You don't need to watch 'Wednesday' to see that Ortega is a superstar

Can you like a TV show based solely on the memes?

That's the situation I find myself in with "Wednesday," Netflix's wildly popular riff on "The Addams Family." I watched the first episode with a smartphone glued to my hand, I must admit, and it was ... fine?

I have not been motivated to watch more, even though I like everyone involved. "Scream" star Jenna Ortega is perfect in the title role, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman are inspired choices for Morticia and Gomez, Gwendoline Christie is luminous as Wednesday's principal, Tim Burton is a natural choice as director, and co-creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have a track record that includes "Smallville" and the underappreciated Jackie Chan flick "Shanghai Knights." The show is entertaining and well-made, and one episode was enough for me.

But I sure like watching the Instagram reels and GIFs featuring Ortega's virtuoso performance on the dance floor, a creepy and kooky routine she choreographed herself with callbacks to Bob Fosse, Siouxsie Sioux and original Wednesday Addams actress Lisa Loring. I don't need to actually watch the fourth episode in which the school dance scene appears to know a superstar breakout moment when I see it.

Deadline reported this week that, after less than a month in existence, "Wednesday" is already threatening "Stranger Things 4" for the title of Netflix's most-watched English-language series. I don't think the Halloween Industrial Complex is ready for how many Wednesday costumes it will need to manufacture in the next 10 months, and Paramount Pictures must be salivating over the March box office prospects for "Scream VI," assuming that Ortega becomes the center of the marketing push.

While the "Wednesday" memes aren't convincing me to watch more, I can think of one high-profile show that almost certainly benefited from ubiquitous GIFs on social media: "Schitt's Creek."

Catherine O'Hara and Dan Levy were already stars of my Twitter feed long before I watched a single episode of the beloved show, which became a Netflix staple for many of us during the darkest days of the pandemic. The show's own social media team clearly put in the work: All those GIFs you see on Twitter bear the PopTV logo and a distinct font scheme. They memed nearly every great moment from the series - and man, it sure had lots of great moments.

Hopefully this doesn't become Hollywood's main promotional avenue; can you imagine a Hollywood exec telling Steven Spielberg that "The Fabelmans" flopped because they couldn't make viral TikToks out of it?

• Sean Stangland is an assistant news editor who can't wait to watch "Glass Onion" on Netflix this weekend.