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Spoiler warning for all iterations in their entirety of A Series of Unfortunate Events.

I’ve been meaning for a long time to write more about A Series of Unfortunate Events for many reasons, so here’s the post, finally. Also, if we’re not mutuals on Facebook, then you didn’t know this — I took the month of February off from posting due to an operation for the pilonidal abscess that I developed at the end of January. I am still not fully healed from it yay! but that’s for a different post.

There are so many things that I want to say about this. How to condense them?

Adapting works written with words alone into the form of a film or television serial always comes with challenges. There are plot devices, narrative styles, specific moments that work much better on the page and in the readers’ heads than they do on screen, and the reverse is also true. Netflix’s adaptation does justice to the source material; it captures much of the aesthetic as well as the plot and characters; basically, it gets a lot of things right; but to me it is ultimately unsatisfactory.

Daniel Handler, under the pen name Lemony Snicket, published thirteen books between the years 1999 and 2006. These books follow three young siblings, most commonly described by the third-person narrator and by other characters as orphans, as they are passed from incompetent guardian to incompetent guardian following the deaths of both of their parents in a fire that also destroyed the mansion which was their childhood home. These children are, of course, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, and their first guardian is Count Olaf, the primary antagonist for the first half of the series. “Antagonist” is a word which here means “villain,” and if you have read A Series of Unfortunate Events, you know that Count Olaf, in addition to being an orphan, a father, a guardian, an actor, a playwright, a master of disguise, and a former member of VFD, was a villain.

I don’t remember how old I was when I first read The Bad Beginning, because my childhood is a mess of trauma and repressed memories, but I was probably about 12. Immediately I identified very strongly with Violet. The books show her as inventive, resourceful, and often taking on the role of parenting not only Sunny but Klaus as well. Here is one of the first places where the Netflix adaptation falls short (pun intended). Malina Weissman and Louis Hynes are the same height, for starters (Brett Helquist’s illustrations show Violet as significantly taller than Klaus), and while the books make it clear that Violet and Klaus are in very different stages of their emotional development and that Violet’s presence allows Klaus to continue being a child in ways in which Violet is no longer able to, the show instead presents the two elder Baudelaires as equals.

Violet is 14 in The Bad Beginning; Klaus is 12. Violet is a cis girl and has been and continues to be socialized in ways that force her to grow up more quickly than Klaus, a cis boy. The setting of A Series of Unfortunate Events is not completely clear and is not clarified much by either of the screen adaptions, but given the way Lemony tends to frame Beatrice as an object of affection rather than as a person with her own complex feelings and motivations, I choose to assume that sexism in the universe of A Series of Unfortunate Events functions similarly to the way it does in ours. There is, then, very little justification for assuming that Klaus has the emotional maturity to do the things he does in the Netflix show. The show presents Violet and Klaus as an inseparable unit where the books allow them each to play to their strengths much more. We see this, for example, in the camera framing in the third season; Violet and Klaus are onscreen a lot together, and because Sunny is able to walk, she is out of frame. What this does is 1) reinforce the idea that Violet and Klaus can’t really function without each other, 2) but not in the “all three Baudelaires are a family unit” way because they’re no longer carrying Sunny, 3) that’s it I don’t have a third point. Violet’s height, demeanor, and presentation in the show strip her of the small yet significant power she holds in the books, effectively redistributing a good chunk of that power to Klaus, who has neither the maturity nor the canonical precedent for it.

It’s impossible to say what I love most about the book series, but a strong contender is the fact that the Baudelaires are allowed to be children. They are allowed to be immature, even if the world they inhabit says otherwise. Handler gives his characters room to be human. And in small yet significant ways the Netflix adaptation undermines this. The children are always clean, despite their often grimy surroundings (looking at you, Lucky Smells Lumbermill); their clothes always fit. “Grimy” is a word which here means “dirty, dank, disgusting.” In The Ersatz Elevator (book 6), Esmé and Jerome Squalor give the Baudelaires pinstripe suits, all sized for adults (and therefore comically large, especially on Sunny). Netflix gives the siblings pinstripe suits that fit them as though they were tailored to do so. It’s difficult for me to convey in words the satisfying narrative crunch of Sunny swimming in a massive pantsuit and the discomfort of having that detail removed from the relationship between Esmé and the Baudelaires. It lends credence to their distrust of her and it highlights the pervasive sense that the Baudelaires are continually disregarded by the adults around them.

In The Grim Grotto (book 11, for those who are counting), Esmé uses a tagliatelle grande to “whip” the Snow Scouts, who have been forced to work on Olaf’s submarine following their capture at the summit of Mount Fraught in the previous book. The effect, as described by Handler, is more of a wet slap; not painful but rather inconvenient, disconcerting, and unpleasant. The tagliatelle grande also appears in The Carnivorous Carnival (book 9) and in Carnivorous Carnival: Part One (Netflix season 2 episode 9), wielded by Esmé against the carnival freaks. I’m not sure if anyone else cares about this, but I’ve been memeing about it since season 3 came out, and I do think the removal of the tagliatelle grande from The Grim Grotto has the effect, again, of removing an element of discomfort and sheer weirdness from the atmosphere of the narrative. Children experience the world as strange. Little details like the suits and the tagliatelle grande subtly reinforce the idea that the world we live in is built by adults for adults and children are required to go through a form of ritualistic social abuse before they can be accepted into it. (The Snow Scouts are all around the same age as Carmelita Spats, whose age I have assumed to be close to Klaus’.)

