A series of unfortunate events: season 2 –a review

Oh what terrible things will become the poor unfortunate Baudelaire-orphans? What wickedness does the dreadful count Olaf have in store for them? As the second season (of three) shows us: more of the hilariously insane, dreadfully absurd and morbidly fascinating- I loathe this show in every positive way!

The writer is the writer

It was clear from the start that this series would have an end-date. The real Lemony Snicket was/is writing the screenplays. And when the real Lemony Snickets says it’s: the end, it is THE END.

This, I believe is a very positive thing. I don’t want my stories to linger on. I want a start, a journey and an end.  Maybe a small epilogue or two but the minute the finish line has been crossed the story is over. After all, what would’ve become of the story of Romeo en Julia if the story kept on going after their needless deaths?

Lemony Snicket knows this full well. He lets the children get close to the solution (answer) to all their worries and the minute they can almost grasp it then, like a prankster pulling the string on a wallet, he takes it away and lets the story continue for another book or so.

That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t understand the inevitable trap-falls in the grand scheme of things. You can’t have the Baudelaire’s hopping from one guardian to another indefinitely. At one moment in time the children have to take action into their own hands. Realizing fully well that no guardian can protect them from their maleficent Count Olaf the Baudelaire orphans –Snicket lets them- break the storytelling-mould at the exact halfway point of the story which brings the show a breath of fresh air needed. Now suddenly all options are open again. Now guardians might actually survive...

Dreadful silliness and a song or two

The second season of A series of unfortunate events gives us more of the same but with a clear destination in sight. That’s one of the many things that raises it above others.

Plus it features Nathan Fillion being awesome.

To be honest, this second season landed (to me) a bit like a brick. There it was – all new episodes. But strangely enough it helped. In my last review I was a bit too caught up in comparing this television-outing with its (brilliant) cinematic counterpart (2004).

Now time had settled my mind. Suddenly I realized that Lemony Snicket’s: a series of unfortunate events is an American tale through and through. In the original (wannabe Harry Potter-) movie Lemony Snicket is played by a backlit Jude Law and his soothing voice.

But Jude Law is British through and through. Now, after a season of the TV-outing, I realized that this doesn’t fit. The story needs Patrick Warburton. An All-American bloke who is wise but American. And like all Americans (archetypes) he’s nostalgic, caring and, above all, brave.

In this second season I realized that the soothing voice to tell this story is (and should be) an ‘average Joe’. Not a person who knows all because he’s brilliant. But rather a person who knows all because he lived through it. The grease-monkey versus the scholar. The United States versus Great-Brittan.

Having said that it is obvious that the writer loves the ‘ol’ isles’ with a passion. The show is filled to the brim with absurdities that wouldn’t be misplaces in a Monty Python-sketch. Moreover, the constant struggle between hierarchies that is one of the pillars of British fiction returns time and again as the struggle between the youngsters and the adults.

But now I’m divulging into literary critique.

The first episode of the season starts off brilliantly with a wonderful –tongue in cheek- joke on how the kids have grown.

Referencing itself. Is this the influence of post-post-modernist movies like Deadpool 
sneaking into the rest of cinematic and televised fiction?
'We've been waiting for so long it looks like Sunny grew' (to paraphrase).
Yes she did! Yet, the absurdity of the show is what allows this.

And immediately goes off by dropping two fan-favourite bombshells of villains. First there is the head of the ill forsaken school principal Nero who goes on writing letters to Mozart on why he won’t answer him.

Which reminded me of this website I once came across.

And then there’s Carmelita Spats. A little girl in pink with tap-dance shoes who comes across as if Shirley Temple had Rosemary’s baby as a sister. She steals every scene she’s in being so wonderfully over the top obnoxious. This is a part that could easily have gone wrong but she manages it.

A little game to play whenever you see a crowd scene with children
(the Harry Potter-movies are particularly good for this game):
who is looking directly into the camera and who is trying desperately not to (but fails).
It always happens and ASOUE is no exception.

The unhappy tales of Violet and Klaus are the stage for one outlandish villain to the next. With Neil Patrick Harris being far more comfortable in his role in this season (as is his insane troupe) that he actually allows some cracks in the Olaf visage. He’s still a caricature but humanity is seeping in at times. He becomes interesting.

He also has two of my favourite lines:

'Luminous is a term I invented for things that glow in the dark' I think the writer(s) just couldn't help himself mocking a well known (unfortunate) real-life case of somebody saying something similar.

and

‘F! you!...insist.’

Which preceeds a fun little song and dance routine in episode 3 - leave it up to Harris to go all out.

But with the stage set for glorious villains –which includes Mr. Poe and his terrible wife- the ‘good’ tend to suffer. It is true that the two new kids are fine but, alas, a bit underused. With the bits and pieces you get you have to like them enough to remember them throughout the show. But they don't have enough screen-time to develop into characters of their own.

Violet and Klaus then (again at the halfway-point) do get to shine. Klaus gets to play dress up into an Oxford doctor holding an eloquent monologue about the variety of blades. And Violet fixes things to her heart’s desire. The minute these kids decide to fight back the show gives them and Count Olaf the momentum to elevate their pigeonholed characters.

Especially in the final two episodes (which must’ve been a great shoot for all involved). Those two episodes shine.

As always each two episodes take on one of the Snicket books.

The dark side of the tragic tale

I didn’t like everything this season.

I personally could do without one or two of the special effects (though I loved Sunny the secretary) like the super-duper-book-thrower librarian or Sunny’s escape-play in the elevator episode. This was truly too absurd for me and reminded me of some of the more bizarre Palin and Jones sketches in Monty Python. But then again, these toddler segments are just so over the top silly and ludicrous that you (if you roll your eyes, they'll just roll back again) do reground the bleak show about a murderous orphan chasing madman back to the silliness of it all.

Second, I must admit that the silliness does, sometimes, overtake the show. For instance the fact that the good guys of the secret organization are constantly outsmarted by the villains. The way I try to reason this for myself is by assuming that these people are so good that they cannot see evil plotting if their lives (literally) depended on it. Just as the common folk can't recognize Count Olaf in one of his silly costumes.

That's what ASOUE essentially is. Adults are stupid, kids are smart.

Well, considering Carmelita Spats, I would argue only kids with an enormous fortune are smart.
Hmmm. Maybe that's not the lesson to take from this show.

To end this segment with the two weaker episodes of the season: the Vile Village. They are brilliant as always but storywise the fatigue -for me- finally set in. Now I simply could not believe the stupidity of the grown-ups (one the side of good, bad and inbreeding backwards). Also it now started to annoy me that I didn't get any answers. How long can the show keep dangling that carrot in front of me? Luckily after these two episodes Klaus, Violet and Sunny went off on their own. The breath of fresh air the show needed.

A cliffhanger is only depressing if the cliff is coming towards you.

But the above is just nitpicking in a flawless show. It is the attention to details in the background that make this show such a delicious watch. 'Cake sniffers anonymous' the changing of Goodie, Goodie, books. The weird pictures and paintings in Nero's office. Or the symbol of the eye in the sky when Violet and Clause (and Sunny) drive away at the end of episode 6. A feast for the eyes.

And then there’s the true, no hold bars, horror this show actually delivers in the final four episodes. Which is something I, as a horror-buff, can certainly appreciate.

Taking clear reference from the classics (as The Shining) it manages to parody and terrify at the same time –which is an amazing feat.

A series of unfortunate events: season 2 now knows its strengths and its weaknesses. I don’t really know how they pulled it off but I’m starting to believe that this series is going to be, by me at least, considered one of the best televised tales of the last ten years.

Now isn’t that a horrible happy thought?