We Need More of Uncle Fester as a Criminal Mastermind
Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Wednesday Season 1.Ever since the eight episodes of Wednesday Season 1 dropped on Netflix, the show has come under a fair share of scrutiny regarding the changes it makes to the Addams Family universe. Was it the right move to take Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) away from her family? What about turning her into a teenage detective and a magnet for gloomy pretty boys? What is up with her rebellious streak and her claims that her mother wants to turn her into a clone of herself? For long time Addams lovers, there is certainly a lot to unpack when it comes to Wednesday. But, among all the discussion that has been going on around the show, there's one fresh take on a classic Addams family member to which fans haven't been giving the proper amount of attention. It's time we all take a deep breath and talk about Wednesday's man-of-mystery version of good, old, creepy Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen).
Created by cartoonist Charles Addams in the 1930s for his series of single-panel comics for The New Yorker magazine, Uncle Fester is far from being the most beloved character in the Addams Family. Throughout his many iterations in the franchise’s canon, he’s usually portrayed as a weird uncle or even a downright creep that scares the hell out of Thing with his sexual advances (Addams Family Values) and is forbidden from getting close to certain kinds of buildings (2019's The Addams Family). He’s an entertaining side character, to be sure, but not really the kind of guy that fans like to identify with and that TV execs dedicate solo shows to.
That is, of course, until Wednesday came along. Uncle Fester makes his first appearance on the show as a special guest in Episode 7. And, like many other characters on the series, such as Wednesday herself, this version of Fester is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Sure, Armisen’s character is still a weirdo and more than a little disgusting, hiding in the middle of Enid’s (Emma Myers) stuffed animals and whatnot, but he’s also kind of cool. He knows martial arts and is presented as a valuable asset to Wednesday’s investigation on the horrors that are befalling Nevermore Academy and the town of Jericho. Furthermore, he’s no longer just an estranged uncle, but a man of mystery of sorts, a criminal mastermind looking for a place to lie low after some undisclosed job. By the end of the episode, fans are left wondering what exactly this new Fester is up to and perhaps even longing for a Fester-centric miniseries.
Like All Members of the Addams Family, Uncle Fester Has Changed a Lot Over the Years
Much like his equally mysterious and spooky relatives, Uncle Fester made his debut on the pages of The New Yorker in 1938, in a series of satirical, macabre cartoons depicting an aristocratic family with odd preferences and habits. Drawn as a bald man with dark circles around his eyes and clad in a black overcoat, Fester appeared alone in single-panels that had him engaging in activities such as choosing what kind of poison to brush his teeth with or calling an automated time service to make sure his bomb’s clock is set to the correct time. Sometimes, however, he would join the rest of the family for a nice dinner or a creepy fishing trip, leaving no doubt that all characters were part of the same universe.
Still, Fester would only gain his name and his status as an uncle when the first Addams Family TV show came out in 1964. Again, much like the rest of his family, Uncle Fester was entirely nameless up until ABC approached Charles Addams with an idea for a television series, and his connection to Morticia, Gomez, and the kids was hugely left to speculation. All of this would soon change when Jackie Coogan took over the helm of the first live-action Uncle Fester. Back in the 60s, Fester was introduced as Morticia’s (Carolyn Jones) uncle, and Grandmama’s (Marie Blake) brother, a fact that would be changed in later iterations of the character, in which he is presented as Gomez’s older brother.
But even if Fester’s status as an Addams would eventually change, his personality remained pretty much the same. Though The Addams Family, in all of its live-action and animated versions, has always been a comedy, Fester’s role was that of an extra-comic relief. Wednesday and Pugsley’s bald uncle was always the guy that was too weird even for Addams standards. In the 1964 television series, it is said that Fester’s father used to pay him to stay away from other people and that he wasn’t allowed to attend school. In the Barry Sonnenfeld movies of the 90s, Fester (Christopher Lloyd) is a strange, sad, lonely old man that is frequently being duped by women pretending to love him either as a son or a husband. His personality stands in sharp contrast with the seductive, suave nature of his little brother (Raul Julia).
