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svankmajerbaby · 7 years

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A Personal Review of Netflix’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events

Just as a disclaimer, these are my personal opinions on the show. I know that a lot of people loved it, and that a lot of people did not like it at all.

I’ve here listed what I’ve considered were the good aspects, the bad aspects, and the things I felt confused to see. As to the confusing aspects particularly, if someone has an answer for me -or even a theory- I’d love to read it.

The asoue fandom has evidently waited a very long time; and even though I completely understand the exhilarating feeling of joy we all felt last Friday, I think hype and enthusiasm can also give place to analysis and, while not as pleasant a thing, personal opinions, which are certainly not the same as facts.

THE GOOD

The Baudelaire siblings are my children and they must be protected at all costs.

Louis Hynes and Malina Weissman have good chemistry as siblings and seeing them act together and discuss plans and talk about their interests is a pure delight. Both of them are flawlessly cast. Presley Smith, as it’s expected from a baby, gets distracted very often and it’s somewhat distracting to see her looking around and making faces inappropriate for the situation taking place, but I really liked her nonetheless. Her little smile at Uncle Monty was adorable. Her saying bye at Judge Strauss broke my heart.

Violet’s self confidence. Will it work? “It will now.”

Klaus’ enthusiastic definitions of complex vocabulary.

The short dedications to Beatrice are so beautiful and well done. I love the background music, with the soft humming, and the sound of the typewriter keys.

Patrick Warburton plays a wonderful Lemony Snicket. Almost all of his scenes on screen are great. His deadpan delivery is great, his voice is great, his reactions are great. The little moments he narrates in his room are quite interesting, too. As much as I like watching him slip right into a scene in the Baudelaire’s story, I was very much looking forward to see him in his own timeline, on the run. His sigh before the Baudelaires learn the sad truth is perfectly gentle and bitter.

Neil Patrick Harris is a very convincing Count Olaf. I wholeheartedly loathed him. I like how his interpretation of the character is that of a bratty man-child used to having everything his way, and who is so overdramatic and vain he literally does not seem to care about anything but himself. His makeup was fantastically made and applied. Also, he put a nice physicality to the role, in the way he moved like he was slightly drunk, slightly hungry and like he owned the place at all times. His delivery was also quite spot-on -his Olaf voice is menacing and his other disguised voices are ridiculous but still quite distinct, which was good.

I began hating this Count Olaf so much, so early, when he first held Sunny up high.

Olaf! slapping! Klaus!!!!! Very effective on me. Also, during the second episode, Klaus still had the bruise on his cheek. Good. It kept my anger alive.

When the Bald Man made that remark of Violet being pretty I was immediately thinking, “Oh boy. They kept this.” They also kept the very, very, very unsettling remarks Olaf gives about Violet’s appearance and almost touches her hair once and then he said “I can touch what I want” and I seriously wished he was struck by lightning or that Sunny suddenly bit his ankle or something generally painful happened to him. It’s awful, it’s in character, and as much as I despise it I’m kind of glad they kept it there and didn’t hold back any punches.

Little Moment N° 1: Very near the beginning, when Klaus and Violet discuss the Proust quote: “Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind”. That scene was great. I really like both their pleasant confusion and how it a) displayed their intelligence, b) displayed their innocence, c) displayed their inability to understand grief at that particular moment.

The set design is no Rick Heinrichs, but it’s really good. I especially like the design of all the libraries (even if they were a bit samey), the Murnau cinema hall, the secret passageways, the Reptile Room, the Lucky Smells Lumbermill office and Dr Orwell’s office. The outside of the buildings, I’m not that much of a fan. Still pretty good. What little was seen of Prufrock Preparatory, it looked great.

The secret passageways. I loved these.

It was confusing, but there was something curiously beautiful about the untimely death of Gustav. His saying “the world is quiet here” is definitely a strange choice of last words, but maybe this is a thing in VFD. It served nicely to prove how being a volunteer is definitely a perilous career path.

