The following contains some spoilers, a word which here means the revealing and discussing of certain plot points that could impact your viewing experience, for the A Series of Unfortunate Events Netflix series. It also contains some general overview spoilers for the book series the show is based on (which will be marked again when we get there).
If, like me, you were a kid who was incredibly sarcastic, an avid reader, and/or in love with the English language, you probably were a fan of A Series of Unfortunate Events, the 13-book series written by Daniel Handler under the pen name of Lemony Snicket. The books were aimed at kids, but the incredibly dry tone, dark and complex subject matter, sly wordplay and obscure references made for a unique literary experience that people of any age could enjoy. The tone and style of the books however makes adapting the series and all of it's nuances into non-literary forms quite the challenge, as the 2004 movie version starring Jim Carrey clearly shows. The movie was fine, but without the involvement of Handler (Who wrote the original script but was let go partway through the production.) it didn't come close to capturing what made the books so wonderful, especially since it was condensing multiple books into a 90-minute film.
Thankfully though, Netflix has turned out to be the perfect venue to bring the plight of the Baudelaire Orphans from page to screen, and Handler was very involved (Writing 5 of the 8 episodes) in helping Mark Hudis and Barry Sonnenfield (The original director of the movie version who was also fired during production) develop the show. The result is a show that feels just as whimsical and inventive as the books it was based on while expertly handling the dark text and heavy themes of the books in a way that feels very timely. It's also an adaption of the books that feels free to add, change, and expand on the source material, not settling for being a good adaption but striving to be a new and enhanced version of the story. It succeeds at that too for the most part. So let's break down the things that were fortunate and unfortunate (but mostly fortunate) about A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Fortunate: The Show Is Expertly Cast: A Series Of Unfortunate Events requires a collection of talented actors to bring justice to the larger-than-life characters and to make the breathtaking prose most of them spout sound believable and the show succeeds on both those counts. As the unlucky orphans at the center of the story, Malina Weissman's Violet and Louis Hyne's Klaus are likeable, sympathetic presences who believably come off as ordinary children with big vocabularies caught up in this sudden madness. They're a bit stilted in the early episodes but they grow more comfortable with the material as the season progresses and are more than capable of holding their own at the end. Presley Smith's Sunny is as good a baby actor as you could want and often steals the show with a well-timed look. K. Todd Freeman takes the ever bumbling, clueless Mr. Poe and makes him into a figure who you just can't hate, even though he's constantly screwing up when it comes to protecting the children in his charge. Joan Cusack, Aasif Mandvi, Alfre Woodard, Rhys Darby and more all shine as the various guardians and adults that the children meet along their journey, each putting their own spin on the material.
The standout performances though belong to Patrick Warburton and Neil Patrick Harris. As Lemony Snicket, Warburton is our reluctant guide through the story of the Baudelaire's, popping in and out throughout the show to explain things, lead us on tangents or just advise us to stop watching. Warburton's perfect for the role, keeping his naturally gruff voice but replacing it's normal joyful boisterousness with a world-weary sorrow. His Snicket is a broken man, burdened by the weight of the story he tells and the loss he's suffered and his presence adds to the atmosphere of the story immensely. Meanwhile Harris shines as Count Olaf in what is probably the most difficult role to play in the show. The tricky thing about Olaf is that he has to be a credible threat and a monster with zero redeeming qualities, but he also has to be vain, oafish and kind of goofy. It's a tricky line to walk (Jim Carrey's version was always a little too wacky for my tastes) and Harris nails it with aplomb. His Olaf is both awful and campy, scoring many of the show's best laughs with his disdainful delivery, even as you never question how frightening it'd be to have this man after you.
