Today I'm wrapping up my look at season one of the Netflix Original Series 'A Series Of Unfortunate Events' with episode eight 'The Miserable Mill Part 2'
The Tale of the Baudelaires
It’s tale full of
sorrow and woe, that is quite clear that is how the story goes for we
have reached the end of season one of A Series of Unfortunate Events
which certainly sets the stage for season two in a big way, but
obviously those of you who have read the Lemony Snicket novels would
be aware of this.
However since I am
not familiar with the novels and have been watching the series based
on its own merit, I can assure that I am very excited to see the
continuing adventures of Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire to see
what happens at this boarding school that Mr. Poe shipped them off
too after getting his totally undeserved promotion and following the
incidents with have occurred involving Count Olaf.
But we are getting
ahead of ourselves, let us wrap up our look at The Miserable Mill
with part two of the story, which sees that Klaus when he hears the
word ‘Lucky’ he turns into an obedient tool for causing fatal or
near-fatal accidents at the mill. Turns out that Count Olaf’s plan
was to first present himself as Shirley St. Ives, a receptionist for
Dr. Orwell looking to adopt three children, and I actually like this,
as it shows Olaf trying a different tactic, but his plan doesn’t
work when Sir, the person running the Lucky Smells Lumber Mill,
refuses to let the Baudelaires go into ‘his / her’ care because
they are a source of cheap labor (they chew less gum than an adult)
and the only way he’d let them leave is they cause accidents, which
is why when Klaus is his trace state, he’ll intentionally try to
crush a man to death using a stamping machine and be more than happy
to work the controls to send a guy tied to a log down towards large
buzz saw.
Which leads me to
the discuss the type of hypnosis use, which is the classic trigger
word in order to get the person hypnotized to perform whatever action
they were programmed for. It’s possibly the most common of hypnosis
seen in fiction and used quite effectively for the most part. Most
often however, a story forget to have a trigger word to counter-act
the hypnosis, but in the case of this episode that is not the case,
and it expands to more than just Klaus, for all the Lucky Smells
Limber Mill workers were hypnotized to be ‘happy workers for no
pay’ so finding the deprogram phrases plays a big part in the
story.
But there is the
question of why Dr. Orwell would do this, and the reason for it is
simply ego and revenge, she knew the Baudelaires parents and they
caused her to be banned from her profession as an optometrist, and
thus she struck a deal with Sir that if he split the profits of the
mill with her, she’ll give him a perfect work force. For all
intents and purposes Dr. Orwell had it going good unto Count Olaf
re-entered her life, and gradually because of Olaf’s own ego and
greed, their alliance falls apart with Olaf turning on Orwell when
the deprogrammed Mill workers come looking for answer, ans she ends
up accidentally falling backward into the blazing inferno. In
comparison to some of the other deaths seen and implied of the cause,
Orwell’s death is clearly more a fluke.
Then we have the
ending which sets the state for the next story called ‘The Austere
Academy’, which sees that not only Baudelaires left waiting to meet
who I’m assuming is the headmaster, but also two of the three
children of the Mother and Farther we’ve been following as
side-story as well, turns out that like the Baudelaires, these two
kids Isadora and either Duncan or Quigley had their parents murdered
in a fire (and I’m assuming which each ever one of the boys that is
not at the boarding school as well), and they like Klaus have part of
a broken spy glass, thus going back to what I said this episode sets
up the next story.
Which we will not
see for a while, depending on when they are filming the series, and
I’m assuming they are going them in short order to keep the young
actors involved from aging too much.
My overall
impression of the season as a whole is that they are indeed staying
as true as possible to source material with the number of references
and explanations done to make sure everyone is able to follow along,
which makes it great family entertainment. The characters are fully
likeable unless presented as complete buffoons for no real reason
other than the story calls for it. Outside of the Wide Window being a
bit uneven, the remaining three stories were really good and as I
said before I am excited for season two.
With that said, the
next Netflix series that I intend to look at will be Marvel’s Iron
Fist when they debuts on March 17, 2017 as normally the middle of
March means most of the weekly shows I follow should be break prior
to April Sweeps, so perfect filler material.
