I’m always pleasantly surprised when I find a show on a streaming service worth watching, which doesn’t say too much that’s good about what’s being churned out by major studios nowadays.

Just a warning, there will be some spoilers ahead.

When my wife told me she wanted to sit down and watch the Tim Burton-directed “Wednesday” with me, I braced myself for another show about a Mary Sue that can beat up men twice her size and solve the plot’s issue–to the applause and adoration of everyone around her. Another entry in the “modern audiences” trash pile.

What I got was a show about a Mary Sue that can beat up men twice her size and solve the plot’s issues, but it wasn’t to the applause and adoration of everyone around her and, bizarrely, it kind of worked.

“Wednesday” centers around the stoic, black-clad daughter of the Addams family, Wednesday Addams played brilliantly by Jenna Ortega. After being kicked out of her “normie” school for putting hungry piranhas in the pool with the swim team that had bullied her brother Pugsly, she’s sent to “Nevermore Academy,” a Hogwarts rip-off but one that puts that classic Burton horror spin on it.

Right off the bat, it’s clear that the main audience for this was teen girls and young women. All the tropes of the modern teen female protagonist are there. She’s the school’s driven troublemaker that gives the faculty headaches, but like Potter and his pals, she’s constantly in trouble for trying to solve the mystery that would save lives. She’s befriended by a werewolf girl named Enid, a colorful and spunky blond that balances Wednesday’s moody darkness. And on top of that, she becomes the crush of not one, but two boys despite being the outcast among outcasts.

Wednesday is almost immediately thrust into a mystery she must solve, with the help of visions she’s been starting to receive, which would ultimately save the school and all the freaks and monsters within it. Her visions give her snatches of the future and come without warning upon touching something, and it’s up to the Addams family’s daughter to sus the mysteries these visions give her.

It was pretty obvious to me from the get-go that if anyone else but Burton had made this show, it likely would have failed miserably. The horror-comedy director serves up a distinct flavor that works with the Addams universe and, more importantly, makes Wednesday a believable character within her fantasy world.

Loyal readers will know I have no love for the Mary Sue trope, and Burton manages to certainly make Wednesday good at everything. But she fails horribly at simply being human, which fits right into the classic character of Wednesday as we know her.

The character has always been as brilliant as she is devious. Her macabre worldview and sense of justice always gave her something of an edge around others. Her being good at various forms of combat, with precise movements that use her own opponent’s clunkiness against them, fits her character. Burton seems to know where the line is on this, however, and far more focus is put on Wednesday’s mind than her combat capabilities.

While she’s good at most everything, she fails miserably at being a good friend. She openly uses people and abuses the trust of those around her to achieve her ends. Friendly gestures and tender moments go unappreciated and ignored. It’s a glaring flaw for the character that the show doesn’t let her get away with. More people dislike Wednesday than love her, and there are moments in the show where her inability to be human backfires on her. This gives Wednesday a much-needed character arc.

The show manages to walk the line of political correctness without falling too deep into it. I was ready to hear a lot of the “modern audiences” propaganda within the show, but even some of the more politically-charged lines fall within the character and feel more like something that character would say than a winking statement to the audience. You won’t find shoehorned-in speeches about climate or gender in this show and there are no preachy subplots.

But the show does have glaring flaws, namely predictability. You can see resolutions for plotlines coming from a mile away. From the first episode, I had more or less guessed who the bad guys were going to be. Despite multiple attempts to put viewers off the trail, it doesn’t exactly have a wide swath of suspects.

Moreover, there are moments of what I would say are very lazy writing, especially in the final episode. It’s stuffed so full of deus ex machina and coincidence that you start to feel removed from the plot against your will. The climax of the show feels rushed and could have gone a couple more episodes to fully flesh out the pieces on the board before the check-mate could occur.

But none of this ultimately stops “Wednesday” from being a fun ride. This is a show that could be enjoyed by the whole family, as both older and newer generations can enjoy another entry into the macabre but charming Addamsverse.

Older viewers will be greeted with Addams Family callbacks that can be explained to younger generations, prompting a rabbit-hole search on YouTube that could bring about some bonding time. Burton, and even Ortega, made it a point to include tributes to the older Addams Family entries, with Ortega even including Lisa Loring’s (the original Wednesday Addams) dance from the show into her own now-viral dance scene. Burton even cast Christina Ricci as a main character in the show, which many will remember as playing Wednesday in the ’90s Addams Family movies.

I definitely recommend the show, especially for families with daughters, but don’t expect the absolute hit it’s being sold as. It’s a good show that could have been better with a few tweaks here and there. The entirety of the Addams Family, and even some of the secondary characters, are charming because they’ve gotten that signature Burton exaggeration, but some of them feel too normal for a Burton film and end up feeling a tad out of place. That said, Ortega fits the role so well that the character feels like it should belong to her in the same way Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark or Kevin Conroy is Batman.

All in all, a solid series. Hopefully, the already-announced second season will improve on what’s been established.