Episode 3: “Now in Color”
The more fitting title of the third episode of WandaVision would be “Now Entirely in Color” since we already did get that historically relevant transition in the previous installment of the series. From its opening through its set design and comedic tone, the episode’s pastiche is focused on the family-friendly sitcoms of the late 1960s and early 1970s. I say family-friendly because the 1970s also brought about sitcoms (mostly created by Norman Lear, such as All in the Family and Maude) that dealt with more serious issues of the world. But you could still find implausibly wholesome and upbeat — and often musically inclined — shows like The Brady Bunch (1969-1974), which inspires Wanda and Vision’s home, and The Partridge Family (1970-1974). The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1969-1972), are also, along with The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, paid tribute via the opening credits.
While the episode follows the usual Murphy’s Law scenarios that fuel sitcoms overall, namely with the doctor going out of town at just the wrong time and various obstacles to Wanda attempting to keep something a secret from her friends, there’s another trope in “Now in Color” that isn’t related to sitcom narratives so much as television production. I’m not sure how many others are familiar with the hide your pregnancy trope or if the apparent nod to this trope is intentional on the part of the makers of WandaVision, but the latter feels true.
It’s something that typically concerns a real-life pregnancy by an actress playing a character who can not be written-in as pregnant and how the production conceals the physical change. Often the actress will stand behind kitchen counters or bags of groceries or pillows, etc. Or they’d wear baggy clothing, which was notably easier in the 1980s and 1990s. In WandaVision, however, Wanda is trying to hide her baby bump from neighbors who’d question how she’s already so far along, so she wears an oversized coat and holds a bowl of fruit or pot of flowers in front of her midsection.
I don’t know how much this trope was necessary or done in the 1970s. The only equivalent for The Brady Bunch was with Maureen McCormick being pregnant during a gimmicky episode of Day by Day in 1989 and the only relevance to The Partridge Family would be Shirley Jones acting while pregnant years earlier for the film The Music Man. But memorable examples do go back to the aforementioned series I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and I Dream of Jeannie, so it’s been a common practice throughout television history. I first noticed it in the 1980s and 1990s with the sitcoms Newhart, Cheers, The Cosby Show, and Married… With Children.
Episode 4: “We Interrupt This Program”
This episode took a detour from the usual format in order to show what’s been happening outside of the fake TV sitcom land during the events of the first few episodes. There’s nothing really here that fits the pastiche. It’s more like a Lost homage.
Episode 5: “On a Very Special Episode…”
The fifth episode of WandaVision brings the show into the 1980s with an opening credits sequence referencing those of Family Ties (1982-1989), Growing Pains (1985-1992), and Full House (1987-1995) and set decoration paying tribute to the Keatons’ home in Family Ties and the nosey neighbor now turned into the brashy budding-in-whenever-neighbor. The former two sitcoms also employed a production decision that relates significantly to a plot point of the WandaVision series: the magically advancing ages of Wanda and Vision’s newborn twin sons. In the third season of Family Ties, Meredith Baxter’s own pregnancy was written into the show for her character. In the fourth season, a new baby boy was part of the central family, but then for the fifth season, that child was suddenly four years earlier. Similarly, Growing Pains added a new baby girl in Season 4, who became a toddler in Season 5, then a five-year-old by Season 6.
Of course, the main nod to sitcoms of the era was in having some of the episode’s plot revolve around a new pet, which then is quickly killed off. Considering the 1980s were a big time for sitcom premises (including Full House‘s) based on a mom having just died in some manner, a dead dog isn’t the heaviest of situational subject matter — not to mention it’s nothing like the sexual predator or drugs and alcohol special episodes on various sitcoms. It’s about on the level of almost any third act of any episode of Growing Pains, really. This is also the episode in which Vision and Wanda begin seriously fighting, which is outside of the normal everything-is-okay veneer of the sitcom — even very special episodes. And, so, such anger and violence are shown to come about only after the show-within-the show’s credits are finished, so as to acknowledge that the bad and hard parts of life are outside the door of what we’re permitted to see in the bracketed sitcom storyline.
Afterward there’s the likely unintentional reference of a long-lost maternal uncle showing up out of the blue, which reminded me of Tom Hanks’ alcoholic uncle episodes of Family Ties. Speaking of Uncle Pietro, there’s probably some greater Marvel mega-franchise multi-verse reason for why Evan Peters, the actor who portrayed Quicksilver in Fox’s X-Men movies, is now playing the character in the MCU, but for now, his recasting, in the way it’s pointed out by Dr. Darcy (Kat Dennings), works as a TV homage gag. Recasting actors on TV series, not just sitcoms, is a part of the production history for a number of shows for a variety of reasons, most famously with the male lead on Bewitched (Dick York -> Dick Sargent) and also significant to the ensembles of Roseanne, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Family Matters (in relation to Perfect Strangers), The Jeffersons, and That ’70s Show.
And there’s plenty more here as far as ’80s influences go — so much that they could have probably done multiple episodes set in the era. In an interview with Mike Ryan of Uproxx, showrunner Jac Schaeffer mentions that Who’s the Boss, Roseanne, and even the Shakman-linked Just the Ten of Us all informed WandaVision in some way. But even more importantly, a huge influence was the syndicated sci-fi sitcom Out of This World (1987-1991), about a teenage girl with magic powers inherited from her alien dad. The supernatural stuff of the decade, also including My Secret Identity (1988-1991) and ALF (1986-1990), was a big part, surely along with Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, in influencing how WandaVision deals with the tone of the conventional sitcom being “ruptured” by some weirdness.
