Wandavision marks Marvel's latest foray into the world of television. Prior attempts to connect their big screen output to the small screen have not gone so well: Agents Of SHIELD began as a companion piece to the movies, but such close alignment resulted in a show playing perpetual catch-up and which only developed into a satisfying endeavour in its own right once the cord was severed. Subsequent efforts, including Agent Carter and Netflix shows such as Daredevil and Jessica Jones, tied into the cinematic universe in only the loosest sense.
Wandavision's approach is closest to that of Agent Carter, which featured characters from the movies in a self-contained story arc. Marvel's return to television is this time quite literal: the series draws heavily from the aesthetics of sitcoms from the 1950s and '60s, telling the story of the relationship between an android, Vision, and a telekinetic witch, Wanda, as they attempt to settle into (hyper)traditional married life in suburbia. It is here that a press release would affix the addendum 'except nothing is as it seems', which is ironically the problem: as far as premises go, 'dark mysteries lurking in flawless suburbia' is as generic as they come. On the basis of these early episodes, Wandavision looks to be exactly what it seems and nothing more.
The inherent problem with pastiches is that they always begin from a position of being beholden to something else. The nature of pastiche as imitation means it can only offer the broadest, least specific vision of its subject material in its spoofing, making it often less able to do anything unique with its trappings than the originators.
Take the sitcoms to which Wandavision pays ostensible deference. None which have endured in popular memory satisfied themselves with portraying domestic bliss uncritically: Bewitched, which Wandavision aligns closest to in theme and to which the series pays allusion with an animated title sequence in the second episode, was about male insecurity with a woman having more power in the relationship. The Honeymooners portrayed marriage as anything but blissful, once again leaning heavily into male insecurity, this time about being an inadequate provider and filtered through the prism of two people who love each other but struggle with their different backgrounds. Even that most conventional of the era's sitcoms, Leave It To Beaver, took the perspective of a child and doffed its cap to the challenges of good parenting when raising rambunctious children.
As a spoof, Wandavision is unable to use its setting for that kind of narrative and thematic specificity, offering only aesthetic replication. The original sitcoms were able to be more subversive than the spoof because their aesthetics were not affectations, but simply the time and place in which they were made, allowing them to honestly and authentically observe the standards and expectations of that time. Wandavision's choice of setting is nothing but hollow condescension, an imitation of a lifestyle and culture which was never as bland and brainless as those recreating it like to imagine.
In these first two episodes, there's no real reason for Wandavision to look the way it does other than as a visual gimmick. The banality of its pastiche could be deliberate, but because these episodes rely on it almost exclusively for their entertainment value - neither offers much by way of story or emotional depth or thematic meaning - all it has is a winking irony at something which never was the way the show pretends it was. If the show plans on using the '60s suburban marriage standard to comment on Wanda and Vision's struggle to find a place for themselves in the world as a most unconventional couple - as they constantly refer to themselves - there are no signs here of any real, meaningful struggle. It's all played for knowingly corny jokes rather than giving real insight into the relationship and its difficulties external and internal.
Some of the choices work and some do not. Elizabeth Olsen is a delight as Wanda and spot-on in capturing the heightened acting style of the time to which the jokes were attuned. If there is a reason to watch, it is for her alone. Her skill is brought into focus by the failure of Paul Bettany, who strains to reconcile the comedic style of the time with a slightly more naturalistic approach and winds up killing every gag he's involved in. The supporting cast are a similarly mixed bag: Katherine Hahn finds the sweet spot, but Emma Caulfield-Ford pitches too close to her Buffy performance and falls flat.
In terms of the show's look, the first episode is shot in much the same way as an episode of a sitcom from that era, switching only to a modern style of close-ups, maladroit angles and slightly faster cutting once the audience is to be clued in on something being unsettlingly amiss. The second episode splits the difference much less effectively, starting out traditionally and swapping to a more modern style when Wanda finds a coloured object in her black-and-white world (a cliché within the cliché, as it were) before continuing the scene, and the episode, in a distracting mélange of the two.
Wandavision's first two episodes unfortunately demonstrate the defining weaknesses of both Marvel's in-house productions and streaming shows in general. In the latter case, it is the absence of moment-to-moment purpose. Hints at mysteries yet to be revealed are all well and good, but do little to make the watching of these episodes in the here-and-now worthwhile. Like many streaming shows, Wandavision has a vacuum where its episodic storytelling should be, with its loose repurposing of stock sitcom storylines being nothing but filler until the big picture hints which the show believes are the real reason for watching.
In the case of its Marvel-specific weakness, the show feels very focus-grouped and safe, its 'experimentation' lacking any edge or creative vision beyond making a choice for the sake of making a choice. Marvel's problem has never been an unwillingness to take risks - Guardians Of The Galaxy was a big departure from all their previous fare when it came out, right down to employing a Troma-alum as director - but rather in making those risks, or any of its movies, feel motivated by any sort of vision (boom boom). Wandavision shows no sign of having anything to say for itself but exists simply for the sake of existing. It is not art, merely 'content', not created to make its audience feel or doubt or think, but to pacify them until the next meaninglessly expensive thing comes along. The one genuinely ironic aspect of the show is that Wandavision lacks both wonder and vision.
