It is not lost on me that that the only two TV series I’m watching at the moment are Wednesday and Dexter.
Though why wouldn’t you want to keep up with a snide, too-smart-for-the-room malcontent who can’t completely bend the world to her will despite her vast intellectual powers, or the dark passenger of good guy serial killers who only kills the bad guys?
So many of us are frustrated that well-reasoned, fact-based logic no longer works. And I’ll bet even more fantasize about the countless ways we could do away with the truly evil bad guys who are wreaking havoc on our streets, or from inside buildings of rarefied power.
Though, well, perhaps it’s just me.
Let’s face it, these are macabre times.
If you are of the baby boomer (1946-1964) or Gen X (1965-1980) generations it’s particularly strange to see U.S. soldiers in an airfield on their knees rolling out a literal red carpet to the president of Russia and all that implies.
From an ongoing nuclear arms race to a free democracy vs. autocratic dictatorship stance, the dangerous differences between us allowed polite constructive conversation for the good of the planet but never a glad-handing, subservient welcome wagon.
It’d be like Dexter greeting David Berkowitz, the Notorious “Son of Sam” killer in NYC in the 1970s, at a dinner party with a bear hug and a back slap.
At best, Dex would politely nod at him in order to keep the peace, and then spend most of the rest of the evening listening to suss out the danger and to quell any potential violence on the immediate horizon.
And if that analogy sounds like a reach, it should be known this season’s Dexter: Resurrection actually has our amiable anti-hero at a serial killer dinner party, assembled by a fictional tech billionaire played by Peter Dinklage, for his own amusement, with help from his icy assassin assistant in the form of Uma Thurman.
It seemed like a bit of a stretch at first, but as world and domestic events unfold in 2025 one can’t help but wonder how many secret confabs of real world baddies go unnoticed right under all of our collective noses.
Of course, it depends on what your definitions of bad and good; heroes and villains are. And for that definition I couldn’t venture a guess on anything timely enough to satisfy a majority of Americans, never mind the world’s population.
This is what happen when there is no longer an accepted baseline of what is acceptable in a country that is often touted as the actual leader of democracy in the free world.
As for Wednesday, she lives merely on television, in a community of people who are “different” from the norm (Note: In her case, a school for gifted teenagers with supernatural power, aka Outcasts), located in a town of so-called “normies.” It’s a place her parents bring her to so she can be educated and thrive in a free environment and thus ultimately have a better life.
Sure, it sounds good on paper, but in practice…. well, let’s just say the school and the town is loaded with barriers of pre-judgement and predators, often coming from the upper echelons of power at the school itself.
Though not entirely.
Wednesday may be tough, smart and possess unique powers that could benefit those around her, but her difference proves too great. Her elders see her as a threat to the current social order and their futures. Too many in her community find her confidence and looks off-putting. And she does herself no favors in how little tolerance she has for any of it – or anything else.
At another time and in another place, she might even be referred to as “uppity.”
No one believes Wednesday Addams will always do the right thing or turn out to be one of the “good” ones once she is an adult. But a principle premise of the series is that she, and the rest of those society snap judges to be “outcasts” without any proof their differences equal danger and justify contempt, should be given a chance in a world that purports to run on freedom.
It’s the argument for democracy.
It’s the argument for immigrants.
It’s the argument for free and fair elections on an even playing field in a country that professes to be emancipated.
Just as no one believes Dexter Morgan, a guy whose skill at slicing up the human bodies of his victims into a dozen neatly wrapped freezer bags and then thrown into the nearest ocean or trash compactor, is the best role model we have for moral virtue and decision-making.
What’s scary is that these days, at the end of one of our maddeningly endless “news” days, their choices are beginning to look not half bad.
“Bloody Mary” – Lady Gaga (sped up via Wednesday)
notes from a chair 