There are not many things I can truly say is a talent of mine, but being able to watch nearly seven hours of Netflix non-stop is one of my talents. That, and critiquing the performances of people far more talented and successful than I am. So when Netflix dropped A Series of Unfortunate Events on Friday the 13th, I sat down and got my dark and twisty on and watched the entire season in one sitting, you know, like a normal person.
The eight episodes in this season make up the first four books in the series of novels by Lemony Snicket. Each episode follows the unfortunate Baudelaire siblings as they are given to different guardians (sadly, not The Guardians of the Galaxy) after the untimely and (dare I say?) unfortunate deaths of their parents in a mysterious fire. Occasionally there are moments of narration done by Snicket himself as he tries to uncover the mystery of the lives that are the poor Baudelaire Orphans.
The first two episodes follow the plot of The Bad Beginning. The orphans are orphaned and are given to the sinister Count Olaf, played by the Jack of all Trades, Neil Patrick Harris, or, as I like to call him, NPH. The performance NPH gives as Olaf is absolutely stunning; you can see where all of his past experience comes together in this character. Not to give anything away, but his character goes through many reiterations and NPH is fantastic in every single part he plays. My only complaint, and don’t get me wrong, I love dark stuff, but NPH’s performance got a little too dark and unlikeable, which is just strange for an actor like NPH who oozes charisma and (for lack of a better word) like-ability.
Snicket is played by Patrick Warburton, and yes, Kronk himself gives a perfect performance as Snicket. He’s the seamless mixture of comedic and serious, monotone and monotonous, and interested and nonchalant. Whenever he came onscreen I caught myself smiling, even though he was delivering some of the most serious lines in the most serious manner possible.
The children were very intriguing to watch. Violet and Klaus truly carry the show, and these young actors are mostly able to walk the balance beam between this world’s mixture of the lack of emotion, while still being full of that childlike innocence. They can very clearly carry the show, as I said, but they are blank enough slates that their guardians are the true pops of colors that keeps the show interesting. Now, as much as I enjoy these young actors, there were moments that were odd. There were moments where the sibling relationship between Violet and Klaus seemed occasionally romantic, which was just weird. And it seemed as if they kept pushing that this was Klaus’s story, instead of the story of the three of the Baudelaire orphans, this became blatant when it came to the final two episodes at “The Miserable Mill”.
Speaking of the final two episodes, it seemed as if the entire series just lost its drive, everything seemed to slow down, and by this point there wasn’t a chance of it picking back up. This also seemed the case with the guardians; pretty much after episode 4 with Monty it just went downhill. However, there was a fantastic twist that was made for Cobie Smolders and Will Arnet’s characters, this was the kind of twist that made me want to tear my heart out, but it was perfect for the story and for what would need to happen in the future. The twist also set up for even more of a conspiracy theory to take root in the show, thus elevating it.
It was a fantastic season, and I cannot wait for the next tragic installments for the Baudelaire orphans. As long as the producers and directors keep that strong forward motion that they had in the first four episodes, it will be a fantastically terrible season.
