Watch for Falling Widows in “Series” episode The Wide Window!!

 

What a way to start the day! A grim gray ferry ride to a lakeside town that's Stephen King lite!

Watch for Falling Widows in “Series” episode The Wide Window!! [RECAP] // SPOILERS

 

In the third installment of Netflix’s Baudelaire saga, the trio survives a swarm of bloodthirsty leeches, decodes a desperate suicide note rife with grammatical errors and typos, and come face-to-face with a er...certain familiar peg-legged sea captain who’s out for gold doubloons (in the form of an enormous fortune Violet’s set to inherit when she comes of age *cough*)  aplenty.

By now it’s obvious that “A Series of Unfortunate Events” is definitely not a bust. Netflix’s reimagining of Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events” novels can’t really go wrong. But, compared to its predecessors The Bad Beginning and the Reptile Room, the guardian featured in the episodes the Wide Window is the weakest of the bunch. When it comes down to it, the actress (Alfre Woodard)  playing Aunt Josephine just doesn’t have the same emotional heft and comedic timing as current and previous leads Neil Patrick Harris and Aasif Mandvi undeniably had. Dutifully, Woodard parrots Josephine’s scaredy-cat, fuddy-duddy lines about the dangers lurking everywhere and the beauty and brilliance of proper English, but she doesn’t actually inhabit the character.

Aunt Josephine feeling flirtaaay in her cardaay

The result is that in Netflix’s interpretation of the supposedly “fierce and formidable” Aunt Josephine is irredeemably the most cardboard character of the entire show. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare Woodard’s performance to that of Meryl Streep’s, who was cast as the agoraphobic, school marmy Aunt Jo in the feature film adaptation back in 2004. But it certainly is fair to acknowledge that Streep deftly brought her character to life and showed us a fragile woman on the edge (literally! That house! That cliff!) while also teasing that there was more to her than meets the eye. She was frantic, yes, but she had a quiet strength and when her daredevil past came to light it was intriguing as hell to see more of who this woman was. 

Instead, Woodard plays the dowager Aunt as a batty lady a couple of nuts short of a fruit cake but not much else. This could be funny if this angle was intentionally hammed up, much like in how Harris’s and his acting troupe’s absurd shenanigans are often bought hook-line-and-sinker by the adults who are none the wiser of their criminal activities. But instead, it’s her entire identity, and it’s not worthy of any special mention.

The visual effects in “The Wide Window” are also more meh than “wow”. The Lachrymose Leeches with their six rows of very sharp teeth and their one very sharp nose are not nearly disgusting and disturbing as they could be. When they surround the weathered little row boat the Baudelaire’s paddled to rescue Josephine, they look like little clumps of fungi brought to life and and aren’t shocking or scary in the slightest. I know, I know, it’s a lot to ask for something like the Chestburster from the Alien franchise but c’mon let’s crank up the ick factor!! Make us actually shriek and fear what could happen when these creepy critters are out for blood!

Love, limes and morbid gift shops!

The low-budget tone of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” is charming much of the time, it’s got a bit of a quirky off-beat feel to it, especially in the earliest episodes with the flat, wide and sweeping very ‘set’ like shots, but in some cases it just comes across as cheap and cheesy filmmaking. The Wide Window features the latter. Mother and Father Baudelaire take to the skies on a very erm...crudely animated jet plane in some VERY contrived and flimsy ‘action’ scenes that just scream “greenscreen!” It’s tough to take their triumphs seriously when it’s obvious that they’re not even close to being touched by real danger. Dang it, Netflix! The stakes were supposed to be higher than this! 

Give us butt kicking Cobes!

What the heck are Cobie Smulders and Will Arnett doing spouting canned dialogue back and forth to one another!? For cripes sake, Smoulders is an Agent of Shield why the heck isn’t kicking major baddie booty on screen!? Yeah, she and Arnett can “pilot” a plane and shoot and make big booms but here they feel like an imitation of Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino as the badass parental unit in 2001’s “Spy Kids” -- only here, they’re not really bad asses. Welp.  

