The Lemony Snicket series changes it up for its second season
While Season 1 of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” followed a specific format in it episodes, that formula is slowly broken in its second season.
We rejoin the Baudelaire orphans at Prufrock Preparatory School with Count Olaf hot on their trail.
Unlike the previous season, the Baudelaires are not always privileged with single guardians who always end up dying on them.
Instead they travel to even more, as Mr. Poe put it, “adventures in all sorts of exotic locales.”
Count Olaf, played by the incredibly talented Neil Patrick Harris, returns with more crazy costumes, character depth and musical numbers.
Answers slowly come in the form of new and old characters that all begin to fill in the questions of the audience while also creating other ones.
Viewers get to learn more about Lemony Snicket as he tells the story of the Baudelaires.
Snicket also hints every now and then about how his own life is intertwined with all the other characters, building up to when maybe he too joins the story for Season 3.
As for the Baudelaires, the fact that they can still keep their heads up through all this is motivational and sometimes on the cringing side.
The sorts of obstacles whether they are the characters the story introduces or the setting can be monotonous and unsettling. It is because of these characters you may end up groaning or just needing to take a break because their mannerisms can be very annoying.
If the story of the Baudelaires in this season teaches anything it’s that the bad guys don’t always get what they deserve.
The same applies to the good guys.
Though some characters will grind on your every last nerve, others will touch your heart, bring nothing but laughter or inspire curiosity.
Others will also inevitably die as so many others before them.
This second season does not follow the previous format.
Even though the audience feels like they know what will happen next something else happens to throw the viewers off.
Cliffhangers deliver a sense of nervousness, not anxiety, if viewers choose not to watch all of the episodes in one sitting.
The first season wrapped up every episode with a pretty, tragic little bow but the second season likes to cut you off in the middle of processing whatever happened.
Answers can be found in this second season but new questions arise from it.
This is the story of the Baudelaires though; there is nothing but horror and inconvenience on the way.
In the meantime the audience is left hanging on the side of a cliff until the story resumes.
Only Season 3 will wrap up this tragic tale of the Baudelaires.
Cast: A-
Script: B+
Cinematography: A
Soundtrack: A-
Overall: B+
