Disney+ Marvel's WandaVision (1 Viewer)

[Sam Favate]

The second season of The Mandalorian only had two soundtrack releases (one with music from the first four episodes and the second with the other four episodes) that came out halfway through and the second release when the season ended. Maybe Disney will do the same here?

Those weren't physical releases, were they? I would have snapped them up.

 

[Sam Favate]

I feel confident that once they break out of whatever this is and make it to the "real" world of the MCU, the laugh track will disappear.

I suspect there will be little to laugh about at that point.

 

[Sean Bryan]

This brief featurette gives a glimpse of the live studio audience they filmed in front of.

 

[TravisR]

Those weren't physical releases, were they? I would have snapped them up.

It's not on CD but Mondo released a $200 8-LP box set of the first season that has since sold out.

 

[Brian L]

We watched both episodes cold, without really reading anything about the show other than knowing it was coming. Probably a mistake, but thus far this is......weird. Great production values to imitate the look and feel of The Dick Van Dyke show and Bewitched, but if someone asked me to explain what I just watched, I'd be hosed.

Although I have seen quite a few of the MCU films, I am not really all that fluent with all the characters, so I had no knowledge of the back story of Wanda and Vision, and it would seem that would be helpful to get a lot of what is going on.

After the show, I went online to try to fill in the blanks, and I found a link to a list of Easter Eggs.....only one I actually caught, and even that had a much deeper meaning.

WandaVision: Marvel Easter Eggs Breakdown | POPSUGAR Entertainment

www.popsugar.com

Clever stuff if you are fully invested in the MCU and have knowledge of what to me are lower tier characters, but without that, I was lost.

Perhaps things will go in a very different direction, and these two episodes are just sort of a backstory for something else entirely, but at the moment, it would not appear to be a show for casual fans of the MCU. We will give it another shot, but thus far, I haven’t a clue what’s really going on.

 

[TonyD]

I don’t think anyone really knows what is going on and why they are in this wierd TV universe.
There have been some clues.

Strüker (Strücker?) Watch with a Hydra logo on it.
The toaster with some familiar sound fx on it.

They have dropped some clues but only the super Marvel die hard s might have figured it out at this point.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

You’re not really supposed to have a clue what’s going on. The last time Vision was seen was in Avengers: Infinity War (set during the year 2018), when Thanos murdered him to take the mind stone (an Infinity Stone that was part of his body). The last time Wanda was seen was in Avengers: Endgame (the sequel to Infinity War, set during the year 2023) where she and the rest of the Avengers wage war against Thanos and defeat him.

Even if you’ve seen every single MCU movie a dozen times, there’s really nothing in them to give a clue as to what’s going on here. That’s pretty much the point of the show - the audience is being thrown into a “WTF?!” posture and the characters also seem to have brief hints where they can tell this isn’t quite right.

I don’t think the comics will hold a definitive answer because the MCU films have all been about drawing different elements from the books without directly adapting them.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The biggest clue is actually one that’s not part of the show proper, but rather, from the original press release when Disney+ made its debut. The show was announced as leading directly into the forthcoming feature film “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” That suggests that this version of Wanda and Vision may not be the ones we know from the films (as will be the case with the forthcoming “Loki” show) or that Wanda may have somehow escaped to an alternate reality. But whether it’s that or something else, rest assured, the mystery/confusion is the premise of the show, not a sign that the viewer hasn’t seen enough of the films.

 

[TonyD]

Yeah, that’s how I described the show to my wife who other then watching some of these movies with me has no idea what’s going on in the MCU.

 

[NeilO]

This brief featurette gives a glimpse of the live studio audience they filmed in front of.

So, not a laugh track then.

 

[Sean Bryan]

So, not a laugh track then.

Definitely not for the first episode. I believe they are using laugh tracks for the eras when they were commonly used.

 

[Sean Bryan]

We watched both episodes cold, without really reading anything about the show other than knowing it was coming. Probably a mistake, but thus far this is......weird. Great production values to imitate the look and feel of The Dick Van Dyke show and Bewitched, but if someone asked me to explain what I just watched, I'd be hosed.

Although I have seen quite a few of the MCU films, I am not really all that fluent with all the characters, so I had no knowledge of the back story of Wanda and Vision, and it would seem that would be helpful to get a lot of what is going on.

After the show, I went online to try to fill in the blanks, and I found a link to a list of Easter Eggs.....only one I actually caught, and even that had a much deeper meaning.