K. Todd Freeman gave his all to his performance, and it shows. Sometimes he veered into almost too much of a useless, clueless stand-in for neglectful authority figures, but most of the time he was perfect for the role. I know how hard is to fake a convincing cough, so kudos to him also for his very believable sore throat. He is also amazingly good at talking really fast with really long sentences which is difficult to do and sound slightly spontaneous, so yep. A greatly done Mr Poe.

I know Eleanora Poe is an awful person, but I’m kind of happy to see how Mr Poe is so supportive of her, and they seem to love each other very much. I’m always down for that.

Jacquelyn won me over by sheer determination and commitment. Hope to see more of her, even though she proved to be just as deaf to the children’s questions and despair as countless other people.

Little moment N° 2: When Klaus turns the stove on, in the first episode, he stays there, looking at the fire, with wide eyes. He stays there, looking at it, while Violet puts the pan on the stove; and then she puts her hand on his shoulder and pulls him gently to the table. It’s a very small thing (Snicket is talking over it, and it ends in a matter of seconds), but Klaus’ distress and fixation on that stove fire felt strangely deliberate and very, very sad.

Sunny biting something with her face off camera -when she flattens the skipping rock, when she chops the parsley- the effect is so cute and funny? I wish that was more used.

“A home cooked meal is better than nothing. A roof over one’s head is better than nothing. (...) But being raised in a violent and sinister environment by a man more interested in one’s fortune than comfort and well-being is not better than nothing.“ Yes.

I love Joan Cusack’s performance. Strauss was such an insecure woman, and despite being so gullible and not listening to them when they tried to warn her, she loved the Baudelaires so much and wanted to keep them and help them, and was so kind... She provided a great emotional core to the second episode. I hope Cusack returns in case they film book eleven.

Aasif Mandvi made a wonderful Uncle Monty. He managed the perfect line between eccentric snake fan and caring, loving guardian. My only complaint about his performance was that he had not enough screentime.

Zombies In the Snow, good God. The fake cow. I loved it so much.

Larry, yes. Yes, thanks.

Klaus saying that plenty of boys enjoy playing with dolls... my nerd son.

Violet’s fear for his brother’s safety in the Miserable Mill, and her insistence to clear their parents’ names while being in Paltryville. She can’t afford to think their parents could have possibly been morally dubious. In the end, the parents were still the unquestionable heroes the children wanted them to be, but I like to think this was a bit of foreshadowing of the secrets revealed in the end.

The super extra 200 page letter Beatrice sent Snicket (if one freeze-frames it one can read that it describes how she sent it through carrier pigeons and which also details how they became engaged. I love that the prop makers took the time to write that down).

Cobie Smulders is the best secret spy, ass-kicking mother since Carla Gugino. A+ casting choice.

THE BAD

More of a general thing, but the style of the show felt all over the place.

Sunny is barely in the show. She acts as the distressed victim of Olaf’s plans twice (in the cage and in the luggage) which is one scene too many, especially considering the sensible and understandable erasure of her epic duel with Orwell. Her sole victorious moment was when she bit Captain Sham’s leg. She rarely participated in the other two siblings’ discussions. She was often sat aside, in a chair out of sight, while her siblings talked. Their siblings actively left her alone! She often feels like an extra weight, which is the worst thing a baby can be in a piece of entertainment.

The ugly Sunny speech subtitles. Why that font... why that color.

Some scenes with Olaf were unnecessary -his twirling with the dress, the interview with Mrs Poe, his talking to the troupe while spying on the children at Strauss’ house. I was made very much aware of how much Neil Patrick Harris participated in the creative process.

When the show’s style was being creative it most often succeeded. I hoped they kept it up, but most of it was only about Snicket. I wish they kept using title cards, like they did before Aunt Josephine and Captain Sham’s flashback, and iris shots, like the one used with Violet. If they had continuously using a stylistic choice, these few examples wouldn’t stick out so much. They could also have played around with the ratios, just to give an example, or kept all flashbacks in black and white. It would have been a nice way to incorporate the old-feel style to the show.

I enjoyed their performances, all in all, but the troupe constantly felt like comic relief. They were very seldomly menacing (mostly the Bald Man, who I am genuinely a bit scared of) or useful.

