If we’re being really honest, Wednesday on Netflix is, for the majority of its run, sort of dull—monotone, uninspired, and just a bit too insistent on stealing ideas we’ve already seen. Give it four episodes, though, and you’ll at least get to see one of the most inventive dance moments on television in a while. Jenna Ortega turns Wednesday (and Wednesday School )’s dance into a memorable event with a flurry of flailing arms, high kicks, and piercing looks.
Wednesday, a show that sometimes feels devoid of flashiness despite having Tim Burton, suddenly begins to function at this very moment. (At least as long as Jenna Ortega is writhing her arms around.)
However, let’s talk about some of those dance movements. Sometimes Ortega’s motions resemble those of a “corpse bride”; her arms and neck hang as though from a marionette. Then, at an angle that would once again make her appear dead, she will whip out an arm with the crispness of Britney Spears on her Onyx tour. The camera work in these views further intensifies the thrill; at one point, it soars to capture Ortega’s piercing gaze as she tosses her head back to the music.
The Addams Family has a long history with dancing, despite the fact that Wednesday’s attendance at the Rave’N Dance may have surprised her peers. Frankenstein’s monster-like manservant Lurch, most remembered for muttering, “You rang?” was the subject of several episodes in the original series as various characters attempted to teach him how to groove. In Season 1, it’s first Gomez and Morticia, then in Season 2, Wednesday teaches Lurch yet another lesson.
Who could forget the entertaining but dangerous tango performed by Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia in The Addams Family Values, which gave the phrase “fire on the dance floor” a whole new meaning?
That Wednesday continues this venerable Addams custom is heartening. But who was responsible for this jumbled choreography? Evidently, Ortega planned the scene in a week and then had it shot while ill with COVID.
According to Ortega, she said: “I’m not a dancer,” which is obviously true. Approximately one week before the filming, she claimed to have received the music. Nevertheless, she said that the morning of filming, she awoke feeling “like I’d been struck by a vehicle and that a tiny goblin had been let loose in my neck and was scraping the walls of my esophagus.” The good news is, she kills it anyway.
