What we talk about when we talk about 'WandaVision'

Let's get esoteric, baby

NO FINALE SPOILERS HERE! PROMISE!

Today, ‘WandaVision’ ended its nine-episode run in perfectly Marvel/Disney/Scheinhardt Wig Company fashion, which is to say there were some ‘splosions, some pew pew pews, some light jokes, and some heart. As a finale — and maybe more significantly as a finale to an MCU property — it was satisfying enough. Marvel has their shit so completely down at this point that you could have telegraphed everything in these last 50 minutes (ten minutes for credits!!), including their patented “here’s where we’re going next” tag, and still leave feeling like you’d been served… maybe not a full meal. A Happy Meal?

‘WandaVision’’s much-touted “classic sitcom” conceit gave way a few episodes ago to standard issue Marvel production design, and even before that it was debatable to what extent the show was really using this pastiche to full effect. The ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ homage felt to me like the best synthesis of form and content, operating as both a compelling dramatic story for Wanda and a real sitcom episode at the same time. Others — say the ‘Modern Family’ riff — felt like a gloss at best.

But hey! We had some fun along the way, were gifted this instant-classic GIF,

and got to watch two of Marvel’s most underutilized thespians ditch the “you took everything from me!”s and “we have to shut it down!”s and just perform (even if this was largely in the reality-warping space of Wanda Maximoff’s mind). ‘WandaVision’ was perfectly enjoyable television.

…was it good?

Certainly it inspired a lot of conversation! Not just in my lengthy Friday morning text threads,

but all over the internet, where its storytelling was heralded and mocked and memed and think-pieced all at the same time. Yesterday, Emily VanDerWerff at Vox published this exhaustive look not so much at ‘WandaVision’ itself, but the conversation that’s exploded around it. Her assessment feels dead-on in spots and wildly off-the-mark in others, but more interesting than any one point Emily or anyone (myself included!) might be making about ‘WandaVision’ is why we’re making them in the first place.

‘WandaVision’, as a show, was — Hot Take City, here we come! — kind of bland? Yes, there were witches and hexes and Quicksilvers and Kathryn Hahn, all of which are “weird” on paper. But by episode four, when the larger machinations of the MCU started to intrude, I began to think of it as something like ‘The Mandalorian’: a pricey-looking, competently-made show that, more importantly, serves a specific function within a larger narrative ecosystem. As a TV series, WandaVision’ is just fine.

But it’s fascinating as a cultural artifact, as something that reflects this challenging year we’ve all had, the grief engendered by that, and the ways we make meaning in a mainstream entertainment landscape that just wants us to keep re-upping our Disney+ subscriptions in time for the premiere of ‘The Falcon & The Winter Soldier’.

The COVID Bump

‘WandaVision’, by any account, is a massive hit. VanDerWerff smartly reminds us that Marvel had no new releases in 2019, which primed the pumps, but I think ‘WandaVision’ connected with people for reasons beyond anticipation. Like ‘Tiger King’ and ‘The Undoing’ before it, ‘WandaVision’ premiered in a wacky-ass landscape, which is to say an ongoing global pandemic. We’re all trying to pass the time any way we can (see: sourdough starters, tie dye, sea shantys) and we’re trying as hard as we can to do it together — or what passes for “together” when we’re largely separated from our friends and extended families. I mean, ‘Tiger King’ was a nasty, cynical show that completely ignored the poverty and abuse animating the lives of its subjects… but it was a nasty, cynical show we watched as a community.

And I’m hardly saying the same about ‘WandaVision’ — which, again, was fine — but it gets a bit of an automatic letter-grade bump by sheer dint of the time in which it was released. COVID, baby! When the world feels like it’s on fire (and sometimes literally is!) and everything uncertain, we turn to things that offer pleasing predictability. The sitcom is one of the best embodiments of this: a problem emerges, people fight; that problem is resolved, people make up. Situation comedies, and old ones to boot, are like the perfect medicine. For many people, that was ‘WandaVision’ — a show that is about sitcoms, sort of, or at least uses those rhythms both narratively and formally to tell… well, some kind of story, let’s talk about that next.