Fortunate: The World of the Show Is Realized Beautifully: The world A Series of Unfortunate Events takes place in can best be described as "Vaguely the mid-20th Century as imagined by Wes Anderson channeling his inner Tim Burton". It's a world of typewriters and trolleys, antique cars and landlines, secret codes and widely read newspapers. An occasional contemporary reference will sneak in every so often but there are no cellphones or computers in sight. It's a nostalgic, timeless fairy tale vision of a past long forgotten and the show brings it to life beautifully, making the world come alive even with a fairly gloomy, muted colour palette that follows the Baudelaire's everywhere they go. The locales that populate this world are just as inventive and Sonnenfield's influence is definitely felt. From Count Olaf's horrible abode that oozes filth and disrepair in every nook to Aunt Josephine's home perched halfway over a cliff to Mr. Poe's metallic banker's office to the many libraries the Baudelaire's encounter on their journey to the various secret passageways utilized by Lemony Snicket, everywhere we visit feels lived in and real. I can't remember the last time I kept stopping a show to take in the world around it.
Fortunate: The Show Nails Down The Tone And Feel Of The Books Perfectly: The tone of A Series of Unfortunate Events is incredibly cynical but darkly whimsical. The heavy themes and stories of innocent children in constant danger and peril would be hard to take if they were played totally straight but the books keep it's tongue firmly in cheek with a constant stream of sly dark humor, clever turns of phrase, ridiculous situations, and constant reminders that this is all terrible and we shouldn't be reading to keep things feeling fun, even with all the murder and cruelty. Translating that to screen is tricky because there's an extra layer of remove from the action in a book that you lose once you bring that action to life on screen making terrible things harder to swallow, but somehow the show manages to pull it off. From the always changing opening theme song warning you to look away (Doing the kind of content advisory the back of the books used to do) to the constant presence of Lemony Snicket gravely defining words and changing outfits to blend into his surrounding better to the love of language present in every scene (Something brought over from the books) and all the brilliant turns of phrases (There's just something so joyful about phrases like "official fire department" and "vigorously fixed destination"), the show manages to soften the horrible events with pure whimsy. And on the few times where the show drops the whimsy and dwells on the horribleness of an unexpected act of violence or the loss of another home, those moments hit all the harder.
Fortunate: The Show's Not Afraid To Stray From The Books: As most readers of the books will tell you, the early installments of ASOUE (The ones this season adapt) tend to be simpler and more repetitive than later installments. That's because the series wasn't approved for 13 installments until a few books in so the larger narrative arc of the books doesn't really start until book five (The Austere Academy). Now though, it's been a decade since the series wrapped up and the show is free to adapt the books in a way that better connects them to the overall narrative. This makes a season that could've been a bit of a snooze more purpose and gives both people who read the books and people who didn't a more cohesive viewing experience. It also allows for the show to do things that will delight and surprise book readers. From minor stuff like changing the context of things like the "Zombies in the Snow" film and The Anxious Clown to big stuff like a massive reworking of a lot of The Miserable Mill and an ongoing subplot involving mysterious characters played by Will Arnett and Cobie Smulders that had me scratching my head most of the season (We'll get to that in a couple sections), the show feels like a fresh version of a beloved story. The series also feels free to more often leave the perspective of the Baudelaire Orphans to show you some of the behind the scenes machinations and while this doesn't always work (The second episode devotes 5 minutes to a flashback that adds almost no new information and could've been done in half the time and the fourth has a chase scene that seems only there to give an Easter egg for book readers), when it does, it gives you the sense the Baudelaire's are players in something much bigger than they can imagine, adding a layer of resonance to their plight.
Unfortunate: The Show Can't Avoid The Repetitiveness of The Early Books: As much as the show deviates or plays with the structure of the first four books, for the most part it's hard for the show to break completely free of it's patterns (The exception being The Miserable Mill episodes which add in enough different elements to shake things up a bit). For the most part, even without reading the books you'll be able to guess when Count Olaf will show up, when he'll try to pull off his plan, when Lemony is going to walk in with an interjection of some kind, even when the Arnett/Smulders scenes or spy intrigue will pop up. The predictability isn't a major flaw or anything. It's baked into the structure of the books (even the later ones follow variations on the same basic plot) and into the structure of scripted television in general. It does put a bit of a damper on the plot momentum though.
