Volunteer Fire Department

Spoilers for all three seasons of A Series of Unfortunate Events, as well as for the book series (duh).

This post is twice the length of my usual posts HAHAHAHA buckle up pals

I've been deeply affected by fiction before. Various movies and Game of Thrones episodes have made appearances in my nightmares, and I will always be a sucker for a well-written period drama. However, I think I can say confidently that no work of fiction has changed me more than A Series of Unfortunate Events.

The world is quiet here. -- motto of the Volunteer Fire Department

I read the books beginning when I was around ten. What drew me in, apart from the wonderful self-awareness in Daniel Handler's writing, was the incredible relateability in the Baudelaires' experience: even though their situations were fantastical and unlikely to occur in my sheltered, homeschooled existence, what rang true was how the protagonists tried to do everything right and still ended up in trouble. Also, the adults didn't listen to them.

I never watched the 2004 movie; I read a synopsis and had mixed feelings, and the generally negative reviews reinforced my decision. When the Netflix series premiered, I was hesitant. I knew that it wouldn't stray too far from the books in terms of plot, because of Handler's involvement, but I was still concerned about tone and flow. The books are so easy to read: quite dark, yet filled with wry, often tongue-in-cheek humor.

Mr. Poe: The adults will take care of it from here.

Violet: The adults won't take care of anything. But we will. -- The Reptile Room part 2

The first season was dark, darker than I remembered the books being. The more I love a book, the greater shock it is for me to see it on screen. I have a fairly active and vivid imagination, which my ten-year-old self had mostly put to work imagining the characters' appearances, so it was a little disconcerting to see a fully fleshed-out world on the screen. The early appearances of VFD are well done, albeit perhaps a little confusing at first to book readers.

Neil Patrick Harris is deliciously camp as Olaf. His first appearance terrifies; the show wisely waits a few episodes to begin sowing seeds of incompetence in both him and his henchpeople. The screen adds nuance to all of the characters, but especially to those fortunate enough to be played by actors with expressive faces and body language (Usman Ally as Fernald, the hook-handed man; Aasif Mandvi and Alfre Woodard as Uncle Monty and Aunt Josephine, respectively; Malina Weissman and Louis Hynes as the elder two Baudelaire children). Book readers know not to get too attached to any of the orphans' guardians, but this isn't Game of Thrones -- the deaths are, in a way, predictable. The Baudelaires survive because they can see through Olaf's disguises; their unfortunate relatives either can't or refuse to.

That no life lives for ever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

     Winds somewhere safe to sea.

-- Algernon Charles Swinburne, "The Garden of Proserpine," quoted in The Slippery Slope part 2

I watched the entire second season the day it was released. I hadn't dared to cast anyone as Esmé in my mind lest I be let down, so I was thrilled to see Lucy Punch, her over-the-top everything a perfect match for Olaf (and sometimes outshining him). The Baudelaires' guardians become more and more morally corrupt, setting up the children's own development into thieves, jailbreakers, and eventually, in the last moments of The Carnivorous Carnival, arsonists. No longer are they innocent children, running from pure evil. Now they are helping to start fires to stay alive.

The Baudelaires reject the help of the incompetent adults who are ostensibly on their side in favor of a search for a secret organization which, they believe, holds answers. The more information they gather, the more obvious it becomes that just because someone is well-read and acts with noble intentions, they don't necessarily have all the answers, especially if they're dead. I've long thought that A Series of Unfortunate Events is a pretty sado-masochistic experience for the reader: sadistic, because we're watching children experience disappointment after disappointment, and every new hope turns out to be another victory for Olaf's side; and masochistic, because not being listened to is an experience common to almost all children, and we were all children once.

I also watched the third season in one sitting, and found myself crying at the end. Showing key moments on that fateful night at the opera was an excellent narrative choice, making Kit and Olaf's reunion at the end more emotionally charged for viewers and lending nuance to Olaf's (and Esmé's) descent from volunteer to villain. I didn't remember Klaus being quite so smitten with Fiona on their first meeting, but the presence of Captain Widdershins in the book made the atmosphere on the Queequeg quite different. I had always been a little disappointed in the ending, and the show wrapped up its loose ends nicely but not too nicely, making it easier to be satisfied with leaving the Baudelaires to create the rest of their story without Lemony documenting it. I would have liked two episodes for The End; perhaps the plot material wasn't enough, but it felt rushed, and I missed a key part of Sunny's transition from baby to girl -- mothering Beatrice.

Count Olaf: I always thought you were a legendary figure, like unicorns or Giuseppe Verdi. -- The Penultimate Peril part 1

One of the most relevant aspects of this story is its approach to the noble/wicked binary. Like a lot of people, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny begin the series believing in a black-and-white version of good and evil. There's the noble side of VFD, the ones who still put out fires; and there's the side that defected in the schism, the rotten apples, and they're irredeemable. Or are they? Volunteers still start fires -- Beatrice Baudelaire stole a sugar bowl and killed someone with a poison dart; her children kidnapped a fashionable villain for ransom, fired a harpoon gun at a librarian, and set fire to a hotel.

Horseradish is a bitter antidote to a poisonous fungus named for an ancient Greek monster who had snakes instead of hair. "Look away, look away" is the refrain of the show's opening credits theme, as though watching might turn us to stone. It's very, very easy to believe that everything is either all good or all bad, but it's also very, very wrong. The more the Baudelaires learn about the world they inhabit, the more they -- and we -- come to realize that although someone's actions define who they are, there is nothing inherent or fated about those actions.

Each decision is a choice. As Fernald Widdershins says in episode 4 of season 3, later quoted by his sister Fiona, there are no wholly noble or wicked people (see also: Diane Nguyen of Bojack Horseman). We all start fires and put other ones out, and sometimes we even put out a fire that we started. A Series of Unfortunate Events is about flawed people trying to survive in a world that is kind to none of them, especially the orphans.

Man hands on misery to man.

     It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

     And don't have any kids yourself.

-- Philip Larkin, "This Be The Verse," quoted in The End