Summary
“Woe Me the Money” feels like a bit of a step back after the previous episode, as it slows the pace of the Isaac plot to focus on Dort instead. However, it’s a bounty of production riches with some nice character moments.
Wednesday Season 2 peaked with its Freaky Friday body-swap episode, so it was inevitable that Episode 7, “Woe Me the Money”, would feel like a bit of a step down. And it does, since it sidelines the overarching Isaac/Francoise/Tyler plot a little to instead focus on Barry Dort, Gideon, and the Morning Song cult, which was briefly raised in the midseason premiere. There’s still some development in the ongoing stuff, don’t get me wrong, especially the small matter of an impending Addams family demise, but it’s also very much a more focused chapter that feels contained to the school gala, which Tim Burton uses as another opportunity to pull out all the stops production-wise.
But anyway — Barry Dort. As if it wasn’t obvious that he was a bad guy with ill intentions, this episode opens with a 15-years-earlier flashback to his initial recruitment of “Gideon” in Florida. Barry Dort is Morning Song, and has been using Gideon to line his pockets the whole time. In the present day, he confronts Bianca and her mother to help him enact his ultimate plan of defrauding Hester Frump of her sizeable fortune. This, of course, requires using Bianca’s Siren Song while keeping her mother hostage in his apartment to force her hand.
Wednesday, meanwhile, learns that Isaac was Gomez’s best friend and roommate when he was at Nevermore, but he didn’t make the connection between him and Slurp until he saw him at Pilgrim’s World. She also lets her mother know about a looming death in the family, and asks to sacrifice Pugsley, which would presumably be too easy an option. Through Eugene, she learns a bit more about the moths that hatched from Slurp while he was still putrid, and plans to follow them back to his current location, which will take a while, and thus leaves her with plenty of time to save Hester from Dort. We do see Isaac and Francoise, but he’s occupied trying to save her from her worsening condition by transfusing Tyler’s Hyde blood into her. It’s only a temporary solution, though.
Despite Dort’s lavish proposal of “Frump Tower”, Hester is in no mind to give Nevermore a penny, so he uses Bianca to force her hand and leave her entire fortune to Nevermore. This naturally alerts Morticia and Wednesday, since they both know she’d never leave the school anything, let alone be paraded around as the guest of honor at the gala, so Wednesday confronts Bianca. During a fencing spar, she reveals the truth, but then Siren Song’s Wednesday into forgetting. Luckily, Agnes is invisible nearby and is able to fill the mind-wiped Wednesday in on what was said.
Wednesday’s usual harsh manner upsets Agnes in Wednesday Season 2, Episode 7, which pushes her towards Enid, who, it turns out, is at risk of being stuck as a werewolf forever if she transforms during a full moon, which is in two days. This turns out to be a good thing, since Enid and Agnes steal the show at the masquerade gala with a brilliantly choreographed dance routine that is also part of Wednesday’s plan to turn the tables on Dort. During the routine, Agnes disappears and swipes Dort’s amulet, the one that protects him from the Siren’s Song, so in his address to the school, Bianca is able to force him to confess. He attempts to take Bianca hostage — a slightly more serious threat after seeing him burn Gideon to ash earlier in the episode — but Ajax petrifies him with his Gorgon glare, and a chandelier falls on him, smashing him to bits, much to the amusement of Hester and Wednesday.
Finally, though, Wednesday sides with her own parents over Hester, which, to be fair, she rather seems to appreciate. She talks Hester into giving Nevermore a sizeable donation in Gomez’s honour as recompense for an earlier remark about the quality of outcast he is, and it certainly feels like some progress has been made here, which, if Weems is right about Wednesday’s powers being linked to her relationship with her mother, can only be good news.
There is some bad news, though — Isaac is on campus, and he manages to find Pugsley sulking in the cemetery. By the time Wednesday and Eugene get there, Pugsley and Isaac are gone, having left only a moth behind. Perhaps Wednesday might get her wish for her brother to be sacrificed after all.
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