Fortunate Yet Also Maybe Unfortunate: The Show Foregrounds The Mystery Early On But About That Mystery...: (This section contains vague general spoilers about where the mystery goes in the books, along with show spoilers so read at your own risk) As I mentioned above, the full narrative arc of the books isn't introduced until book five and the mystery doesn't kick into high gear until a couple books after that. Eventually the events of the earlier books are grandfathered in to be connected to the mystery. The show makes the choice to start laying down the groundwork for the mystery almost immediately, through the introduction of the mysterious spyglass (The spyglass motif is the one thing the show borrows from the movie version) and the introduction of Sara Canning's Jacqueline (Who might be a genderswapped version of Jacques, a key character in the books) and Luke Camilleri's Gustav (Who is never seen in the books). The show also works in a subplot about Mother (Cobie Smulders) and Father (Will Arnett), two characters heavily implied by context and editing to be the Baudelaire's parents as a mystery for the viewers (particularly book readers) to try to solve on their own. For the most part, the show utilizes the mystery well, using it to motivate the Baudelaire's throughout the series and give them more agency than they had in the early books where they passively went from one event to the next, but not making the mystery so prominent that it becomes more important than the Baudelaire's journey. It also throws plenty of bones to book readers who know where this is going by including some fun Easter eggs. Count Olaf offhandedly mentioning a missing sugar bowl? Excellent. The scene where Gustav is hit by a poison dart, says "The world is quiet here" and slips away into a reflecting pond? A treasure trove of book references. They're also nice because they don't lock out non-book readers at all, but rather give them something to discover once they have the full picture though.
The issue with putting more emphasis on the mystery though is that a major theme of A Series Of Unfortunate Events is that mysteries are kind of pointless and answers only lead to more questions that might never get solved. You get some answers over the course of the series and the Baudelaire's get more answers that we simply aren't privy to but a lot of things are left blatantly unsolved. That's part of the fun of the books, but it's also a point of contention for many fans who became invested in the mystery (It's like the kid's literature version of Lost). So fleshing out and developing the mystery is potentially going to be frustrating for many people down the road who are waiting for the answers the Baudelaire's are constantly promised. A lot of things are intentionally Red Herrings as well. The story of Mother and Father who turn out to be not the Baudelaire's parents but the parents of the Quagmire children is basically a take on a subplot from the later books involving the Snicket File, a document suggesting there was a survivor of the fire. As a fan of the book and how it subverts expectations, I was thrilled with how this subplot played out and how it sets up the formal introduction of the Quagmires for next season. However I know there are probably plenty of people who were frustrated with that development because of how the show basically goes out of it's way to trick you. So while the mystery can be a lot of fun, the show needs to be careful with how much they emphasize it as the seasons go on or at least how they manage viewer expectations. It's fine for now but it could make or break the show down the road.
If, like me, you were a kid who was incredibly sarcastic, an avid reader, and/or in love with the English language, you probably were a fan of A Series of Unfortunate Events, the 13-book series written by Daniel Handler under the pen name of Lemony Snicket. The books were aimed at kids, but the incredibly dry tone, dark and complex subject matter, sly wordplay and obscure references made for a unique literary experience that people of any age could enjoy. The tone and style of the books however makes adapting the series and all of it's nuances into non-literary forms quite the challenge, as the 2004 movie version starring Jim Carrey clearly shows. The movie was fine, but without the involvement of Handler (Who wrote the original script but was let go partway through the production.) it didn't come close to capturing what made the books so wonderful, especially since it was condensing multiple books into a 90-minute film.
Thankfully though, Netflix has turned out to be the perfect venue to bring the plight of the Baudelaire Orphans from page to screen, and Handler was very involved (Writing 5 of the 8 episodes) in helping Mark Hudis and Barry Sonnenfield (The original director of the movie version who was also fired during production) develop the show. The result is a show that feels just as whimsical and inventive as the books it was based on while expertly handling the dark text and heavy themes of the books in a way that feels very timely. It's also an adaption of the books that feels free to add, change, and expand on the source material, not settling for being a good adaption but striving to be a new and enhanced version of the story. It succeeds at that too for the most part. So let's break down the things that were fortunate and unfortunate (but mostly fortunate) about A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Fortunate: The Show Is Expertly Cast: A Series Of Unfortunate Events requires a collection of talented actors to bring justice to the larger-than-life characters and to make the breathtaking prose most of them spout sound believable and the show succeeds on both those counts. As the unlucky orphans at the center of the story, Malina Weissman's Violet and Louis Hyne's Klaus are likeable, sympathetic presences who believably come off as ordinary children with big vocabularies caught up in this sudden madness. They're a bit stilted in the early episodes but they grow more comfortable with the material as the season progresses and are more than capable of holding their own at the end. Presley Smith's Sunny is as good a baby actor as you could want and often steals the show with a well-timed look. K. Todd Freeman takes the ever bumbling, clueless Mr. Poe and makes him into a figure who you just can't hate, even though he's constantly screwing up when it comes to protecting the children in his charge. Joan Cusack, Aasif Mandvi, Alfre Woodard, Rhys Darby and more all shine as the various guardians and adults that the children meet along their journey, each putting their own spin on the material.