Season 6: “All-New Halloween Spooktacular!”
Pretty much skipping over the 1990s (when sitcom trends for shows that weren’t ’80s carryovers may have had less relevance to suburban family dynamics), save for its bleak claymation-style yogurt commercial, the sixth episode of WandaVision finds inspiration almost exclusively from Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006). It was not the first sitcom to break the fourth the way we see the twins suddenly do in this installment, but it’s one of the bridges from the ’90s hip meta video camera shtick and the era of the mockumentary style sitcom (see the next episode). Breaking the fourth wall does come at the right time in WandaVision‘s narrative arc because this is also the episode when a character attempts to literally break through the walls of the fake Westview suburbs into the real world, and that then leads to the show taking over more of the real world as realities are further mixed.
On top of that, it’s your obligatory sitcom holiday episode, specifically a Halloween special, and like the best of them it has a lot of fun with the characters’ costumes. People in television shows go all out with holidays, from the overly perfect get-ups, which often have some sort of pop culture or meta significance as in the case of the WandaVision characters wearing outfits that nod to their comic book counterparts, to the extent that the town participates in not just the usual traditions but some big-deal celebration, like the fair that’s occurring in the town green in this installment.
Episode 7: “Breaking the Fourth Wall”
Another funny episode title considering it’s a bit late in its alignment with what’s going on in the show, “Breaking the Fourth Wall” blends The Office (US version, 2005-2013) and Modern Family (2009-2020), evoking their documentary-style aesthetic and, yes, the fourth-wall smashing that comes with that. Again, it’s as if the trajectory of the American sitcom, from its beginnings as an escapist bubble of ideal American living to its 21st-century trends consisting of postmodern meta-textuality and transparency was all perfectly designed for the sake of a show like WandaVision and its theme of a constructed veil of false perfectionism that all comes tumbling down as the make-believe and the real worlds crash into each other and cause a break in the fabric of the magic of television. Interestingly enough, though, it’s more transparency for the characters within the TV land rather than for those outside it that affects the show now.
The Office and Modern Family and others like it, by taking on the documentary style, remind us in the audience that we’re watching a show that has been created and produced, that it’s a constructed and lensed story and even if related to “reality” television, things are being manipulated by some other hands at play. To use that whole concept for the moment when we learn that Agnes, or Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), is behind the whole thing, is further proof of WandaVision‘s brilliance. Agatha is the woman behind the camera and curtain and controls (not unlike Christof in The Truman Show, a movie that influenced this series), directing things with her magic and also just introducing elements for dramatic tension and effect, such as the dog and the dog’s death and the sudden appearance of Uncle Pietro.
Of course, at the very end of the episode, also concerning Agatha’s reveal, is the closest thing to a spinoff, which is another major staple of the sitcom throughout its history. The obvious reference for the “Agatha All Along” theme, though, is The Munsters (1964-1966), which brings us back to the 1960s and its minor monster sitcom trend (the other big one was The Addams Family, 1964-1966). But it should be noted that The Munsters were not just from that decade, as a continuation-reboot existed in the late 1980s and early 1990s long before continuation-reboots of TV sitcoms were a thing. A new version of the show was also attempted last decade, as well, but it didn’t go anywhere.
Finally, since it doesn’t fit anywhere else in the discussion of the episode, here’s the acknowledgment that, yes, Happy Endings (2011-2013) was also given a nod in “Breaking the Fourth Wall” with the opening credits sequence.
Episode 8: “Previously On”
The most disappointing episode of WandaVision — by design and by necessity. You just can’t do a sitcom pastiche without acknowledgment of the “clip show,” a type of episode where characters reflect on moments from their lives, with their memories depicted through a compilation of greatest-hits excepts from a variety of past episodes. “Previously On” doesn’t quite do that, but it does retell events from past installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, mostly from new perspectives. It’s similarly a rehash of moments we’ve seen before, so it fits the idea. I have to point out that not all clip shows are terrible, by the way. One episode of Growing Pains memorably did one where it’s the memories of inanimate objects — all recognizable props to fans like me — reminiscing together while being set out for a garage sale.
Episode 9: “The Series Finale”
All sitcoms eventually come to an end. Sort of. (And if you’re not The Simpsons, apparently.) They’re not usually as packed with plot — and definitely not as packed with action — as WandaVision, but what you do typically have is a moment for goodbyes. Maybe it’s within the narrative of the show with kids heading off to college or another regular character moving on to somewhere else, but there’s also often the goodbyes at the very end between cast members and between the actors and the audience. It used to be that we’d never see these people before, so it could be pretty emotional, almost like these people, these creations for the show, are passing away. That’s how I saw the scenes of Wanda saying goodbye to her kids and then to Vision.
Of course, now a lot of sitcoms are resurrected (and this isn’t even a new thing; just look back at all the Brady Bunch reunions and the ’80s revival of Leave it to Beaver) and we get to see our favorite characters all over again, just older. And we’ll be seeing a lot of the characters from WandaVision again in other parts of the MCU. And because this is a franchise based on comic books, we can expect to see dead and disappeared characters come back as well. The post-credits scene even hints that we’ll be seeing the twins somewhere down the road. There are finales, but there are no endings.
Oh, and one more thing about this episode (see, no endings): Uncle Pietro being revealed to just be some actor named Ralph Bohner has to be a shout-out to the Growing Pains character Richard “Boner” Stabone (played by the late Andrew Koenig). If not, that’s some coincidence from a series that has shown itself to be written by fans of that sitcom.
Check out our weekly recap of WandaVision here.
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