Last week’s WandaVision took a break from our regularly scheduled programming to check in with Monica Rambeau, Jimmy Woo, and Darcy Lewis as they studied the Westview Anomaly. It provided a much-needed dose of explanations and exposition. This week, however, WandaVision thrusts us right back into the sitcom world of Wanda Maximoff’s making. Sure, the cracks in Wanda’s facade are beginning to show a little more consistently. But even among Agnes’s fourth wall breaking, Norm’s mortal terror, and Vision’s sleuthing, episode 5 contains a truly impressive amount of sitcom homages. Let’s break them all down here.
Family Ties
It’s well-established at this point that each episode of WandaVision uses one sitcom of a particular era as a stylistic jumping off point. Episodes one through three cribbed from The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched, and The Brady Bunch, respectively. Now, the sitcom that episode 5 “On a Very Special Episode…” is paying homage to is unquestionably the 1982 NBC series Family Ties. WandaVision obviously doesn’t borrow much, if any, of Family Ties’s themes but it does liberally (no pun intended) take from the show’s style and look. Wanda and Vision’s ‘80s outfits are closely similar to Steven and Elyse’s usual threads. Their new home also closely resembles that of the Keaton’s. Back when WandaVision’s very first trailer premiered, many astute viewers were able to identify the Family Ties homage quicker than anything else. The Family Ties comparisons extend to even the episode’s opening intro. Both the lyrics and the handcrafted style suggest that of season 2 of the NBC show. In fact, this might be the closest WandaVision has copied any show’s credits yet. And that might be because the show’s composers Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez are particularly familiar with the ‘80s era of sitcoms. As Robert told EW: “I think we can say — maybe because we’re ’80s kids — that the ’80s was our favorite decade to take on. The craft of theme songwriting peaked in the ’80s because, after the ’80s, you see fewer and fewer songs at the beginning of sitcoms and TV shows. It was their heyday. It was the brilliant starburst before the death of the sun. They’re longer. They’re touchy-feely ballads. And it was fun to really put some emotion into the one we did.” Here are the lyrics of the Lopez’ song for posterity’s sake: Episode 5 also takes some aesthetic inspiration from ‘80s sitcoms Growing Pains and Step by Step, but Family Ties is the real homage here.
On a Very Special Episode…
We need to take a moment to appreciate just how good WandaVision’s episode titles have been. There have been so many familiar TV-related phrases through nearly a century of broadcasting and WandaVision seems determined to shout out all of them. The name of this episode is particularly apt. Anyone who watched sitcoms in the ‘70s or ‘80s could tell you about the “very special episode” phenomenon. Every so often, a network’s voiceover would interrupt the beginning of a particular episode by saying “Tonight, on a very special episode of XXX…” Before content warnings became in vogue, this was usually a gentle nudge that this episode could cover some “real shit.” The “very special episode” warning could precede an installment covering everything from drug use to child abuse to Punky Brewster getting trapped in a refrigerator. The aforementioned Family Ties featured many, many “special episodes.” One Family Ties special episode, in particular, is quite noteworthy. The season 2 entry “Say Uncle” features none other than Tom Hanks as Uncle Ned. While spending some time with the Keaton family, Uncle Ned quickly makes it clear that he has a drinking problem (which includes him consuming vanilla extract). This culminates with Uncle Ned attacking Alex.
The Kramer Effect
One of my personal biggest disappointments in WandaVision’s earlier episodes is that the studio audience didn’t clap when Kathryn Hahn’s Agnes burst into a scene. For starters, it’s polite to cheer when one sees Kathrhyn Hahn in any context. But also, the uber popular “drop-in” neighbor is a recurring TV trope.