The standout performances though belong to Patrick Warburton and Neil Patrick Harris. As Lemony Snicket, Warburton is our reluctant guide through the story of the Baudelaire's, popping in and out throughout the show to explain things, lead us on tangents or just advise us to stop watching. Warburton's perfect for the role, keeping his naturally gruff voice but replacing it's normal joyful boisterousness with a world-weary sorrow. His Snicket is a broken man, burdened by the weight of the story he tells and the loss he's suffered and his presence adds to the atmosphere of the story immensely. Meanwhile Harris shines as Count Olaf in what is probably the most difficult role to play in the show. The tricky thing about Olaf is that he has to be a credible threat and a monster with zero redeeming qualities, but he also has to be vain, oafish and kind of goofy. It's a tricky line to walk (Jim Carrey's version was always a little too wacky for my tastes) and Harris nails it with aplomb. His Olaf is both awful and campy, scoring many of the show's best laughs with his disdainful delivery, even as you never question how frightening it'd be to have this man after you.
Fortunate: The World of the Show Is Realized Beautifully: The world A Series of Unfortunate Events takes place in can best be described as "Vaguely the mid-20th Century as imagined by Wes Anderson channeling his inner Tim Burton". It's a world of typewriters and trolleys, antique cars and landlines, secret codes and widely read newspapers. An occasional contemporary reference will sneak in every so often but there are no cellphones or computers in sight. It's a nostalgic, timeless fairy tale vision of a past long forgotten and the show brings it to life beautifully, making the world come alive even with a fairly gloomy, muted colour palette that follows the Baudelaire's everywhere they go. The locales that populate this world are just as inventive and Sonnenfield's influence is definitely felt. From Count Olaf's horrible abode that oozes filth and disrepair in every nook to Aunt Josephine's home perched halfway over a cliff to Mr. Poe's metallic banker's office to the many libraries the Baudelaire's encounter on their journey to the various secret passageways utilized by Lemony Snicket, everywhere we visit feels lived in and real. I can't remember the last time I kept stopping a show to take in the world around it.
Fortunate: The Show Nails Down The Tone And Feel Of The Books Perfectly: The tone of A Series of Unfortunate Events is incredibly cynical but darkly whimsical. The heavy themes and stories of innocent children in constant danger and peril would be hard to take if they were played totally straight but the books keep it's tongue firmly in cheek with a constant stream of sly dark humor, clever turns of phrase, ridiculous situations, and constant reminders that this is all terrible and we shouldn't be reading to keep things feeling fun, even with all the murder and cruelty. Translating that to screen is tricky because there's an extra layer of remove from the action in a book that you lose once you bring that action to life on screen making terrible things harder to swallow, but somehow the show manages to pull it off. From the always changing opening theme song warning you to look away (Doing the kind of content advisory the back of the books used to do) to the constant presence of Lemony Snicket gravely defining words and changing outfits to blend into his surrounding better to the love of language present in every scene (Something brought over from the books) and all the brilliant turns of phrases (There's just something so joyful about phrases like "official fire department" and "vigorously fixed destination"), the show manages to soften the horrible events with pure whimsy. And on the few times where the show drops the whimsy and dwells on the horribleness of an unexpected act of violence or the loss of another home, those moments hit all the harder.
