Yep –
another post-season-3 Series of
Unfortunate Events write-up (note:
even though we do get a ring of what I’m about to talk about in the
books, I feel it’s emphasized more on the show.) This isn’t the sort of Relationship Spotlight
that celebrates a fictional relationship I adore that makes me feel all
squishy, as is the case with most of them.
Instead, it’s the kind that examines a relationship that just kind of
fascinates me (see also, Tony and Sid on Skins.) Spoilers for “The Carnivorous Carnival”
through “The End.”
From the
start, Count Olaf is an interesting villain for the Baudelaire orphans to
encounter because there are drastically-different sides to him. He’s a horrifically-hammy actor and
chronically dumb, but at the same time, he’s genuinely frightening – not many
baddies could forget they’re the one driving their own getaway car in one scene
and pull off convincingly threatening a toddler with a knife in another. This makes him a great contrast to Violet,
Klaus, and Sunny, who are all well-spoken and intelligent and usually try to do
the noble thing. His oafishness is
played for laughs, but then he goes menacing on them and you remember that
these are children trying to escape a fortune-hungry murderer who’s fixated on
them.
A running
theme of the series is that the Baudelaires immediately recognize Count Olaf in
every single disguise (because of his aforementioned terrible acting and
general stupidity, all his disguises are laughably transparent,) but they can
never get an adult to believe them, even the ones who care about them. Perhaps this highlights the cleverness of the
children, but it also shows what a horrible situation they’re in, because they
see the writing on the wall every time and no
one will listen. For all of VFD’s
background dealings with codes, secgret signals, and feats of daring do, the
Baudelaires always have to save themselves.
Guardians come and go – they’re too frightened or skittish or naïve to
be of any use to the Baudelaires, or they’re casualties of Count Olaf’s desire
for the Baudelaire fortune. In their
lives, Count Olaf is the largest constant they have besides each other.
The show
pulls some intriguing things out of the Baudelaires’ scenes with Count Olaf, beginning
at the end of season 2 and carrying over into season 3. I’m just captivated when, at the end of “The
Carnivorous Carnival,” Count Olaf tasks the in-disguise Violet and Klaus with
burning down Caligari Carnival.
Obviously, the kids don’t want to do it but feel like it’s the only way
not to blow their cover. Seeing their
reticence, Count Olaf is so tender
with them, admitting that it was hard for him the first time too and offering
them his own lighter to get them started.
It’s an eerie moment that just gets even more twisted when it’s revealed
that he already knows they’re the Baudelaires in disguise. The man who burned down their house, killing
their parents in the process, helps them to start a fire of their own? Shiver.
This
weird closeness between Count Olaf and the Baudelaires crops up again in both “The
Penultimate Peril” and “The End.” There’s
of course the scene in which the Baudelaires try to talk Count Olaf down from
firing the harpoon gun and he quietly says, “But it’s all I know how to do.” They’re able to get their hands on the gun
and it feels like it might be a real moment, but then everything goes wrong (as
it always does.)
It’s when
Count Olaf is at his lowest that he appeals most to the children. When he’s captured by VFD to be put on trial,
he dangles the promise of truth in front of them: truths about their parents, about VFD, about everything
they’ve investigated that’s been held tantalizingly out of reach. He does the same thing in “The End,”
similarly when he’s in greatest peril.
The Baudelaires are smart enough to recognize an obvious gambit when
they see one, but that doesn’t stop them from being tempted. They’re also smart enough to crave answers,
and as wicked as Count Olaf is throughout the series, the prospect of real
understanding when they’ve been kept so much in the dark is a seductive
one.
In the midst
of these last-ditch efforts to save his own skin by giving the Baudelaires the
knowledge they want, Count Olaf also positions himself, weirdly, as the only
one they can genuinely trust. Odd,
coming from a villain who’s constantly using disguises to try and get them in
his clutches so he can steal their fortune, but in a way, he wears his villainy
on his sleeve with those transparent disguises.
Count Olaf both disgusts and terrifies the Baudelaires, but they know
where they stand with him. They know what
to expect, unlike the guardians who let them down or the tangled web woven by
the Volunteers who get them mixed up in all sorts of confusion without ever
telling them anything. In the middle of
his own trial, Count Olaf accuses the assembled adults from past episodes of
doing far more to help him than they ever helped the Baudelaires; through their
ineffectiveness and/or incompetence, they cleared the path for him at every
turn.
Now of
course, this is as preposterous as it is gross.
Count Olaf is at the root of all the Baudelaires’ unfortunate events,
and trying to promote this bizarre kinship between them, even as a ploy, is
twisted. The way the series presents it,
I’d say it’s partly gaslighting (obviously,) but I also think Count Olaf may
believe this, at least a tiny bit. There’s
the fact that no one ever really thinks of themselves as the villain of their
own story, and we see plenty of scenes in the final episodes in which Count
Olaf genuinely seems to relate to the Baudelaires, a kind of dark mirror of
what they might have become had they made different choices. In his justifications and self-pitying, he
tries to claim that they’re really not so different, and at least a small part
of him seems to think that’s true.
But what I
really appreciate is that, however messy and complicated all this gets, the
series doesn’t absolve Count Olaf or bring him into the fold. His last scenes in “The End” are confusing
and emotional for the Baudelaires, showing a side of him they’ve never so much
as glimpsed before, and it throws them for a loop. He does a noble thing (helping Kit,) but it
doesn’t erase his crimes, and the lovely poetry he quotes in his last scene can’t
change things either. When he dies in
the end, the Baudelaires seem, to me, kind of numb. They don’t know what to think. They’re still trying to process what they’ve
just witnessed, and even apart from all that, Count Olaf has been such a major
force in their lives for so long now that they can’t quite take in the fact
that their time of running from him is finally over.
A
fascinating relationship, charged with violence and manipulation, so complex
even though it remains so clear on the face of it. Bravo to everyone involved in bringing this
dynamic to the screen.
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