WandaVision: Marvel Easter Eggs Breakdown | POPSUGAR Entertainment

www.popsugar.com

Clever stuff if you are fully invested in the MCU and have knowledge of what to me are lower tier characters, but without that, I was lost.

Perhaps things will go in a very different direction, and these two episodes are just sort of a backstory for something else entirely, but at the moment, it would not appear to be a show for casual fans of the MCU. We will give it another shot, but thus far, I haven’t a clue what’s really going on.

Disney+ has a series called “Legends” which is supposed to be summaries of various character’ backstories. The first episode is for Wanda and the second for Vision. Each are just 7 minutes.

You may want to check those out.

I expect the next episodes will be for Falcon and Bucky in March.

 

[Sean Bryan]

The commercials seem like they may be reflecting traumatic events from Wanda’s life.

The Stark toaster could be for the Stark Industries bomb that killed her parents and terrorized her and her brother.

The Strucker watch is likely from when she and her brother were experimented on by Baron Strucker.

 

[Sam Favate]

The show has prompted an interesting discussion in my house, as my kids want to understand why it’s in black and white, so we said that’s what the sitcoms looked like in the 50s and the first half of the 60s.

Growing up in the age of YouTube, they asked “What’s a sitcom?”

So we explained it and started talking about the best sitcoms of all time. Of course everyone will have their own list, but I said Get Smart, All in the Family and Taxi. The kids are at least curious.

 

[cinemiracle]

It wouldn't feel like the sitcoms of that era without the laugh track.

I am not a fan of USA sit-coms but the canned laughter track is totally unnecessary. It's like telling the audience to laugh regardless of whether or not it was funny. Let the audience decide how funny that they think a show is.. Canned laughter is always so obvious. It just never lets up in the first 2 episodes.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It’s a live studio audience so it’s not canned. (Typically “canned” refers to using a prerecorded laugh track when the program was shot without an audience.)

In this case, it’s not just telling the audience to laugh - it’s also an unsettling sign that something is not right with the situations these characters have found themselves in.

 

[Josh Dial]

I am not a fan of USA sit-coms but the canned laughter track is totally unnecessary. It's like telling the audience to laugh regardless of whether or not it was funny. Let the audience decide how funny that they think a show is.. Canned laughter is always so obvious. It just never lets up in the first 2 episodes.

I think you are missing a central conceit of these episodes (and likely the entire series)...

 

[Clinton McClure]

I turned it off after 2 minutes.

 

[Josh Dial]

I thought the first two episodes of WandaVision were amazing. It's no secret that I'm a big Marvel fan, but it's like the show's creative team reached into my brain and generated a product made perfectly for me.

I've written elsewhere about why I watch the shows I watch: partly to be entertained, partly to be challenged. I seek out shows that are different, daring, or iconoclastic. Frankly, boring shows (like virtually 100% of network TV) don't do anything for me. They don't take risks, they don't tell new or even interesting stories, and all too often you can see the omnipresent hand of the studio guiding every "artistic" choice.

Shows like The Leftovers, Dark, Twin Peaks: The Return, Legion, and Mr. Robot push the medium into challenging, often avant-garde, places. They demand a viewer's undivided attention, and are often uninterested in whether the viewer comes away with all the answers.

Shows like The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, Fleabag, The Good Place, The Americans, The Mandalorian, and Barry rise above their competitors. These shows don't always break the mold, but they delivery a product that epitomizes their (crowded) genres.

The common factor in these programs is a creative team at the top of their game. Experts confidently crafting the best versions of their shows.

WandaVision is an odd combination of both types of shows I like to watch. It's exploring disparate genres, interesting subject matter, and even the history of television itself. All wrapped up in a Marvel blanket. Think back to the premiere of the first Iron Man movie; could you even imagine a show like WandaVision?

And while it's still early in the show's limited run, WandaVision appears to be answering the Sorkin-esque question, "what's next?" What do you do after Avengers: Endgame? You've just taken your viewers through a decade of interconnected films, culminating in a shared fan experience that will rarely be rivalled. How do you top that (because, to be certain, fans and critics alike will want you to top it)? Maybe it's a blessing in disguise that Black Widow is delayed until after WandaVision. Can you go from Endgame to a spy/action thriller (I'm assuming the genre, and don't get me wrong: I have every reason to believe Black Widow will be great)?

So what do you do? It turns out the boys from Monty Python had it right: you do something completely different.

 

[Sean Bryan]

Ok, I challenge all takers to watch the “Bewitched homage” opening of episode 2 a few times in a row and not get “WandaVision, Wan-WandaVision” stuck in your head.



Also, creepy stuff in the floor boards!