Not enough Reptile Room creatures. I need to see the Church Frog. And the Incredibly Deadly Viper could have been so much better. And it could have had more screentime with Sunny. I find it hard to believe that they became friends so fast.

I really hoped they wouldn’t put the Shirley disguise... Olaf could have perfectly had been a secretary without dressing up as a woman.

70% of the time I felt the costume design was lacking. Not so much that it was bad, but that it was boring and didn’t say anything at all about the character that was wearing it. There was nothing particular about how any of the characters were dressed. I like that each Baudelaire seems to have a certain color palette, but even then it’s not very well determined. Aunt Josephine’s clothes in particular were drab.

The background music can be a bit overbearing. There’s many times when I felt silence would have been better, or maybe something with less choir... And as much as I love the accordion soundtrack -because it is great, and it is fitting- it would have been better with a bit less of it. It made scenes feel “extra quirky”, if that makes sense, and while sometimes it worked, there were moments in which it was overdone.

I really did not care to see the Marvelous Marriage. It wasn’t funny enough to warrant being shown.

The CGI effects were so bad! I understand that they had to use recent pics of the adults to make sure they were easily recognizable, and that Sunny does a great deal of very unusual things that a real life baby can’t possibly do, so one can’t complain too much; but still, some things -like her whistling, or her hanging from the doorknob, or her poker playing, were both unnecessary and a bit unsettling. Also, Violet’s rock retrieving device at the beginning... Surely there had to be a practical way around that. Generally, if they felt the need to add something, one would wish they wouldn’t make an effort to make that addition hard to do without CGI.

The photoshopped picture of the VFD members. It was just bad.

Klaus may have had a bit too many speaking lines compared to Violet... just saying.

Weird continuity goofs... They’re details, but there were so many of them. Most of them around Sunny, which again, understandable, but still, there should have been a way around it.

Let! Klaus! also carry Sunny! Almost all the time, Violet does it!!

So Dr Orwell was Olaf’s girlfriend. I hope they find fresh ways to repeat that trope, because there’s two more characters that exactly follow this concept, and with the already repetitive nature of the Baudelaire’s misadventures this could become quite boring.

Sometimes the adults were so ignorant and blatantly oblivious to what was going on (especially with Mr Poe actively saying what a bad idea it was to act the way he did, like leaving the children with untrustworthy people or abandoning them in the empty dock) that it was not frustrating, it was cumbersome.

Aunt Josephine’s statue. What was up with that? Why couldn’t she just throw a chair through the window?

As effective -and boy was it effective- of a red herring it was, the Mother and Father B-plot felt unnecessary in the end. It could have been cut, and despite suffering from the lack of a Cool Spy Mom and a Tired Spy Dad, the story would have flowed better. Heck, it would have been better with more Jacquelyn.

Statue woman in the middle of the maze? What the heck? What was the purpose of that? Why did she need to talk to the Baudelaires? Why was she the only one who reached out to them? It didn’t contribute anything at all.

Have another actor to be Ike... Sonnenfeld is already visibly seen in the background of Strauss’ library as her father. It was so weird.

Why couldn’t Klaus start the fire with his glasses when he needed to, in the boat during the leeches attack? Mother’s binoculars starting the fire saved the children out of pure luck.

Similarly, the Reptile Room reptiles decided a very particular moment to attack Olaf and his troupe, which also made the ending of the episode seem like a matter of pure luck.

If luck saves the children in the end, then less emphasis is put on their individual talents and resourcefulness. Having them save themselves would have often been the cheaper production decision and the smartest narrative decision.

The Wide Window episodes had sometimes an overreliance on CGI, and it turned it into a bit of a pain to sit through. The house collapsing looked bad. Sunny dangling from the doorknob was bad, Klaus jumping around was bad...

