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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Jan 14, 2019 11:10:46 GMT -5
I think Fiona quite forgettable in the book. The Quagmires are almost duplicates of the Baudelaires in the sense that they're kids without flaws, each with a special skill, and you could give their lines to Violet and Klaus and not notice a difference (albeit contextually). To have a new friend their age who doesn't entirely get along with them, who has flaws which create new tensions and who has their own distinctive voice is refreshing; more so than yet another hyper-intelligent nice kid with not much more to them than a special skill.
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Post by Dante on Jan 14, 2019 11:35:06 GMT -5
Something of an outlier of an experience there, as Fiona's been provoking strong reactions from people for years for exactly the reasons you attribute to the show. Personally, I was quite looking forward to a version of TGG that would hopefully correct some of the misconceptions about the character from over the years; what she did not need was a hatchet job.
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Post by Violent BUN Fortuna on Jan 14, 2019 13:04:07 GMT -5
I have to say that my impression of Part 1 in particular was that it was written by somebody who didn't like Fiona; it engages in so many little moments that undermine her relationship with the Baudelaires and undermine her as a character. I agree with this. I am very open about the fact that I do not like Fiona for a variety of reasons, but I wanted her character to be portrayed well and accurately, and instead I think they presented us with a poor caricature of who she is in the books, and used her merely as a source for conflict, rather than treating her as a character in her own right.
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Jan 14, 2019 13:44:29 GMT -5
I think her inner-conflict makes her more complex and layered. Her family strains are emphasised, and she is lost and under pressure, making more sense of her questionable decisions, including the ultimate decision to join her brother. This, with the social conflict she creates (Klaus likes her and Violet dislikes her, before they meet in the middle as she becomes an anti-hero) appropriately sets up the acceptance of people being neither good or bad, which becomes an important theme in the next episodes. I don't think she's merely a device for conflict.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Jan 14, 2019 21:23:17 GMT -5
I have to say that my impression of Part 1 in particular was that it was written by somebody who didn't like Fiona; it engages in so many little moments that undermine her relationship with the Baudelaires and undermine her as a character. You mentioned her open flirtations with Klaus were refreshing - what did you make of their relationship overall? Do you feel its portrayal was successful despite Fiona's distanced relationship with the Baudelaires as a unit? I think her inner-conflict makes her more complex and layered. Her family strains are emphasised, and she is lost and under pressure, making more sense of her questionable decisions, including the ultimate decision to join her brother. This, with the social conflict she creates (Klaus likes her and Violet dislikes her, before they meet in the middle as she becomes an anti-hero) appropriately sets up the acceptance of people being neither good or bad, which becomes an important theme in the next episodes. I don't think she's merely a device for conflict. Fiona and Fernald, in their own ways, both embody the morally ambiguous character type you describe. Your comment makes wonder about their differences. Given what we know of each character's motives and intentions, do you think one of the two siblings was more justified than the other in their willingness to help Olaf / hurt or treat the Baudelaires poorly?
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Jan 15, 2019 4:35:40 GMT -5
Fiona hands Olaf the fungus, which is terrible, but it's to save her brother, and there's a small chance he might not keep hold of it forever. She is a child in an intense situation where difficult decisions need to be made quickly. After that, she acts heroically.
Meanwhile, Fernald assists in the murder / attempted murder of various good people (including Violet), helps kidnap children and was going to torture the Baudelaires with his hooks; not to protect anybody, but because he was cast out by his family and associates. He was an adult under no time pressure whatsoever, capable of making sensible decisions and capable of going to get a job and making his own life.
Fernald using his salad excuse shows how he doesn't truly acknowledge the severity of the awful things he's done for no truly justifiable reason. He has a lifetime of redemption to work on, but before that, he needs to stop the salad nonsense and accept that he is a terrible person, not a salad. I don't recall him ever apologising for what he's done. I feel his moral corruption goes far beyond Fiona's, partly because of his crimes and partly because of his inability to acknowledge their severity.
What do you think?
