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| A Series of Unfortunate Events: Season 3 (2019) |
Where to start? Well, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. The show is still beautiful. I love the world the show presents and how it exists in this weird little bubble outside of any particular time period. It's a world where everyone still uses typewriters, but Nickelback exists. You might think that throwing in the odd reference here and there (by which I mean that Nickelback moment was the only pop culture reference in the entire season) would date the show, but oddly enough, combined with the world they set up, it actually makes it even more timeless. It already exists in this weird bubble where time is non-existent, so to speak, so having the occasional reference actually works. It's also nice that the show is continuing to rely on practical effects and big sets, and they all look amazing. Of course, they don't always stick to this, and the CGI effects are noticeable when they happen, but given the nature of the source material that was unavoidable. Is it the most realistic CGI ever put to screen? No. Did it at least give me the illusion that it was real? Well, in some cases, no, but I'm honestly okay with that as long as it looks nice, and it absolutely does here. In fact, there are a few individual shots this season that got an audible reaction out of me.
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| Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf |
Going hand in hand with the unique world the show presents, the writing is also still really, really clever and really, really funny. It's a style of comedy that really doesn't exist in any other show, and it's a style taken directly from the books. In fact, some lines, and even some entire sequences, were lifted directly from the books, just like the last two seasons. It's never distracting and it all fits really well, and the best part is that you probably couldn't tell what lines were sourced from the books and which are originals if you haven't read the books. It also helps that the show is exactly my kind of humour, particularly with Lemony Snicket's lines. In fact, this season may have given me some quotes I may end up using in regular conversation. But anyway, while a lot of lines have been taken from the books, not all of the storylines were. Like with the other seasons, this season found a great balance between staying true to the source material and keeping things fresh for the die-hard book fans, but this season found a different way of doing it. Instead of adding in an entirely new plotline, they tweak the existing plots just enough to not only keep things fresh, but also have it make sense for the medium. For, example, for the longest time I was wondering how they were going to handle the trial sequence from Book 12, and the way they do it is really incredibly different from how it's done in the books, but it's done in the way that fits the TV show format the best while also accomplishing the exact same thing. It really impressed me how well they were able to find this balance, and speaking of balance, this season finds that perfect blend of light-hearted and dark. And, hoo boy, this season gets dark. For people complaining that Season 1 wasn't dark enough for them, now we know why: they would have had nowhere to ramp up to if it began on that note. That's not to say this season's all doom and gloom; it's still a family show, after all. But this season gets the darkest, and for those of you who felt that was missing, here you go.
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| Patrick Warburton as Lemony Snicket |
The cast are still phenomenal. Neil Patrick Harris once again shines as Olaf and Warburton is still the perfect Lemony Snicket. The child actors went from strength to strength to strength, and this season perhaps gifted us with some of their best performances to date. The returning supporting cast are just as great once again, with particular highlights being Lucy Punch, Dylan Kingwell, Usman Ally and Kitana Turnbull, but I think the real standouts here are the new recurring characters. Having been teased at the end of Season 2, Allison Williams does a fantastic job as Kit Snicket, and she finds that perfect blend of dry wit and empathy that you'd want in a character like this. Can't really say too much about her performance without dipping into spoiler territory, so I'll move on to the other two highlights. Since the end of last season, I was curious about how they would handle two particular characters: The Man with a Beard But No Hair, and The Woman With Hair But No Beard. Both in the books and the show, they are described as truly intimidating, deeply frightening individuals that even Olaf is afraid of. And... yeah, they nailed it. Richard E. Grant and Beth Grant give truly unsettling performances, and they absolutely killed it as these two properly scary people. But even they get a few good laughs in, that's the beauty of this show: the dichotomy of these truly horrific events happening to these kids contrasted with that light-hearted sense of humour that keeps it all from being dragged down into the doom and gloom of being too depressing to watch.
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| Louis Hynes as Klaus Baudelaire, Malina Weissman as Violet Baudelaire and Allison Williams as Kit Snicket |
Now, as it is the last season, I do need to address how it functions as an ending, and, don't worry, I won't go into any spoilers. I'll simply say this to start with: tears were shed. I never outright cried, but I wouldn't say I just welled up either. It got really emotional in that final episode, and even as someone who saw it all coming from reading the books so many times, it still hit me hard. It's in this last scenes where the acting is at its finest, from all parties. In terms of structure, they did it the right way. Due to the nature of the final book, splitting it into two episodes like the rest would have dragged, so they stuck with one episode for that last story, which means, in a lot of ways, the second last episode functions more as a finale than the finale did. It's in the penultimate episode where we get a lot of the back-stories explained, and we get a lot of the minor characters' stories wrapping up, and we get the wistfully looking back on the show moments, and it all works there so we can leave the last episode for wrapping up the arcs of our main characters. Finally, and this is the main thing I was concerned about, we have the issue of closure. I was a little worried that the show would leave a lot of storylines open-ended, as the books did, but I also didn't want them to explain absolutely everything, since that's not really in the nature of the story. Thankfully, as with the rest of this show, they gave us the perfect balance. They answer everything that needs answering, and they leave a little ambiguous everything that should be left a little ambiguous. It was exactly what I wanted in a final season and, really, exactly what I wanted in an adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I may get around to reviewing the movie eventually, but I always felt that adaptation was missing something. I never felt that with this show. Not once. I used the word 'satisfying' before, and that really is the best word I can use to describe how this entire show felt, and not just this last season.
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| Lucy Punch as Esme Squalor and Kitana Turnbull as Carmelia Spats |
A Series of Unfortunate Events Season 3 (2019), and the show in general, is the perfect adaptation. I believe my first words after it ended were 'I can't wait to start from the beginning and watch the whole thing over again'. I can tell you right now that I will be doing so time and time again in the future. I hope the show comes out on DVD so I can own it in hardcopy. What a great way to start the year. 10/10.
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