A Series of Unfortunate Events Season 2

So last year I did a review of the first season of A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix. Overall, I think I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the show and while there were definite issues to be had with the show, I was impressed with how passionate about the role of Count Olaf Neil Patrick Harris was and just how creative the atmosphere of the show was.

Well the new season came out last week and I took some time to re-watch the first season and then got onto the second season. I think I still have the same outlook on the first season that I did a year ago, but I think a lot of the nuanced parts of the first season lost their flare upon the second viewing and while I still enjoy the first season (quite a bit more than the second), I think a sober look on the season didn't exactly give me a great starting point for the second season.

Something I'll restate about these stories that I mentioned in my season 1 review is that I read the first book of the series and that's it. I have no inkling on what book was the most popular (because I'm having trouble finding the individual sales of each book) or which book is considered the best because every list I've gotten has been wildly different. I find it interesting that the fans of this series probably take different things out of each book than others, making me kind of want to go and read the entire series now. I won't, not anytime soon anyway, but it intrigues me.

But regardless while the majority of the first season was mostly unfamiliar to me, I at least had the first book I was familiar with and the 2004 movie to compare at least the first 6 episodes to something. This season was totally uncharted territory and I am starting to get a little bit of an idea of the style that Daniel Handler (AKA Lemony Snicket) had in his books, but we'll get to that in a little bit.

Season 2 of A Series of Unfortunate Events finds The Baudelaires, Violet, Klaus and Sunny (played by Malina Weissman, Louis Hynes, and Presley Smith respectively) where they were left at the end of the first season, waiting to be enrolled in the "Austere Academy" Prufrock Preparatory School. But Prufrock is just one of many wacky locations that the Baudelaires find themselves in over the course of the season to include a lavish mansion owned by Tony Hale (oh I'll get to him), a "Vile Village" in the middle of the desert, a "Hostile Hospital" and a "Carnivorous Carnival", all while desperately trying to avoid the evil schemes to kill them and steal their family fortune, perpetrated by the vile Count Olaf (played by Neil Patrick Harris).

 And once again, Neil Patrick Harris is having WAY too much fun with this role. Harris is playing up this role so much that at this point it almost highlights how other people aren't playing it up as much as he is. Some are trying, like his henchmen, Nathan Fillion (I'll get to him), some other characters, but Harris feels really comfortable at this point where others aren't exactly as comfortable, aren't committing as much, or just aren't written in a way to keep up with him.

Just like the first season, Patrick Warburton plays Lemony Snicket, the omnipresent narrator who claims it is his civil duty to tell us the unfortunate events surrounding the Baudelaire children.

So it sounds like they're doing very much the same thing that they did in the first season right? It should be as entertaining as the first season right? So why could I rarely stay awake, at least for the first four episodes and just didn't feel as entertained by this season as the first?

Well a huge issue are the main characters themselves, The Baudelaire children.

Now listen, I mentioned in the first season that these kids were not that great of actors. They have a lot of wooden delivery and they're supposed to really be the straightest played characters. But it is just a little bit painful watching these kids try to act because they never really feel comfortable getting emotional or angry, or anything. They're very good at delivering deadpan lines for the kind of absurdist intellectual humor that goes with the theme, but a whole subplot of this season is to save their friends they meet at the school they go to. Now this is a conflict, they care about these other kids and want to save them. But these kids never really have a different expression on their face and they're not really well written either. I think for the first season I could forgive it because I was entertained by the characters Harris was playing as well as the fun actors they got for other roles, but that doesn't really happen in this season.

Oh and their friends, the Quagmires (played by Dylan Wingwell and Avi Lake) are super bland and just white bread kids. There's nothing distinguishable about them and could have been played by big planks of wood.

And you really need more interesting and compelling actors playing important roles like the Baudelaires and the Quagmires when they're on screen 90% of the time. Especially in a format like this where the story feels like it's on repeat now.

The show now starts to get into a very predictable formula. The kids go to a new location. They're put under the care of a nice but either ignorant or misguided person. Count Olaf shows up, puts on a costume and nobody believes it's Count Olaf even when the kids insist it is. Shenanigans happen, Count Olaf's plot is foiled, kids escape. Rinse and repeat.

I get that that happens in the book and Netflix is just adapting something that somebody else wrote, but with the exception of some additions of characters, some of whom are interesting, some of whom are not, when the show follows a similar formula over and over again, it gets tedious and little boring at times.

Now there is an underlying plot of the Baudelaires trying to figure out their parent's history and the mystery surrounding their parents, the people they've met, and Count Olaf, but they don't exactly answer any of those questions in any kind of digestible or intelligible way. It would have been better to have small answers to the questions as opposed to an information drop in the last episode that was already information we already could deduce just from the structure of the story.

And speaking of the backstory, let's talk about some of the background characters, especially the mysterious VFD.

So we finally get the name of the secret organization that the Baudelaire's parent's were apart of called VFD. A lot of that information is brought to us by Jacque Snicket (played by Nathan Fillion).