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Post by Dante on Jan 15, 2019 6:54:45 GMT -5
I have to say that my impression of Part 1 in particular was that it was written by somebody who didn't like Fiona; it engages in so many little moments that undermine her relationship with the Baudelaires and undermine her as a character. You mentioned her open flirtations with Klaus were refreshing - what did you make of their relationship overall? Do you feel its portrayal was successful despite Fiona's distanced relationship with the Baudelaires as a unit? It's difficult to say (in part as my memory is already tidying away my experience of the episodes, like a bad dream). There's a lot less of the relationship, obviously, because the Baudelaires and Fiona only spend the opening and climax of the story together at all; and perhaps that's why they push it more strongly in the opening section, actually. There's very little time for development across the course of the story as the Baudelaires and Fiona spend the story apart, and so the TV show's take is a bit more simplistic in consequence. Where the book had the space for the relationship between Fiona and the Baudelaires to build up and change over the course of events, from their initial alliance as young people who are outsiders to V.F.D.'s secrets, to their diverging priorities when Fiona is shaken yet again by her abandonment by a family member and Sunny's infection plunges them into crisis, to their final acceptance of the different paths they have to take to stay true to what they value most - the Netflix show has to compress all that into basically a third of the time; so we pretty much start straight off with Fiona's troubled neophyte captaincy, the bond between Klaus and Fiona as researchers, and her philosophical and personal disagreements with Violet, all packed together and diluted rather than developing over time into a moral crisis that defines the book. The show isn't particularly interested in having Fiona actually spend time with the Baudelaires; one consequence of which is that the hook-handed man's relationship with Sunny affects him more than his relationship with his sister. You'll notice I'm talking more about Fiona's relationship with the Baudelaires as a whole; so far as her relationship with Klaus goes, there simply isn't as much to go on. Girl meets boy, girl gets stuffed under a desk rather than participating in the plot, girl says goodbye to boy. I think TGG also suffers in places from the same disease as The End; it wants to get things over with quickly, but that hurry tends to reveal why the books were structured differently in the first place. Granted, the format of the show does have its advantages. Because of its unlimited perspective, and because it actually knows what's going to happen in TPP, it's able to set up Fiona joining Count Olaf and her brother's continued loyalty as obvious ploys which are rapidly seen through, resulting in their betrayal the instant they have the opportunity. In the book it's less clear-cut, largely as I think Handler hadn't yet decided what he was going to do with them in the next volume. That's the sort of thing I was hoping the show would do more of, take advantage of continuity rather than having to guess; but then there's the sugar bowl, of course.
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Post by Violent BUN Fortuna on Jan 15, 2019 8:12:39 GMT -5
Argh so many new comments since I last checked this thread. Essentially, to summarise/clarify what I've been thinking and saying, I don't regard anything the show did in these episodes as 'character development': instead, I think they just changed some of the characters, which is not the same thing at all. And as Dante correctly points out, by reducing the time Fiona actually spends with the Baudelaires, they had to essentially toss out the character developments (and relationship developments) of the book, and instead squash everything they could into a much shorter time frame, which is clunky and rushed to say the least. Instead of seeing Fiona's interactions with the Baudelaires evolve over time and due to circumstance, everything is just thrown in mostly at the start, which doesn't make any sense and loses all the depth of the book. It also results in certain things, such as Fiona's line 'When you think of me, think of a food you love very much,' making absolutely no sense because they're never given a chance to talk about developing a food based code. Which was kind of hilarious but also just highlighted the inadequacies of the show's changes. Also, I agree with Quisby that the Quagmires are very distinct characters from the Baudelaires within the books. They have similar sensibilities, but I don't think they're carbon copies or even close to it. All that said, despite disagreeing on Fiona's presentation within the show and the Quagmires' presentation within the books, I wholeheartedly agree with Liam R. Findlay that Fernald's moral corruption far outweighs Fiona's, and I would like to thank you for writing the words 'he needs to [...] accept that he is a terrible person, not a salad' because it really made me laugh and also it's an amazing put down and I want to use it on someone ASAP. I mean, maybe it's a bit specific, but I think it could work.
