WandaVision: Turns out, what Marvel needed all this time was a laugh-track
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B+
In a pandemic, releasing super-hero blockbusters the way the Navy christens aircraft-carriers isn’t working for Marvel. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the case of the mind-warping Disney+ series WandaVision, that measure is called “abstract imagination.”
The closest thing so far to an Avengers: Endgame sequel, WandaVision follows two Avengers characters – Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a. the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and her android “husband” Vision (Paul Bettany) – as they live a suburban life as a secretly super-powered couple, in sitcom formats that, episode by episode, cover the period from the ‘50s to the ’70.
Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany are the super-powered couple next door in WandaVision.
If this isn’t Matrix-like enough, Vision is a character who’s supposedly dead, if you’re following the movies at least. But in a comic book world, what is “dead” anyway but a writing challenge?
If WandaVision causes over-serious genre fans to suffer the vapours, well, that’s a bonus. The series, in the three episodes I’ve previewed, is so different from what we’ve come to expect from super-heroes that it might serve as a gateway drug for people who’ve steadfastly resisted them so far. (The first two episodes are being released on Disney+ Friday, January 15, with the third on January 22).
There are obvious inspirations for WandaVision, including The Twilight Zone and Pleasantville (in the episodes during which the show is in black-and-white, dollops of colour appear for dramatic effect as they do in that movie).
But the real debt is owed to the sitcom genre itself. Whatever long-game Wanda and Vision’s primetime existence serves narratively, WandaVision is stylistically spot-on. The first episode has the tone of an I Love Lucy/Dick Van Dyke Show mash-up, with the boss and his wife coming over for dinner. The second opens with an homage to the opening of Bewitched, as befits a decade of escapist sitcoms with witches and genies trying to keep their existence a secret.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
It’s all delivered with the sharp wisecracky silliness of classic sitcom writing – save for the sinister parts. Wanda, whose powers can extend to influencing perceptions of reality itself, begins to have flashbacks. Her friends offhandedly blurt things that relate to her pre-sitcom world. Even the radio begins carrying static-muffled voices addressing her directly with alarm.
The series doesn’t initially overload you with this sense of menace beneath pristine reality. It opts instead to show off its chops recreating the version of the world older viewers watched on their CRT TVs. But the menace does build incrementally. I worry from the trailers that once the curtain is completely pulled back, the whole thing could turn into Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 2.0
But the cast is committed to the verisimilitude, many of them being network comedy veterans themselves, including next-door-neighbour/new-best-friend Kathryn Hahn (Parks and Recreation, Transparent), boss’s wife Debra Jo Rupp (That ‘70s Show). In future episodes, there will reportedly be a nod to Full House (the series in which Olsen’s twin sisters starred as toddlers).
Bettany’s flair for comedy is well-established, but seeing Olsen deliver wisecracks makes me realize how dour her typical roles have been up to now. She works very well with a laugh-track.
WandaVision. Series directed by Matt Shakman. Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany and Kathryn Hahn. First two episodes debut on Disney+ on Friday, January 15.