Now this is an area I wish I had read the books for but I am pretty sure that the adventures of Nathan Fillion and the random librarian they run across as the school (played by Sara Rue was not in the book. I'm sure they were characters in the books but I don't think the story diverted to them having cooky spy adventures. Which is problematic because the truth is, these two do absolutely nothing in this season. They're goal is to help the Baudelaires escape from the clutches of Count Olaf but while logic would dictate they could just swoop in, grab the children and bring them to safety, that can't happen because that didn't happen in the book.

And it's not just these characters, it's everyone in the secret organization who is good. Everyone from Larry the Waitor (played by Patrick Breen) to Jacquelyn (played by Sara Canning) are horrendous at their jobs and do absolutely nothing to help the Baudelaires.

In the first season, the story diverted to follow Will Arnett and Colbie Smulders. Now these two were really a red herring and weren't really connected to the story of the Baudelaires at all but they at least seemed capable and good at their jobs. Everyone the Baudelaires come across with this secret organization is horrible at their job and are no help whatsoever.

The only person who really seemed to be helpful at all was actually portrayed as a pointless and useless character, Jerome Squaller (played by Tony Hale)

I guess this is a spoiler but there's a scene in the show where Tony Hale survived Count Olaf's plot, unlike a lot of the people who were the Baudelaire's guardians in the past. He's this wealthy dude who just wants to take care of the children in his mansion. He tells the children to come with him and let the police go after Count Olaf. This is a super nice guy offering these kids to live in his mansion with him. Yes, the Baudelaires have to save their friends but there's no way they couldn't convince this guy to use his wealth to help them search for their friends... and so the Baudelaires go and live in the desert...

Which draws me to a conclusion that I feel I might get some shit for. I don't think these books were really well written.

And yes, I understand these books are children's stories and they're absurd and they don't exactly exist in the realm of reality that would allow Neil Patrick Harris to continuously dress up in different costumes and expect people not to recognize him. But even the most absurd universes have rules and this season doesn't really follow those rules.

Nobody can recognize Count Olaf in his disguise but Count Olaf can immediately recognize the Baudelaire children in their disguises. This secret organization really wants to help the Baudelaire children but they send Larry the Waitor to save them when he has failed multiple times already. Tony Hale is a super rad guardian who just wants to take care of the kids of his friends and the Baudelaires turn down his guardianship.  I get that the story needs to continue but when you're adhering to the fact that there is another episode we need to get to instead of logical story progression and choices, that's when things start to suffer.

This review has been mostly negative because the truth is a lot of the stuff I liked about the first season is still in the second season. I wasn't a huge fan of the first, second, and third set of episodes but "The Hostile Hospital" and "The Carnivorous Carnival" were actually pretty fun episodes with a lot of creepy imagery. Those were also the episodes where you actually start to figure out more information about the VFD and more importantly, didn't revolve around the Baudelaires trying to find the boring as hell Quagmires.

I think the more absurd a role is in this show, the more entertaining it is and the more fun the actor had with it. Harris, Lucy Punch, Nathan Fillion, even Robbie Amell has a small role that I was a lot funnier than I originally thought, were all pretty good in this show. Looking back, Aasif Mandvi, Alfre Woodard, and Catherine O'Hara played up their roles excellently and were really entertaining.

In season two I can really only point to Tony Hale and the previous people mentioned as roles that stood out to me.

Also...

Somebody is really pushing for this show to be a musical in the same vein as Dr. Horrible's Sing A Long Blog. In the first season the songs were scarce enough for it to just be entertaining enough but not distracting. In this season it seems like they felt like they were wasting the opportunity to have Neil Patrick Harris sing if they didn't add a couple musical numbers.

Listen Neil, you're talented. I love seeing and hearing you dance and sing. But I don't need it. You're a talented actor and you seem to be having a lot of fun in this role. The songs, while fun (especially the circus song) just felt a little bit shoehorned in. If you want to do a dark musical like Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, here's an idea, maybe do a sequel to that!

Do I still recommend A Series of Unfortunate Events? Well at this point I'm committed, and have already gone 18 episodes in. It would be kind of silly of me not to check out the third (and I really hope last season). But the formula is losing it's charm on me and the show is starting to feel tedious. Again, I recommend going back to my season 1 review because a lot of the things I liked about this season were present in the first season, like the creative atmosphere and some of the humor. But I didn't really feel like the second season was as strong as the first.

I need to find somebody who read the books and have a discussion about the format of these books and ask if it ever felt tedious like the show is. I would also have other questions but maybe I'll answer those questions with season 3.

But those are my thoughts on A Series of Unfortunate Events Season 2. What did you think? How does it compare to the books? Is there just a huge secret community of people who love A Series of Unfortunate Events that I just haven't run across? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films or TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie and TV reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. This is obviously a passion project for Neil Patrick Harris but I'm actually really looking forward to him doing something else. I mean this guy is always just a talent. Enjoy!