‘Wednesday’ Season 2: Money lessons from the gothic, witty Jenna Ortega, who carries the Addams Family saga forward

A rich, tight-fisted grandmother; an uncle who travels all around the world but lands at the family home with a bride everyone is convinced is a gold digger; a strange and very hairy cousin; a brother you’d want to kill in a hundred different ways; parents who are so in love with one another that you want to throw up; a family so colourful that you tell people you are allergic to colour and wish to wander around in the funereal black. No, not yours, but this is the Addams Family, and we follow the adventures of Wednesday Addams in a brilliant Netflix show.

The legend that is Tim Burton brought to life a family you and I have secretly thought was ours.

First came the cartoons about a family that’s ‘creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky, all together ooky’, then you grew up watching the Addam’s Family. Long before I grew up, there was a TV show where you watched Lisa Loring as Wednesday Addams and John Astin and Carolyn Jones as Morticia and Gomez Addams, her parents. Then you fell in love with Anjelica Husto,n who arranged roses like no one else has, since she was Morticia ‘Tish’ Addams, and how she danced the tango with Raul Julia:

Uncle Fester, Thing, Lurch, and yes, Cousin. It was unforgettable in three Addam’s Family movies. Here’s a taste of brotherly love between Uncle Fester and Gomez Addams in this unforgettable song:

That’s why when Netflix and Tim Burton brought us Wednesday, a tale of a girl who won’t fit in, who wonders whose twisted idea (it is) to put hundreds of adolescents in underfunded schools run by people whose dreams were crushed years ago… But the sadism is admirable… The show is one of Netflix’s highest-watched and loved shows. Season 2 has been split into two parts with four one-hour episodes each, and the first four episodes that dropped on Wednesday, August 6, are supremely satisfying. You will look at your brother (especially because the festival of Rakhi is upon us) and smile because Wednesday says, “No one gets to torture my brother except me.”

The characters, the music, the setting, and the story keep you involved from the very first minute to the end credits of the last episode. So what money lessons can you learn from a girl who has some of the best lines delivered with deadpan sarcasm, says to you: “Anytime I grow nauseous at the sight of a rainbow or hear a pop song that makes my ears bleed, I’ll think of you.”?

Money lesson one: “Use the words ‘little’ and ‘girl’ to address me again, and I can’t guarantee your safety.”

Wednesday Addams is a proud young girl and does not care for being patronised. When you hear financial institutions single out and create promotional material targeting women for accounts, loans and other financial packages, you wish you could speak like Wednesday and tell them that you don’t care to be put in a convenient box… Ability counts, not gender, isn’t it?

Money lesson two: I know I’m stubborn, single-minded, and obsessive. But those are all traits of great writers… And serial killers.”

All through season one, we see Wednesday use the ancient typewriter to write a novel, which keeps getting rejected by publishing houses because they call it evil and demented. She reads the rejection letters and tells her roommate at Nevermore school that she would rather die than change a word of anything she has written. When it comes to personal finance, you too should be single-minded in trying to achieve your goals and be obsessive about finding ways to make your money work harder for you.

Money lesson three: “For the record, I don’t believe I’m better than everyone else. Just that I’m better than you.”

Wednesday is very clear about who and what her competition is. She sounds terribly rude when she says that she is just better than the person challenging her. If only we could all be so confident in our lives when facing competition.

You have grown up being compared with Sharma-ji-ka beta all the time. That’s why when it comes to personal finance, you are always on the lookout for the best deals that will make you money. But look at how Wednesday handles her life. And you will realise that when you have a clear goal, a clear competition, then you work smarter, not harder, to beat that one person and achieve your goal faster.

Money lesson four: “I don’t bury hatchets. I sharpen them.”

Wednesday realises that Nevermore – the school for Outcasts – has many secrets. And it’s not just secret doorways that lead to underground passages. The school principal, Dort (Steve Buscemi), is a delightful, overly happy, and yet somehow evil man who calmly threatens siren Bianca into doing as he asks of her or else… It’s a good thing then that Wednesday believes in never letting go of a grudge, or a vision of Enid’s tombstone that she saw during her summer holidays as she hones her psychic abilities.

Never give up is the money lesson you learn from Wednesday, and though revenge is fictional, what we learn from her figurative ‘sharpening of hatchets’ is that you never forgive. How often do we listen to a friend who insists that you should invest with them, and when it turns out to be a dud, you do feel awful, and you want to kill your friend for losing your hard-earned money? In real life, you can’t, so you revel in Wednesday Addams, who gets away by avenging wrongs. Just remember to never again go against the advice of your personal finance manager or your gut instinct.

Money lesson five: “I find social media to be a soul-sucking void of meaningless affirmation.”

Wednesday saves the school in season one, and in this season, she has to learn to deal with the newfound celebrity status, with juniors in school wanting to take her autograph, click pictures with her, and even stalk her. In real life, success puts you in the limelight, and everyone wants to know how you managed it.

Meaningless affirmations in real life come from many who want to emulate your successes, who want advice you don’t want to offer, and yes, they will ‘butter you up’ – like Principal Dort, commission a portrait of you for the school – because they want your money. We use the phone for many reasons, but this is a warning to not be dependent on the phone for all your money dealings. Investing in Bitcoin may prove to be profitable, but it will open you up to scams you are not yet prepared for.

What you are prepared for is a super enjoyable four hours about someone who says, “Listen, people like me and you, we’re different. We’re original thinkers, intrepid outliers in this vast cesspool of adolescence. We don’t need these inane rites of passage to validate who we are.” If you have not experienced Wednesday, you can start with the first season and watch her dump piranhas in a swimming pool filled with school jocks to avenge her brother, Pugsley. And when you enjoy the psychos, werewolves, sirens, and the wild fun of season one, watch season two, where zombies are added to the show, and yes, Pugsley will remind you so much of Ravi Kishan that you won’t be able to unsee it… Plus, you end up humming the REM favourite, ‘That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight, losing my religion…’

Manisha Lakhe is a poet, film critic, traveller, founder of Caferati — an online writer’s forum, hosts Mumbai’s oldest open mic, and teaches advertising, films and communication. She can be reached on Twitter at @manishalakhe.