In Addams Family Values, jokes about his lack of charm and even instances of sexual harassment abound. He threatens Thing with masturbation, and it is heavily implied that he watches Gomez and Morticia (Anjelica Huston) go at it every once in a while. Furthermore, the man is portrayed as such a poor sob that even baby Pubert (Kristen Hooper, Kaitlyn Hooper, and Cheryl Chase) must come to his defense by the end of the film. In 2019’s The Addams Family, Fester (Nick Kroll) tells little Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) that he is barred from going to malls and buildings in general. In the animated movie’s 2021 sequel, The Addams Family 2, he is shown juggling babies in a maternity ward, which probably means that he is not allowed near hospitals as well.
For many years, this pathetic persona has worked in Fester’s favor, but there was always a limit to how much could be done with his character. The fact that Addams Family Values is as much his movie as it is Wednesday’s (Christina Ricci), with the other Addams family members all cast in supporting roles, must mean that Sonnenfeld did something right when he centered the character in his first Addams Family film. Nonetheless, if there ever was a second sequel to 1991’s The Addams Family, it is hard to imagine the plot focusing on Fester again without audiences getting utterly bored with watching this man suffer indignity after indignity and turn on light bulbs with his mouth. The same cannot be said about Uncle Fester’s co-star, Wednesday, who all but became the face of the Addams family in the years that followed.
Wednesday’s Uncle Fester Is Still Disturbing, But He’s a Creep With Something on the Side
But, thankfully for Uncle Fester, his days as a sorry excuse for a human being were coming to an end. In 2022, along came Fred Armisen and showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar to the rescue of this poor man’s reputation. In Netflix’s Wednesday, Uncle Fester is still a downright creep and can often feel too disturbing even for Addams standards. He tries to eat Eugene’s (Moosa Mostafa) bees, he’s had at least two lobotomies, and listens to conversations hiding in piles of stuffed animals belonging to teenage girls. He’s really not someone you’d want to get close to. However, that doesn’t mean he’s not someone we would enjoy watching for a few more minutes. After all, Wednesday’s Uncle Fester has a lot more on his plate than just criminal insanity.
We are introduced to Wednesday’s version of Uncle Fester in the show’s second to last episode, “If You Don’t Woe Me By Now”. Dressed in his traditional black overcoat, with his bald head covered with a huge-brimmed hat, Fester makes a real entrance jokingly ambushing his niece in the woods near Nevermore, and then stopping a sword blow with his bare hands. He tells her that he needs a place to hide after a “job in Boston”, and during his stay at Nevermore he proves to be instrumental in helping Wednesday find out more about the monster that has been attacking her classmates. He has a talent for stealing things, and his ability to conduct electricity, introduced in the 1964 series, is, for the first time, used for something else besides powering light bulbs: it can be applied to numerous things, from disarming enemies to bringing severed hands back to life. By the end of the episode, we learn that Uncle Fester is a dangerous bank robber on the lam, and that he and Thing (Victor Dorobantu) used to be partners in crime up until something they refer to solely as the Kalamazoo job.
These tidbits of information leave us wondering what kind of shenanigans exactly is this new Uncle Fester up to. What is the Boston job? What happened in Kalamazoo? What other robberies has he been part of since his teenage years raiding the secret rooms of Nevermore Academy? The fact that this new Uncle Fester has turned his talent for conducting electricity into a bona fide superpower makes it all even more interesting: how exactly does he use this ability in his criminal endeavors? Indeed, this new Uncle Fester is a far cry from the pitiful, disgusting man that we met in previous versions of The Addams Family. Well, okay, maybe this was an exaggeration: Armisen’s Uncle Fester is still very much a creep, but he also has a few things working in his favor.
Instead of being constantly duped, this new Uncle Fester does the duping. Instead of being worthy of pity, he has a criminal record that makes us pity those that cross his path. The problem is we still don’t know exactly what that criminal record contains. Perhaps it’s time to give this new and improved Fester his own TV series, or at least a little more screen time in a second season of Wednesday. Hey, if the world has room for Austin Powers (Mike Myers), then it can definitely make some space for another creepy man of mystery!
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