A Series of Unfortunate Events Season 2: The Baudelaires' perilous alliterative adventures continue

In season 1 of A Series of Unfortunate Events, as we follow the tragic story of the orphaned Baudelaire children, there is a rare moment of hope: Violet, Klaus and Sunny’s parents were believed to have been killed in a fire that also destroyed their home. Just as the children discover that their parents were active members of a secret organisation, the scene shifts to another location where two characters — known simply as Mother and Father — are fighting off assailants to get back to their family. It’s a heart-stopping moment: you so badly want the Baudelaire children to be reunited with their parents, and for their lives to regain some semblance of normalcy. Miraculously, the Mother and Father do get back home, and the first thing they do — naturally — is go find their children. Except, their children aren’t the Baudelaires after all, but a set of triplets, known as the Quagmires. [caption id=“attachment_4423799” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] A still from A Series of Unfortunate Events.[/caption] The impact of that moment is difficult to describe. If you’re invested to any degree at all in the (mis)adventures of Violet, Klaus and Sunny, then you feel horribly let down for them. The moment is a reminder: there is to be no happy ending for the Baudelaires, and if all your previous experiences of stories has lulled you into thinking that sooner or later, there will be a neat resolution — a triumphant changing of the fortunes for the children — then this is the equivalent of the rug being pulled out from under your expectations. This is what A Series of Unfortunate Events does: It shows you — constantly — that the world is a grim, dark place, and that miracles that alleviate its bleakness are only a mirage. A Series of Unfortunate Events season 1: Netflix’s take on Lemony Snicket’s classic is a fun visual treat After their ‘Bad Beginning’ in season 1 — when they’re told that their parents have died and they’re to be shipped off to a guardian they’ve never met — things go steadily downhill for the Baudelaires. Their paths cross almost immediately with Count Olaf, the villain who wants their inheritance (and revenge on their parents) and will stop at nothing to reach his goal. Sure, their ingenuity and gumption sees the Baudelaires evade most of Count Olaf’s wild schemes, but he’s always a step behind, bringing chaos in his wake, and ruining any chances at happiness Violet, Klaus and Sunny may have. Season 2 sees the Baudelaires continue their miserable journey, picking up from where we left off. The executor of their parents’ estate, the eternally-coughing Mr Poe of Mulctuary Money Management has dropped Violet, Klaus and Sunny off at Prufrock Prep, a dismal boarding school where, as orphans, they’re only entitled to sleep in a tin shack, and attend classes where they pointlessly measure objects or listen to meaningless anecdotes. The two bright spots in their existence are the school library (and librarian) and friends they make at Prufrock – Duncan and Isabelle Quagmire (who lost their own parents and a brother very soon after that momentous homecoming in season 1). [caption id=“attachment_4423803” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] A still from Season 2 of A Series of Unfortunate Events.[/caption] Soon enough, Count Olaf gets wind of their whereabouts and shows up at Prufrock Prep (his own alma mater incidentally) to carry out his nefarious plans. The children foil him, but not before his gang kidnaps the Quagmires. What follows are more of the Baudelaires’ alliterative adventures — they’re taken to new guardians Jerome and Esme Squalor (whose last name is in total contrast to their net worth), nearly find the Quagmires before being betrayed, are left in a village that will raise them as its wards, encounter tragedy and villainy there, finally rescue Duncan and Isabelle, must run from Count Olaf deep into the hinterlands where an encounter in a hospital unfolds, followed by one at a carnival, and ends on a literal cliffhanger (Count Olaf sends Violet and Klaus tumbling down a precipice). That summary barely begins to scratch the surface of the Baudelaires’ journey and the full emotional cost of it. It doesn’t, for instance, account for the horrifying deaths of the children’s two champions (among the rare adults who actually seem to understand the mortal peril the Baudelaires are in). Or the moment when they get a clue that one of their parents *may* just be alive (we won’t be counting on it though). Or the somewhat confused headway they make into unravelling the mystery of the secret organisation called VFD of which both their parents and Count Olaf were a part. The whimsy of the storytelling and imagery of A Series of Unfortunate Events tends to alleviate the stark, unrelenting misery of its story, but the visual tone as well as the plot itself, takes an even darker turn this season. In season 1, it was easy to dismiss Count Olaf as a buffoon; he bungled up so much that even when he had the children in a tight spot, there was the knowledge they’d escape. There’s no such reassurance this time. Count Olaf is meaner and more sinister – and there are dead bodies to prove it. The children get little to no breathing room as he catches up to them with alarming quickness. Outsmarting Olaf buys them only the smallest of reprieves and you know that things are about to get a whole lot worse for the Baudelaires. One of the glaring motifs of the A Series of Unfortunate Events stories is how adults consistently let down the vulnerable children in their care: starting with Mr Poe, who leaves the children with just about anyone who’ll take them, to Jerome Squalor – who’s too much of a coward to be able to protect the children. In this world, the grown ups repeatedly let children down, and it is the children who must be adults and take responsibility for themselves. In fact, the adults are often the ones who put the children into dangerous situations, with their irresponsible decision making. (And the adults who position themselves as the children’s saviours have more often than not, unsavoury intentions.) An instance that illustrates this point particularly well, occurs in the episode ‘The Vile Village part 1’, when Mr Poe is driving the Baudelaires to their next guardians – an entire village-ful of people. He glibly informs the children that the villagers “draw lots, you know like in that Shirley Jackson story” to decide who will house and feed the new wards. What’s not mentioned is that in the Shirley Jackson story, the lottery decides which of the villagers will be stoned to death in an annual ritual. Season 2 comes just as the author of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books – Daniel Handler, who writes under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket – has been called out by multiple women for reportedly making lewd and sexist comments. Handler has since apologised, but the incident is a real-life reminder of a point often hammered home by his series: that what may appear eccentric, charming and frivolous on the surface is often hiding a streak of real ugliness beneath. A Series of Unfortunate Events season 2 is currently streaming on Netflix