Fortunate: The Show's Not Afraid To Stray From The Books: As most readers of the books will tell you, the early installments of ASOUE (The ones this season adapt) tend to be simpler and more repetitive than later installments. That's because the series wasn't approved for 13 installments until a few books in so the larger narrative arc of the books doesn't really start until book five (The Austere Academy). Now though, it's been a decade since the series wrapped up and the show is free to adapt the books in a way that better connects them to the overall narrative. This makes a season that could've been a bit of a snooze more purpose and gives both people who read the books and people who didn't a more cohesive viewing experience. It also allows for the show to do things that will delight and surprise book readers. From minor stuff like changing the context of things like the "Zombies in the Snow" film and The Anxious Clown to big stuff like a massive reworking of a lot of The Miserable Mill and an ongoing subplot involving mysterious characters played by Will Arnett and Cobie Smulders that had me scratching my head most of the season (We'll get to that in a couple sections), the show feels like a fresh version of a beloved story. The series also feels free to more often leave the perspective of the Baudelaire Orphans to show you some of the behind the scenes machinations and while this doesn't always work (The second episode devotes 5 minutes to a flashback that adds almost no new information and could've been done in half the time and the fourth has a chase scene that seems only there to give an Easter egg for book readers), when it does, it gives you the sense the Baudelaire's are players in something much bigger than they can imagine, adding a layer of resonance to their plight.
Unfortunate: The Show Can't Avoid The Repetitiveness of The Early Books: As much as the show deviates or plays with the structure of the first four books, for the most part it's hard for the show to break completely free of it's patterns (The exception being The Miserable Mill episodes which add in enough different elements to shake things up a bit). For the most part, even without reading the books you'll be able to guess when Count Olaf will show up, when he'll try to pull off his plan, when Lemony is going to walk in with an interjection of some kind, even when the Arnett/Smulders scenes or spy intrigue will pop up. The predictability isn't a major flaw or anything. It's baked into the structure of the books (even the later ones follow variations on the same basic plot) and into the structure of scripted television in general. It does put a bit of a damper on the plot momentum though.
Fortunate Yet Also Maybe Unfortunate: The Show Foregrounds The Mystery Early On But About That Mystery...: (This section contains vague general spoilers about where the mystery goes in the books, along with show spoilers so read at your own risk) As I mentioned above, the full narrative arc of the books isn't introduced until book five and the mystery doesn't kick into high gear until a couple books after that. Eventually the events of the earlier books are grandfathered in to be connected to the mystery. The show makes the choice to start laying down the groundwork for the mystery almost immediately, through the introduction of the mysterious spyglass (The spyglass motif is the one thing the show borrows from the movie version) and the introduction of Sara Canning's Jacqueline (Who might be a genderswapped version of Jacques, a key character in the books) and Luke Camilleri's Gustav (Who is never seen in the books). The show also works in a subplot about Mother (Cobie Smulders) and Father (Will Arnett), two characters heavily implied by context and editing to be the Baudelaire's parents as a mystery for the viewers (particularly book readers) to try to solve on their own. For the most part, the show utilizes the mystery well, using it to motivate the Baudelaire's throughout the series and give them more agency than they had in the early books where they passively went from one event to the next, but not making the mystery so prominent that it becomes more important than the Baudelaire's journey. It also throws plenty of bones to book readers who know where this is going by including some fun Easter eggs. Count Olaf offhandedly mentioning a missing sugar bowl? Excellent. The scene where Gustav is hit by a poison dart, says "The world is quiet here" and slips away into a reflecting pond? A treasure trove of book references. They're also nice because they don't lock out non-book readers at all, but rather give them something to discover once they have the full picture though.
The issue with putting more emphasis on the mystery though is that a major theme of A Series Of Unfortunate Events is that mysteries are kind of pointless and answers only lead to more questions that might never get solved. You get some answers over the course of the series and the Baudelaire's get more answers that we simply aren't privy to but a lot of things are left blatantly unsolved. That's part of the fun of the books, but it's also a point of contention for many fans who became invested in the mystery (It's like the kid's literature version of Lost). So fleshing out and developing the mystery is potentially going to be frustrating for many people down the road who are waiting for the answers the Baudelaire's are constantly promised. A lot of things are intentionally Red Herrings as well. The story of Mother and Father who turn out to be not the Baudelaire's parents but the parents of the Quagmire children is basically a take on a subplot from the later books involving the Snicket File, a document suggesting there was a survivor of the fire. As a fan of the book and how it subverts expectations, I was thrilled with how this subplot played out and how it sets up the formal introduction of the Quagmires for next season. However I know there are probably plenty of people who were frustrated with that development because of how the show basically goes out of it's way to trick you. So while the mystery can be a lot of fun, the show needs to be careful with how much they emphasize it as the seasons go on or at least how they manage viewer expectations. It's fine for now but it could make or break the show down the road.