The musical numbers. None of them were truly terrible, by themselves, but they felt out of place and unneeded. The first cringy one was mercifully short and at least served the purpose to show how much of a self-aggrandizing lousy actor Olaf is. The little song with the spoons he sings in the taxi as Captain Sham feels stretched out and annoying. And the last song, “That’s Not How The Story Goes”, which everyone (why Poe? Why Olaf?) sings... It was the most bizarre thing in an already very, very bizarre show. From Snicket in his school uniform, sitting on a cliff, to Sunny’s weirdly CGIed contorted face whistling (including Mr Poe cheerfully singing it, which almost made me think he was truly looking forward to the Baudelaires being even more miserable), it’s a really good song -the best of the musical numbers- but it was a wrong way to finish the first season.

Finally, I know that Neil Patrick Harris is the Star Power, but why must he sing the title song? Why couldn’t it be an instrumental? And as much as I like the way they managed to change each title sequence for each book, it would have been better to have more interesting visuals during the titles. It felt like a missed opportunity.

THE CONFUSING

The grandfather clock toaster? Couldn’t Violet’s talents be shown with a more interesting, useful invention?

What was up with the weird James Brown references? “I’m super bad”, what? A non-sequitur/inside joke between the siblings?

At Justice Strauss’ library, Klaus showed her that he had a small notebook with him, and said he had it with him at all times. He never actually used it. Why show it if you’re not going to use it?

Why are most of the henchpeople unusually and occasionally nice? Why do they act shocked and worried when Olaf kills and hurts (most clearly with the killing of Josephine and when he held Sunny up high)?

Strauss was last seen reading a book on secret organizations. Why does she have that book? Will she become a member? Is her family linked to VFD? How can that book be a thing, if the organization is supposed to be secret? Is VFD something that is well known? Is that book’s author a VFD member, or a Geraldine Julienne/Rita Skeeter kind of badly-informed and dimwitted investigator? Are there other organizations besides VFD that one should be concerned about? Is that book a standard secret VFD reading, or is it sold in average bookstores and available in city libraries? Just how available to the public is that book?

It was suggested Strauss is Jewish (what with greeting Poe and the children with “Shalom” and mentioning how cooking could be a mitzvah), and Olaf too (mostly for the klezmer-style wedding music and his little dance, but I’d find it rather out-of-character for him to be a religious man at all) and Dr Orwell too, though much less clear, for mentioning Olaf ruined a bat mitzvah. But the big question is, are the Baudelaires Jewish?

Who was that elder lady at the cinema and why was the camera so interested in her uninteresting life

Is the Bald Man as unquestionably terrible as he was in the books? “We should use the baby as bait” kind of confirmed it, but the question is more about the future role of the character, considering what happens is following books.

Where did Olaf get that very specific snake-bite-faking device? Is that a standard VFD contraption?

What in the world is Beatrice’s name doing engraved in the remains of Aunt Josephine’s house?

What was up with Snicket buying an orange vest?

Are Sir and Charles actually members of VFD?

Why did Orwell have literal skeletons in her closet? Did she kill people, took away their clothes and hair and skin and muscle and cleaned them and stored them in her closet?

In the little awfully photoshopped picture at the end of the last episode, at Prufrock Prep, Snicket and Olaf seem to be friends; even though Snicket said at the beginning of the first episode that Olaf’s “dreadful villainy haunted [Snicket since he] first met him as a young man.” Was it a goof by the showrunners, or a proof of the unreliable narrator Snicket can be?

Are the Baudelaire parents really the ones shown in other awfully photoshopped picture of the volunteers at Paltryville? Klaus recognized them, so there’s almost no way they’re not the Baudelaires. Are these actors the confirmed ones for the parents?

Aren’t the Quagmire parents wary of telling their children about their past in VFD? Weren’t they afraid of the known fate of some members of the organization? Do they believe VFD is doing good?

Were the Baudelaire parents active volunteers till the moment of their demise? Did they balance a double life, with the VFD missions and their homelife?

Does Snicket still trust VFD? Does he support the organization that gave him nothing but pain and misery?

Will the series portray VFD as noble? What happened with the aggressive training, the indoctrination, the kidnapping, the indoctrination?

Are the Baudelaire parents morally dubious? Will the show have the guts to put that on screen?

“Call me Ishmael”???????? What the fuck??

Here’s hoping the second season rights the wrongs, emphasises on the good, and answers some questions and creates new ones -hopefully all the right ones.

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #my review

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