'WandaVision' review: Marvel universe meets 1960s sitcoms

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Because every fan has already seen the (2019) movie, it's no spoiler to say that the Avengers won by the end of "Avengers: Endgame." Thanos was vanquished but Stark died and Captain America got old — very old. By entering a pocket dimension, he had lived out a full life, happily. But what about everyone else? "WandaVision'' picks up the story of two minor characters — Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany). Superheroes with special powers, Vision always had a soft spot for Wanda, so together, they have entered their own pocket dimension, or pocket universe. They have entered the American Sitcom circa 1960, and together are living as TV husband and wife in their very own sitcom, complete with laugh track and sitcom tropes. That is weird enough — indeed — but it gets weirder: Their sitcom is evolving, while something from another dimension wants in. What? Who?

In the opener, Wanda and Vision are settling into their sitcom life, and meeting the neighbors, including Agnes (Kathryn Hahn). Meanwhile, Vision's difficult boss, Mr. Hart (Fred Melamed), invites himself and his wife (Debra Jo Rupp) over to dinner. There's a mix-up and sitcom hilarity ensues.

The first two of nine episodes drop Friday.

MY SAY Sitcoms were once the most edible form of television. We consumed them like bags of popcorn, one after the other. We didn't stop to think about what we were eating because they didn't stop to think about what they were feeding us. They filled our lives with fake music, fake laughter, fake situations and (most important) commercials, lots of those. These defined our world so completely that the simple act of looking out the window at our neighbor's neat bungalow with two cars in the driveway reinforced our world view. After all, we saw it on the TV!

And so the comforting illusion went. Until sitcoms evolved. We learned that the world on-screen wasn't really there at all. The joke, in fact, was on us and on the traditional sitcom itself. One by one, show by show — "All in the Family," "Married … with Children," "The Simpsons," "Seinfeld" — they inverted "The Donna Reed Show," and its ilk, turning the sitcom into a laughing stock. Father didn't know best. Maybe we shouldn't have left it to Beaver. Our dream of Jeannie was shattered.

And if all or most of these shows were about nothing, then was our life about nothing too?

That existential crisis — which, hopefully, most of us grew out of by the age of 12 — is Wanda and Vision's existential crisis. They think they've entered something timeless, innocent, uncomplicated until they learn that it's not that at all. As they get caught up in this TV evolution, or devolution, the weirdness grows, and the tropes change — from a "Dick Van Dyke Show"-like world, to a "Bewitched"-like world, to a "Brady Bunch"-like world. They're just along for the ride, trying to adapt with it. But what is "it?"

That "it" and their bewilderment is the pleasure of "WandaVision," while the relief — and believe me, it's palpable — is that you don't need to know all that much about "The Avengers" either. By taking relatively minor characters without intricate back stories — at least on-screen ones — "WandaVision" is free to build out their stories. "The Mandalorian" did much the same, and just as effectively.

Meanwhile, Wanda and Vision's sitcom milieu is familiar indeed. "WandaVision'' has a lot to say about it but, for the most part, says it with love.

BOTTOM LINE Homage in the best sense.