Wednesday: Season 1 - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Wednesday: Season 1



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
Widely considered the longest running ghoulish family in American history, The Addams Family has long since been made, remade, and re-imagined several times over. The 1964 TV show was what I grew up on coming from a fairly conservative family who liked that sort of 50s and 60s “family TV” sort of thing, and It wasn’t until I was actually in college that I sat down and watched Barry Sonnefeld’s amazing movie adaptation starring the immeasurable Raul Julia. The old Super Nintendo got a pretty kick butt video game out of the mix, but only recently has the IP had new interest in the form of the animated films (both of which were kinda “meh” to yours truly). However, it truly surprised me to see that Warner Brothers was going full bore into releasing a Wednesday Addams TV show. Especially after I ignored its release on Netflix only to find the internet raving about it online. It joined a long list of shows and movies that “I should really watch when I have the time”, only to forget about the show until I got the review copy on my desk this last week.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the show considering that I had basically ignored the online scuttlebutt for the last year (ish) and actually only saw pieces of the trailer when I was perusing Netflix a while back. So color me a tad surprised when I get a strong taste of The Addams Family humor that Christina Ricci was phenomenal at some 30 years ago, mixed with a heavy dose of early Harry Potter movie mystery and a wildly gothic flair that simply works when I honestly didn’t expect it to.

The first season is a mix of a tense 8 episode arc, wherein 18 year old high school student Wednesday Addams gets kicked out of public school and sent to a supernatural boarding school known as “Netherland”, which just so happens to be the same school that her mother Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and father Gomez (Luis Guzman) graduated from decades ago. Convinced that she’s going to simply escape and defy her parents like she always does, Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) finds herself in over her head in a mystery that will not only define her as she moves forward in life, but also tie into her parents past.

It seems that a mysterious creature is killing people out in the woods outsize Netherland, causing the Sheriff of the nearby human town to put the blame on the supernatural school. Simultaneously Wednesday Addams has been manifesting prophetic visions. Visions which she realizes is the very key to solving this mystery that she’s stumbled into and possibly unlocking the door to her past as well. This means the Machiavellian young teen has to figure out a way to get along with her werewolf roommate Enid (Emma Myers), and figure out just what exactly the headmistress (Gwendoline Christie) is hiding from her.

The show is taut, tense, and surprisingly well done. I honestly wasn’t expecting a whole lot, but this rises a heavy dose over the usual CW and Netlfix original style fare. Instead of getting overly dark and angsty, the show pushes a hard PG-13 rating (that slides into R territory at times) and a HEAVY heavy does of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets style mystery going on. Jenna Ortega does an absolutely bang up job of portraying a modern day Wednesday Addams, rivaling Christina Ricci’s legendary performance in the 90s (and for good measure, Christina Ricci plays a teacher at the supernatural school). I was sad that Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman only show up in 2 episodes of the series, as they knocked their roles out of the park, but I can hope that they make more appearances in the 2nd season when that comes out considering how well this season was received.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

I compared to the physical release with the streaming release on Netflix, and while I really wished we could have gotten a 4K UHD release to match the streaming 4K, I do say that the Blu-ray looks a bit better than most of the 4K stream itself a good majority of the time. There’s less banding, less compression artifacts (especially since Dolby Vision and HDR is so dark on the netflix stream. Something that Netflix has struggled with for years), BUUUUT I did notice some minor quibbles. The show is overly dark and dreary, which is a great aesthetic for mood, but it sometimes struggles with really dark scenes, and outdoor shots can be over exposed and slightly hot on the white levels. But overall the disc bounces between black and white Wednesday Addams tropes and overly sunny The CW style daylight scenes in Netherland are pleasing to look at despite the mild artificating.





Audio:

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA track does a great job at bringing the moody and atmospheric sound track to Wednesday to life. The film opens up with a punchy load of bass to the face as Wednesday unleashes some just punishment on the jocks abusing Pugsley, and doesn’t really let go till the end of the series. Naturally there’s quite a bit of dialog centric bits that push LFE and surrounds out of the picture for a while, but there is PLENTY to kick you in the teeth with fist fights, carnival fireworks, and monsters attacking people to keep everything immersive. All in all, it’s a nice track that uses its surrounds well, but there are some minor room for improvement in dynamic range AND the fact that the show is presented in Dolby Atmos streaming, but only 5.1 DTS-HD MA on disc. Grumble whine moan.







Extras:

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Final Score:
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Is Wednesday: The Complete First Season absolutely perfect? No, it’s got some mild angst thrown in there, and the show feels like it could have used 1-2 episodes more to really have fleshed out a few things in the town of Jericho. But overall this was a fantastic first season for a show that I didn’t think was even going to make if off the ground. Warner’s Blu-ray looks and sounds great, but for some reason the studio decided not to include ANY extras in the 2 disc set AT ALL (which is sort of balanced out by the very reasonable price for the set). Kind of mildly disappointing there, but at the end of the day I enjoyed the show and am now really looking forward to season 2.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Jenna Ortega, Emma Myers, Hunter Doohan, Christina Ricci, Jamie McShane, Gwendoline Christie, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzman
Created by: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, French, Spanish DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Studio: Warner
Rated: NR
Runtime: 480 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: March 26th, 2024

Recommendation: Good Watch

 

[VJM]

Your right, it's disappointing that this is not a UHD release and missing Atmos. There must be some exclusive deal that Netflix retains the UHD/Atmos version. It's good to see that the HD/5.1 is still worth it, thanks!

 

[Sonnie Parker]

I thought this was a pretty good series.

 

[tripplej]

I also enjoyed this series.

 

[Michael Scott]

yeah, the atmos mix being missing was kinda annoying. but the series itself is fun

 

[VJM]

This popped up on sale at Kscape a while back, I'm 3 episodes in but it looks and sounds fantastic, much better than the streaming version for sure!

 

[Michael Scott]

This popped up on sale at Kscape a while back, I'm 3 episodes in but it looks and sounds fantastic, much better than the streaming version for sure!

Yeah I compared the streaming Netflix version to the Blu-ray, and the Blu-ray beats it in all but picture quality. (And even that's debatable as parts of the Blu-ray look better due to compression issues, and another way is the 4K resolution looks better than the Blu-ray). I'm quite certain the kaleidoscope version looks pristine

 

[mechman]

We really enjoyed this series when it came out.