Good Grief

Art is subjective. I love the movie ‘Mamma Mia!’¹, which by any metric is bad, and features a vocal performance from Pierce Brosnan you might charitably call “unique.” And yet something about that sun-dappled wine cooler of a movie always fills me with joy. Ditto stuff like ‘Cloud Atlas’ (a lot of people despise this movie) or ‘Good Burger’ (which, after two Kel Mitchell references in two days, I’m realizing had a more sizable impact on my childhood than I understood to this point!).

Madison Hatfield @madhat31

Do you hear that sound? It’s every screenwriter in the world whispering a reverent “FUCK” under their breath. #WandaVision

This tweet got a lot of play last week, both mocked and praised in equal measure. My first reaction was that it reads like it was written by someone fresh out of a coma who, before she got into the coma, had only seen ‘The Big Bang Theory’. But then I thought… maybe ‘WandaVision’ is someone’s ‘Good Burger’?² Maybe this show was exactly what they needed at a crucial juncture?

Still, I think you can honor someone’s emotional experience and fairly criticize the work that provoked it at the same time! “‘WandaVision’ is a show about grief” was the rallying cry of a lot of fans these past two months, and I don’t disagree with them on paper. In practice, though, this manifested as a lot of “tell” and not so much “show.” Wanda looked increasingly depressed as the season wore on, and multiple characters literally spoke the word “grief” out loud. Monica Rambeau just missed her mom or something.

The bulk of the show was more interested in its mystery-boxing, its larger MCU continuity. I mean guys, come on: this wasn’t some handcrafted little indie about coming to grips with terrible loss; it was a four-hour TV movie about witches battling the military-industrial complex. ‘WandaVision’ is a “show about grief” the way, like, ‘Minions’ is a movie about unionization.

But like I said… it really was a show about grief for no shortage of people, maybe even some people reading this newsletter (SOUND OFF!), and whether I think ‘WandaVision’ was a successful show ultimately pales in comparison to whatever it made you feel. I think about this Hansel quote from ‘Zoolander’ all the time:

Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that.

The show didn’t work for me. But if it did for you, now, in the COVID Year of Our Lord 2021? That’s special and rare. And honestly, I envy you. To be able to watch something like ‘WandaVision’ and think “YES, THIS,” to tweet about it as though a functional line of dialogue in a functional episode in a functional show is ‘Citizen Kane’ and you’re watching over Mank’s shoulder like—

(You’re being mean now, Henning, which is both lazy and inconsistent with that whole “hey, like what you like!” ethos from literally paragraphs above. Was the ‘Finding Forrester’ GIF worth it?)

What is a [Substack], if not [Ego] Persevering?

Listen, I like to paint myself as some detached outsider when obviously I’ve seen almost every MCU movie³ and will keep watching them until, idk, at least one of the three Chrises (Evans, Hemsworth, Pratt) are revealed to be cannibals, or two of them Republicans. With or without COVID, Marvel offers something undeniably comforting: the knowledge you’re sharing in some near-universal pastime, which post-’Game of Thrones’ is an increasingly rare experience. Whether ‘WandaVision’ or ‘The Mandalorian’ or whatever else is “good” or not is, on some level, beside the point; getting to talk about it is.

[Din Djarin] would be another person who's a hero. The [bounty hunting] he's created over the years, I don't really [watch it on Disney+], but the fact that he's [doing the bounties], I respect that.

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What do you guys think? Am I needlessly picking picking fights with a studio that’s ballsier than I give it credit for? Does “comfort TV” get a bad rep, especially when we all just really need it right now? Should I cut these emails down by like 500 words? LMK!

1. And its sequel, ‘Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again’, which is the ‘Godfather, Pt. II’ of the ‘Mamma Mia!’-verse

2. “Agatha All Along” and “I’m a Dude” are both cut from the same sonically perfect cloth

3. ❌ ‘Thor: The Dark World’ ❌