”  I feel that with the way the show is filmed we can definitely see the way that Wednesday would view the world, which is something we have not seen in the show in the 1960s and the movies in the 1990s. In those versions of the Addams family we never really focus on the kids so we don’t get to see their personality and character development, which I thought set this adaptation apart from the others. I am glad that Burton took this opportunity to explore a previously underdeveloped character like Wednesday.

The Addams family has been a big part of pop culture, so this show had a lot to live up to. Beginning with the comics created in 1938 by Charles Addams we meet the Addams family who are an odd wealthy family interested in all things macabre. It became a very popular franchise that has been revived again and again. Burton creatively uses people’s familiarity of the family to his advantage, referencing other Addams Family works throughout Wednesday. From snapping twice to get into a secret room to Wednesday saying she could eat girl scouts for breakfast (if it was not already implied, this bit is a metaphor) we can see that the show still acknowledges the past. Even though we have all of this past knowledge we can see that this new show is original and presents many perspectives we have never seen before.

Watching this new series was definitely a great way to spend my Thanksgiving break. All the elements and combination of goth and sarcasm made for an amazing show. In my opinion, it was definitely worth the watch. It had a conclusive ending and with a possible season two I am very excited to see what is next for the dark and adored Wednesday Addams.