I loved this season! I love that it stays so true to the spirit of the books, yet add enough to keep it suspenseful, even for those who know the plot from the books. Some of this has been discussed here before in the various threads, but I'm just going to write it anyway because I want to.
Probably what I most enjoyed about this season was the in-jokes directed at book fans. Specifically, one thing that made it feel so much more faithful to the books to me was that nearly any time any noteworthy change was made, it was lampshaded in dialogue, but subtly so. The example I can think of off the top of my head is the survival of Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender. I was holding my breath to see if they were going to survive, even though I'd already seen stills of them in TCC, and it seemed addressed at that concern that Hoig says "Stings real bad" when they enter the car. If they only knew how easy they got off!
The effect of this, or at least the effect it had on me, is an assurance that the people doing this adaptation had copies of the book on hand for reference, and had read them very carefully. It makes me feel like the whole thing is in safe hands.
Along the same lines, the ATWQ references were great! Barrymore Feint, past Lemony mentioning Stain'd-by-the-Sea, further reference to the Qwerty quote - am I missing any other big ones? Somehow all of this makes the books seem all the more relevant (because let's be honest, although ATWQ are good books in their own right, their main quality is their suprisingly tenuous connection to a series that matters so much to me personally, and anything that strengthens that connection is a minor miracle). I think maybe the reason I'm so hooked on all of these inside references is that I was watching the show with someone who hadn't read the book, and got to explain the references as they came.
I've seen the feminist elements (a term which I here use intersectionally to cover LGBT+ representation, among other things) discussed in the other threads, and I agree with what I think was the general gist of those discussions: It's nice little things to have, but throwaway easy-to-miss phrases like "her wife" and "my mothers" aren't exactly revolutionary. It's what I personally think of as passive feminism, and to me it seems like a decent thing to do while still being less preferable than actual, active feminism, which I guess in this case would've meant, say, having actual queer couples in the show (Charles and Sir could've been much more explicit, and would still not have had to be made any kind of big deal out of), or explicitly portraying Isadora as transgender (which I admit that, although I like that interpretation of the books, would just have given TAA even more information to convey; something which it already seemed to have a little too much of to handle).
To me, by far the most interesting thing about the "Her wife" line was that the Quagmires had previous guardians before being sent to Prufrock.
I do personally believe that it is important to have this kind of casual representation - it just needs to be backed up with actual, on-screen representation. Come to think of it, it'd be cool to have the Duchess of Winnipeg fill out that role.
I think the LGBT+ references are just one part of a few subtle efforts the adaptation makes to uphold a feminist standard. There's the stuff from the books, obviously - Violet having skills that are traditionally considered masculine, etc. - but there's also smaller things like the focus on Klaus' screams in TAA. Which, to be honest, did not work great for me; All it seemed to say was "Look, the boy is the one who screams the loudest, isn't that funny?". Which isn't funny unless you already believe that the girls would normally scream louder, so it seems counterproductive to me.
Still, I do believe it's intended as feminism, because this show is generally feminist in a lot of small places - like Olivia's friend who gave up her dissertation to become a welterweight boxer, or Klaus noting that lots of boys like to play with dolls. Whenever a character in the show needs to do or say something traditionally masculine, and it doesn't particularly matter who does or says it, it's generally a woman (and to a lesser extent, vice versa), which I do think is more effective - if less impactful - than what they did with Klaus' screaming.
I mostly love the volunteers. I think following Jacques from an earlier point makes perfect sense, and the complete change of Olivia's character isn't bad, either. I liked the morally grey character in the book, but I have to admit that I simply liked Show Olivia so much that I'm glad they changed her so I could get to experience that version of her, too. The thing I miss from the book is not so much having a character who is morally grey, but more having a character who demonstrates the difficulty/impossibility of remaining neutral during a schism.
My feelings for Larry are much the same as those for Olivia. I just like him, so it doesn't matter all that much to me that he's a totally different character from the books. Which of course he really isn't, he's just a more character. As Dante once said:
We now live in a world where Larry the waiter is a main character in ASoUE.
Also, his last name is Your-Waiter. Which is stupid, but made me laugh several times, so I still like it.
Having Jacques and Olivia so fleshed out, and portraying them in such a noble light, made me doubt a bit whether they were actually going to kill them. Which was great, because my hope that Jacques might live gave it a huge effect when he didn't. The same goes for Olivia - her role was to take up the torch. She could potentially survive, but get separated from the Baudelaires; she didn't really have to die in the version for the narrative to work. But she did, and the thought that she might have lived made the season finale so much more heartbreaking for me.
With so many volunteers roaming this season, Jacqueline seemed a little redundant, but not so much that it bothered me. I feel like she's just your prototypical hypercompetent secret agent, whereas Larry, Jacques and Olivia have a little more personality, and generally also more well-defined roles to play in the story.
I'm not very invested in any of the romantic pairings introduced in this season (except Olaf and Esmé (Osmé? Eslaf?)). The Baudelaires are both going to get more serious romantic interests in season 3, and Jacques and Olivia were already interesting enough without having to be in love - though Olivia's grief is a good motivation for her to keep seeking revenge on Olaf, and the scene with her watching the recordings of Jacques was pretty good.
I think I can see a little of Daniel Handler's fascination with taboos in both of the Baudelaires' TAA love interests: Klaus thinks Isadora looks "Different. Which is good." when disguised as his sister, and Violet will eventually have to deal with her attraction to someone who is identical to someone who's previously shown attraction to her. Both of those are situations that I could see happen in a novel like Watch Your Mouth, Adverbs or All the Dirty Parts. I didn't get a clear feeling about whether Duncan's feelings for Violet was supposed to be mutual, but even if they aren't - especially if they aren't - I think it lends weight to Violet's question in TE about which triplet called out her name.
After the first viewing, my favourite set of episodes is definitely THH. It was one of the scariest books, and the adaptation gave Olaf a chance to be as scary as I'd like him to be most of the time. His speech about hunting was perfect to me, highlighting the fact that in spite of his previous failures and occasional silliness, he is merciless, and that if he corners you, you will die. Also, the references to The Shining were spot-on. I'm even considering going to stay with my family for a few days before they get a chance to get this far without me, because I'm sure my dad and my brother would love those references, and I'd like to be in the room when they watch those episodes.
At first, I was just confused and slightly disappointed that they'd decided to change Officer Luciana's name just for a short gag, but the second time I thought it was pretty funny. It was only when she attempted to do the same thing in THH that I realised it was a reference to her four real names. Are they implying that her real name isn't actually Esmé Gigi Geniveve Squalor, or just that she's too pretentious to even imagine herself having fewer than four names?
By the way, does anyone have a guess why the characters sometimes switch around the words 'here' and 'which' in the phrase "a word which here means"? Lemony did it a few times in season one, and it bothered me then, so I was a little disappointed to see Mr. Poe doing it as one of the first things in season 2.
I think those were most of my initial reactions. But honestly, most of my actual initial reaction is just pure glee at seeing these books finally come to life in such a faithful manner.