On the other hand, Violet, Klaus and Sunny are absolute rockstars in this arc. When the Fickle Ferry stops running, (because, as the kids realize bottom print, weather permitting) they steal a ship and row row row that boat merrily down the lake in the middle of Hurricane Herman. So what do the youngsters discover in the caves scattered around Lachrymose Lake? Crates of prohibition era booze stacked up? No! Their presumably deceased (and most definitely) mad Aunt Josephine! However, the kids weren’t quick enough to intercept her banana snack break. Following in the footsteps of her dearly deceased husband Ike, Josephine too becomes chow for the notorious Loch leeches.

Klaus hits the books like a boss.

They young actors shine in several other entertaining scenes. One where Klaus (Louis Hynes) and Violet (Malina Weissman) and Sunny are forced along to an awkward brunch at the Anxious Clown Restaurant with Poe and Captain Sham/Olaf, and the kids are peddled “cheer up cheeseburgers” by their shady waiter after the untimely ‘death’ of their Aunt. Another is when they combat particularly nasty allergic reactions they deliberately triggered while at the resturant, so they’re able to get back to Aunt Josephine’s cliff-side death trap of a house to crack the code they’re convinced Josephine left them.

Ooops. Wrong photo!

Along with the acting from the rest of the cast and the smart dialogue, the plot of “The Wide Window”is a redeeming factor and is just about enough to compensate for Woodard’s bland and abysmal performance. The taxi driver obsessed with Moby Dick is a hoot, Lemony Snicket is as morose and insightful as ever, and we get even more teasers about the secret society Violet, Sunny and Klaus’s parents were affiliated in. One of the latest big reveals!?

A photo of the original Order of the Phoenix secret society teased in the previous episodes shows up among Josephine’s belongings. The photo-op is at the local Lucky Smells Lumber Mill-- a mere pickup truck drive’s away from the Lake. In a particularly juicy scene, the kids use their noggins to crack the code to Josephine’s safe (Ike!) and stumble upon sheafs of compelling photos, sheet music, a box of crackers and fascinating records and books about said mysterious society hidden away in the library. Watching Olaf woo the widowed Josephine in the guise of Captain Julio Sham is wickedly funny. His spoon-clapping sailor song that he serenades Josephine with while they taxi off to get fried egg sandwiches is goofy and hilarious. Harris literally saves every single scene he’s in with Woodard-- if there’s one actor who’s an unstoppable force in this show it’s him! No ifs ands or buts about it!

Methinks something is not adding up hear---I mean HERE.

Even though it’s a middle grade book series intended for an audience of readers in the elementary and middle school aged demographics, A Series of Unfortunate Events doesn’t rely on contrived and conventional happy endings. Things are a little dark, a little twisted and a whole lot unfortunate! That spirit of the books comes through in this television adaptation, as is the oh so remarkable way Daniel Handler had of writing to us kids as though we were intelligent, peers and equals, something Warburton embodies in even his smallest of scenes. There’s no condescension or skepticism about what the kids are capable of. Instead, their brightness and intuition is repackaged as some of their best attributes. As I was growing up and reading these stories, the Baudelaire orphans resiliency in the face of tremendous losses and nearly constant disappointments was inspiring and admirable. In the Series of Unfortunate Events universe being a child isn’t an insult, it’s an asset. In Netflix’s adaptation it continues to be so! These kids can’t be saved or protected by the adults around them in the crises they keep getting hammered with, so they gotta be there for themselves! After all, who else is going to be able to spot Olaf for who he really is?! It sure as heck isn’t a banker from Mulctuary Money Management!

Onnnnnwards!

What woes await us in the next installment, The Miserable Mill? One things for certain, it’s sure as heck got to involve some serious violations of child labor laws! And of course, an abundance of Olaf. 

 **images from the IMDB