I will be discussing spoilers, but I'll enspoiler them, so open the spoilers at your own risk.
This is also going to be a pretty long-winded post.
General non-spoiler-y thoughts
For me, there's something really, genuinely special about seeing these books brought to life, with all the characters and places that I read about (many, many times, in the case of the first seven or so books) when I was growing up (THE LAST BOOK CAME OUT OVER TEN YEARS AGO I FEEL OLD HELP). There's a few things I could quibble about, sure, but just SEEING all these characters and locations and everything that happens to the Baudelaires is really cool and I felt like a nine-year-old kid reading and falling in love with these books for the first time all over again. ASoUE was the first series of books I really obsessed over, and at the start of each new episode I was excited to see how they'd interpreted the new guardians/locations, etc that I was so familiar with.
I think the second half (The Vile Village onwards) of this season was stronger than the first, although I think that my opinion of that might be coloured by the fact that The Ersatz Elevator was the first book in the series I read (yep, I started with book six) so it has a very special place in my heart so I wasn't happy with some of the changes they made in that one - which I feel was the most different to the book out of all the episodes (maybe?). For the first few episodes of this season I felt like the new characters (ie the ones not in the books) were playing too prominent a role, rather than just adding to the backstory like in the first season, but from The Vile Village onwards I think the balance was better. I've been cool with a lot of the changes they've made, but I also think the show is strongest when it doesn't diverge too far from the source materiel - which in the Ersatz Elevator episodes I felt like it did.
I remember getting really confused when I was originally reading these books at around book eight and so far everything seems to be making a lot more sense than it did when I first read the series. Which could be because I'm quite a bit older, but I think the series has introduced all the mysteries really well.
I've been really impressed with the casting and portrayal of pretty much all the characters. I do still feel like Neil Patrick Harris isn't as strong a Count Olaf as Jim Carrey was, and I generally prefer him as Olaf-in-disguise than as just Olaf, but he's growing on me. All the other characters I felt were soooo well cast for their roles, even if they weren't quite how I'd expected them. Esme Squalor in particular is spot on.
So glad that we see more of the henchpeople in the show.
I know the books got pretty grim, but this season gets dark. There were some seriously creepy scenes in the last four eps. Heimlich Hospital gets pretty scary.
Spoiler-y thoughts
Spoiler! :
So in general, I was pretty impressed with this season. For those who've seen it, what did you think? Do you agree with any of the points above? Anything stand out for you?
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