This brings me to possibly the biggest change that Netflix made to the series: introducing VFD much earlier. Reading the books, we are imbued with the sense that the Baudelaires are alone, and each guardian’s ultimate failure to protect them only reinforces this and foreshadows the ending of The Vile Village (book 7), in which the siblings, armed with the knowledge that the authorities are not actually on their side, choose to reject any future guardians and instead to become, in the popular narrative, wanted criminals. They search for VFD, largely unsuccessfully, and they know — and the reader knows — that within their universe, it is incredibly unlikely that one of their parents survived the fire. The Baudelaires are hopeful because one cannot live in a world where one is not wanted without hope, but their hope never stretches beyond what they believe to be realistic.

From the beginning of the Netflix series, we as viewers are privy to a lot more information than the books give us. The presence of the Quagmire parents — i.e. the presence of adult authority figures presumed to be morally good — lends a sense of relief. Even though the Baudelaires are stuck with Count Olaf for now, they’ll be okay. The adults will get them out. This is the opposite of the books, in which anything good that happens for the Baudelaires and that is not almost immediately ruined by Count Olaf is, at least through the first half of the series, a direct result of their own actions. The books force the Baudelaires to grow up very quickly, especially Violet; and perhaps the Netflix show, rather than making Klaus grow up as well, allows Violet to remain an adolescent by giving us what are essentially stand-ins for the Baudelaire parents. As soon as the Quagmire parents die, two of the Quagmire triplets enter the Baudelaires’ lives, and the story has already progressed to the point where a school is a stand-in for a guardian, leading to the inevitable collapse in the Baudelaires’ minds of the system of authority to which they have been made subject.

Netflix, then, removes details to streamline the story without understanding what made those details so crucial from the perspective of both the plot and the characters. I am trying very hard not to place a value judgement on Netflix, but it’s difficult because I’m politically left-aligned and Netflix is a megacorporation and in the stage of capitalism that we currently inhabit, megacorporations invariably exploit their workers. It’s also difficult because almost every piece of Netflix original content I’ve watched has been entirely forgettable, bland, and overly simplistic. But of course: there is no room for nuance when your primary mission is to make money. (I promise that I do try not to be so cynical all the time.)

Now that I’ve outlined some flaws in how Netflix altered the source material, I’m going to shift gears and talk about some weaknesses in the source material that aren’t really addressed in the adaptation.

Both reading the books and watching the show, what strikes me as a 23-year-old is the elitism of the “good" side. Throughout the series, the Baudelaires, the Quagmires, and multiple volunteers deride their enemies for using words incorrectly or for not knowing what certain words mean. Because these characters are largely presented as morally good, we’re expected to applaud these displays of their apparent superiority as proof that they are in fact morally good and they don’t deserve all the bad things that happen to them. Instead they can come across as overly pedantic and narrow-minded.

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is useful. Knowledge gets the Baudelaires out of several very sticky situations. Knowledge is also privilege, and this fact is completely unacknowledged both in the books and in the show. “Privilege” is a word which here means “a special, unearned advantage or entitlement, used to one's own benefit or to the detriment of others.” For the entirety of the readers’ relationship with the Baudelaires, they are treated very badly, and we never actually see any of their previous life. But their parents were millionaires, and they will be millionaires when Violet turns 18 and inherits the family wealth. They are also assumed to be white (both screen adaptations confirm this). As far as anyone is aware, they were educated at home until their parents’ death; tutors were never mentioned, but given the wealth and social status of the Baudelaire parents, tutors are not unlikely; and despite evident humility in many contexts and on several distinct occasions, the Baudelaire children’s biggest weakness is their sense of moral superiority. They have been brought up to view the world as a meritocracy, and not only is their world clearly not that but they also have no idea of the racial, socioeconomic, and class implications of meritocracy.

(Is this where I mention my headcanon that all three of the Baudelaire siblings are autistic?) (But seriously. If you’re interested in why let me know and I’ll write another post about it.)

Count Olaf’s unconscionably poor treatment of the Baudelaires upon accepting them into his house as his adoptive children would be enough cause at least for a strong dislike. I can also understand that the Baudelaires would be uncomfortable living in a dirty space (although Count Olaf lives alone and may very well have executive dysfunction or other symptoms which prevent him from cleaning his living space — clearly the best course of action would be to hire a maid instead of forcing children to do unpaid labour). And, of course, part of the conceit of A Series of Unfortunate Events is that it presents what appear to be clear binaries — noble/villainous, child/adult — before picking them apart, and before we pick something apart, we must get to know it as completely as possible.

However, A Series of Unfortunate Events is for children. People whose brains, whose senses of self, whose understandings of the world are still developing. Teaching children that people who are morally good also act with a sense of moral superiority — and then not addressing that even when addressing the other overly simplistic generalizations made earlier in the series — is irresponsible. Netflix had an opportunity to take material that was already good and make it even better, and they left that opportunity outside the studio.

In a way, that sums up all of the criticisms I’ve made in this post. Netflix had an opportunity to take material that was already very good and make it even better, and they didn’t do that. They played it safe. They simplified the story. Now, I have never adapted a book or book series for the screen, and simplification is a thing that seems to happen a lot in adaptions, but how is it that the Hunger Games films quite accurately capture the spirit of the books and add to them while the Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events does not do the same for its source material? (Let me know if you want a Hunger Games post. I’ve just rewatched the films and plan to reread the books if/when I have time.)

When I first watched Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, I was delighted at how close it came to the books. I loved it. And I think I would still love it if I weren’t a chronic overthinker and if I hadn’t begun rewatching it a couple of months ago. I don’t think it’s meant to be rewatched. I think it’s meant to be consumed once and then forgotten forever. We have access to technology that has the ability to record everything we do and keep it forever, and we are creating art that barely has enough soul for one playthrough. Or maybe it’s the audience that drives this; maybe we are so terrified of the loneliness that will inevitably come with eternal existence that we cling to our transience and we build things that are meant to be destroyed. Either way, something is not right here.