We’ll get the not-so-good stuff out of the way first. In this episode of Wednesday, we unravel the dual mysteries of the sirens’ MorningSong cult and the behavior of Principal Dort. Turns out it’s all one mystery: He’s the secret mastermind behind the cult, using Bianca’s mom’s siren powers as a recruitment tool and a hunky ex-actor named Arnold (played by Starship Troopers’ Casper Van Dien) as its public face. The reason Dort has been so eager to raise money for Nevermore from ultra-rich donors like Morticia’s mom Hester is because he plans to steal it all. 

So yeah, it’s pretty much that simple, and it gets both explained and wrapped up entirely in the course of this episode. It feels nearly as abrupt as the way certain characters were jettisoned at the beginning of the season. But burning a man alive, turning another to stone and then shattering him with a dropped chandelier, and showing us Steve Buscemi in a mullet? That all goes a long way toward making even this weaker storyline pretty damn watchable anyway.

But for, what, the fourth episode in a row now? This installment of Wednesday contains some of the shows must fun and most accomplished material to date. Part of it is having Tim Burton back on board as director. Maybe the well-received Beetlejuice Beetlejuice gave him his mojo back, I dunno, but he seems his old self behind the camera again. No one makes lurid purples and neon greens work quite like he does — Nicholson’s Joker, anyone? — and he really seems to enjoy doing the more horrific stuff, like torching Casper Van Dien to ash.

I think what impressed me most, though, is the way he lit Joy Sunday in her sea-blue gala gown, when she finally gets the better of Principal Dort and exposes the whole scheme by siren-songing him into coming clean. (With a little help from invisible Agnes, who stole his anti-siren amulet.) She looks resplendent, lit from within, as though she’s guest-starring on Wednesday during a break from reigning as Queen of Lothlórien. 

Which leads to another important point: Everyone in this episode looks absolutely incredible. Bianca in Blue, Enid in pink, Agnes in green (!!! more on that in a moment), Wednesday and her mom and Grandmama in black of course — everyone’s dressed to the nines in a way that suits them. Not for nothing, but it also hews closer to the much more adventurous looks and styling these actors go with out on the promotional trail, too. Many times I’ve seen Jenna Ortega on the red carpet or in a magazine and thought “Man, I wish Wednesday looked that interesting.” In this episode, it kinda does.

In addition to the fiery demise of the cult’s frontman and the crushing death of its true leader, there are at least three other major set pieces worth shouting out for sheer awesomeness. The first comes when Wednesday duels the truth out of Bianca in the fencing room, in a contest that’s fierce with Wednesday’s anger and Bianca’s fear of the truth. It makes you wish these two had spent more time interacting this season, the way their rivalry gave them an excuse to do in the past — Wednesday even comments that she’s barely seen Bianca around this year. Us too, writers!

The second is less a much less physical scene. In her most misguided effort yet to win Wednesday’s approval, Agnes raids her wardrobe, dons a black wig, and goes full-on Wednesday cosplay. (Wednesplay?) Wednesday is disgusted and lashes out, crushing Agnes, whose obsession with Wednesday is all consuming.

Or is it? Accidentally encountering a crying Enid — who’s just been the better woman and given her blessing to her boyfriend Noah returning to his girlfriend from back home — Agnes sobs that she thought that by becoming just like Wednesday, she’d be the best friend the girl always wanted. Enid puzzles the kid out: the reason she feels invisible all the time is because she subsumes herself in other people. “Be your own psycho, Agnes,” she advises with a smile. 

The two laugh and tease each other with an easy comfort that you genuinely feel could have been there all along if Agnes had approached Wednesday differently. It’s also here that you realize what a talent Emma Myers is, and how good she is as Enid: You 100% believe she’d forgive and become pals with someone who tried to murder her earlier in the year, because she’s that convincing as a person who finds the good in everyone because she knows where to find it in herself. Myers could probably make a friendship with the Sarlacc from The Return of the Jedi feel believable. 

Evie Templeton is a real find as well, as we see in the scene that follows. Enid performs the dance (to Lady Gaga, naturally) that she’s been rehearsing all season long, and she kills it like Napoleon Dynamite if he were an actual trained dancer. Right in the middle of the routine, Evie pops in wearing a bright green ballgown, her hair out of pigtails. She’s her own person, and as she dances with Enid — turns out she’s been spying on Enid dancing all year, so maybe that whole “she’s her own person” thing was premature — she looks very much like she’s having the time of her life.

Both of them do! Myers gets to shine here as much as Ortega did in the first season’s big dance number, albeit in a less, er, idiosyncratic way. Still, she gets to twirl around with her legs wrapped around an invisible partner, as though levitating in the air. That’s pretty badass. Throw in the fact that it’s all a diversion so Agnes can invisibly sneak off stage and pickpocket Principal Dort, and it’s one of the most purely happy things I’ve seen on TV all year.

This is Wednesday, though, so it’s not all good news. For one thing, the site of cops occupying Nevermore’s campus is an eerie echo of the way law enforcement personnel have been used for this very purpose, while the siren-songed Hester’s drastic cuts to the faculty and reintroduction of barbarities like corporal punishment are effectively Trump Administration education policy, to the extent that a policy exists at all beyond “no more education.” More in character for the show, there’s also the kidnapping of Pugsley by his ex-friend, the resurrected zombie scientist Isaac Night that serves as a cliffhanger.

There’s one more moment I want to call out before we go. Enid locks herself within the confines of the lupine cages to prevent her from wolfing out, since a full moon is coming up, and if a young alpha transforms at that stage of the lunar cycle, they’re stuck that way permanently. Inside her cell, Enid tells Wednesday something Professor Capri said to her about her pack being her strength. “You’re my pack, Wednesday,” she insists.

And even though both characters are essentially living cartoon characters — very literally, in Wednesday’s case — that bond between them feels legit. It’s not so much that opposites attract, it’s that each of these people has gotten so used to looking at their opposite number and thinking “I know exactly what she needs” that they now consider each other in this way as a matter of habit. You can’t not make Wednesday care about Enid, not for long, nor vice versa. They’re too determined to stay in each other’s business. That’s a very believable basis for a comedy friendship, and this is one of the best comedy friendships on TV.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.