Unfortunate Yet Also Fortunate: The Show Feels Suddenly Timely And Just Might Be What We Need Right Now: At it's core, beneath the layers of irony and the wordplay and the many references, A Series Of Unfortunate Events is about how to respond to evil and how to find a way to keep going in the face of unspeakable tragedy and unrelenting horror. It seems every person the Baudelaire's come across have a different way of dealing with the injustices of the world and none of them are perfect. Mr. Poe seems content to ignore or underplay the dangers and horror around him until it reveals itself right in front of him. His wife sensationalizes and monetizes it daily in her newspaper, not really caring about it. Uncle Monty stands on guard but fails to recognize who his enemy actually is until it's too late. Aunt Josephine hides in terror from anything that could hurt her, refusing to truly live. Charles quietly protests but always complies with his partner's tyranny. Phil is the ultimate optimist and refuses to waver from his sunny worldview. Jacquelyn, Gustav and their associates fight the good fight, but their methods are overly complicated, overly secretive and often ineffectual in preventing things from getting worse. Even our narrator struggles with responding to injustice. Lemony Snicket dutifully chronicles the story of the Baudelaire's, consuming the tragedy until it overwhelms him but unable to let go of the past.
This all resonates more strongly in January 2017 than it would have in most other years. 2016 was an unrelenting series of gut punches that are just now sinking in and taking effect. Death felt more rampant, basic social norms and human decency were overturned, fear won out over hope and unity at almost every turn and the institutions and people who were supposed to stop things from getting worse failed on every level. Many people seemed incapable or unwilling of noticing the looming danger around the corner. Plenty of clever and knowledgeable people made plenty of clever and knowledgeable arguments that failed to change minds or stop things from taking hold. Now there's a lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen and every day it feels like there's some new horror to react to or deal with. We like to think that everything will ultimately work out more or less and things will start to get better. A Series of Unfortunate Events argues that "that's not how the story goes". Evil can be thwarted and outran for a time but it'll always find it's way back and there might actually not be a way to stop it.
That doesn't mean you stop trying though. Buried deep within the incredibly bleak and cynical worldview that surrounds the story of Baudelaire orphans is something resembling hope, or at the very least, resilience. The Baudelaire's have lost everything and find themselves in a world that's cruel and dangerous, surrounded by secrets they have no idea how to unravel. Their talents and penchant for problem solving thwart the schemes of Count Olaf but he always gets away to scheme another day. Adults frequently condescend to them because they're children and any adult they try to put their trust in either disappears, gets killed or is ineffectual in helping them. As they move from one unfortunate event to the next trying to figure out what happened to them, they become increasingly disillusioned until they decide they can only count on each other. Despite all the adversity though and Snicket's insistence that this is a story of nothing but misery and woe, they aren't overcome by all that's happened to them. They survive and they go on and they don't stop fighting even when they want to. By relying on each other, they find strength in each other and that's ultimately enough to get them through to the next fight. It's not much but it's better than nothing and watching them face the evil of the world together can get downright inspiring. The sinister forces of the world may amass against them time and time again but through all the horror and the tragedy, they can't stamp out the children's light or their innate goodness and if the Baudelaire's can get through everything that comes their way so can we as long as we keep at it. There's not a perfect way to deal with tragedy and there's not a perfect way to deal with injustice, but there is a way forward and as long as we don't give up even when it seems hopeless and we keep pushing and searching for that way forward, we just might be able to find a brief respite from the storm. Even if it's just for a moment.
A Series Of Unfortunate Events is now streaming on Netflix. Definitely watch it!
A Series Of Unfortunate Events is now streaming on Netflix. Definitely watch it!