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Onder
Reptile Researcher
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Post by Onder on Jan 15, 2019 9:08:34 GMT -5
Fiona hands Olaf the fungus, which is terrible, but it's to save her brother, and there's a small chance he might not keep hold of it forever. She is a child in an intense situation where difficult decisions need to be made quickly. After that, she acts heroically. Meanwhile, Fernald assists in the murder / attempted murder of various good people (including Violet), helps kidnap children and was going to torture the Baudelaires with his hooks; not to protect anybody, but because he was cast out by his family and associates. He was an adult under no time pressure whatsoever, capable of making sensible decisions and capable of going to get a job and making his own life. Fernald using his salad excuse shows how he doesn't truly acknowledge the severity of the awful things he's done for no truly justifiable reason. He has a lifetime of redemption to work on, but before that, he needs to stop the salad nonsense and accept that he is a terrible person, not a salad. I don't recall him ever apologising for what he's done. I feel his moral corruption goes far beyond Fiona's, partly because of his crimes and partly because of his inability to acknowledge their severity. What do you think? I'd have to agree. I feel like, as viewers, Fernald's chef salad speech is supposed to act as a sort of epiphany, but it really doesn't hold up under scrutiny for the reasons you mentioned. There are degrees of evil and he shouldn't get to absolve himself, without apologizing, simply because nobody is 100% altruistic. Ultimately, I think the most powerful messages the series has to offer involve both the Bauds dedication to each other and coping with grief. The moral relativism rings a bit hollow to me. Unrelated thought: The Water Cycle poster in these episodes is amazing, and I would unironically get one. Definitely my favorite prop from the show.
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Jan 15, 2019 11:42:29 GMT -5
While I criticise Fernald for excusing himself so easily, I don't criticise the show for developing the salad metaphor through him and having him excuse himself, because it makes good sense to the storytelling and developing themes, whether we agree with Fernald's morals or not. It also results in certain things, such as Fiona's line 'When you think of me, think of a food you love very much,' making absolutely no sense because they're never given a chance to talk about developing a food based code. It's funny you mention that. I watched this episode with my parents last night (they've loved the Grim Grotto episodes, as non-book-readers), but my dad said "huh?" after Fiona's food line.
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Post by Violent BUN Fortuna on Jan 15, 2019 13:34:29 GMT -5
Oh yes, I mean, I enjoy the discussion in both the books and the show regarding the salad metaphor, even though I don't approve of Fernald excusing himself like that. In fact, I think the fact that he is so clearly just using the salad thing as an excuse makes it an altogether more interesting discussion because although it could be an interesting and to some extent valid statement, from him it is all too hollow and meaningless.
Yeah, my brother (who has read the books, but only once, I think, and years ago), was similarly bemused by that line (although his objection was 'You barely know each other!').
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Post by Uncle Algernon on Jan 15, 2019 16:57:26 GMT -5
The moral relativism rings a bit hollow to me. Give the show some credit — remember the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender's catchphrase in TSS?
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Onder
Reptile Researcher
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Post by Onder on Jan 15, 2019 18:58:56 GMT -5
The moral relativism rings a bit hollow to me. Give the show some credit — remember the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender's catchphrase in TSS? Haha yeah that was hilarious. Though I disagree with moral relativism, it's still pretty cool to see it presented in such a thoughtful and creative way. ASOUE is primarily a dark comedy so I'm really just nitpicking here.
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Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
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Post by Antenora on Jan 17, 2019 12:58:17 GMT -5
Did anyone else notice, when the Baudelaires were investigating the grotto, that they found a set of shackles and restraints? It looked very much like those which Dr. Orwell used on Klaus. This leads us to a disturbing conclusion: Gregor Anwhistle was testing the Mycelium (and who knows what else) on humans. Maybe he also got Dr. Georgina Orwell to hypnotize them into "volunteering" so nobody could accuse him of using unconsenting subjects.
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Post by Violent BUN Fortuna on Jan 17, 2019 19:21:24 GMT -5
Did anyone else notice, when the Baudelaires were investigating the grotto, that they found a set of shackles and restraints? It looked very much like those which Dr. Orwell used on Klaus. This leads us to a disturbing conclusion: Gregor Anwhistle was testing the Mycelium (and who knows what else) on humans. Maybe he also got Dr. Georgina Orwell to hypnotize them into "volunteering" so nobody could accuse him of using unconsenting subjects. The shackles reminded me very much of ATWQ and Hangfire's enslavement of the town's children.
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