I'll admit that this one did satisfy my yearlong Snicket anticipation appetite. But what happened, I'll also admit, isn't exactly what I thought.
Here's what I thought would happen:
Duncan, Isadora and Hector come back. Captain Widdershins and Phil are still lost, but they send word to Fiona that they are safe and still alive. Fiona appears at the Hotel Denouement near the middle of the story.
Fernald comes with Fiona to the Hotel Denouement, and they order a room adjacent to the Quagmires. The Baudelaires share a suite with the Quagmires, and the party is crashed by Olaf.
He reveals he has the Snicket File, and the Baudelaires manage to steal it from him. After reading it, they learn there is no hope of their parents' lives.
Justice Strauss reappears without Jerome Squalor, who is doing work as a volunteer elsewhere. The Baudelaires then have to go undercover as guests on vacation with Hector, who is also disguised, and with Kit, who is also disguised.
He doesn't unleash the Medusoid Mycelium, and Klaus decides things couldn't work out between he and Fiona.
Duncan, who has been crushing on Violet, is rejected, but is okay with it. The Quagmires then disappear as the penultimate major event in the story.
Esmé finds the sugar bowl, but hands it to Carmelita to hold. In her natural stupidness and not knowing what it is nor how important it is, she flings it into the sea and it is not seen again for some time.
Olaf explodes at Carmelita, but Esmé assures him it was "just an accident."
The carnival freaks---Hugo, Kevin, and Colette, go fishing in the pond, stupid yet hungry as they like none of the restaurants at the hotel. Kevin pulls the sugar bowl out.
Meanwhile, two bellhops are taking laundry down to the laundry room when Kevin loses the sugar bowl. Another bellhop, not knowing what it is, puts it in the lost and found.
Neither Olaf nor Kit end up with it, but it is picked up by an anonomous person. After a fight over it outside near the pond, it is dropped and sinks to the bottom of the pond.
The Quagmires turn up again, but only for a short time as Kit suggests she takes all of them--including Fiona, Fernald and the Baudelaires--waterskiing.
Fernald has trouble, as he has hooks. He sinks in the water, but discovers the sugar bowl. A separate tributary formed from the pond and carried it away.
He tries to grasp it with his hooks, but has to go up for air. When he gets back underwater, he fumbles with the sugar bowl, until he gets it.
With his natural notoriousness, he resents giving it to Kit, but doesn't want to give it to Olaf. He opens the sugar bowl, and a poisonous liquid darts into his eyes, making him temporarily blind.
It falls back into the sea, and is never seen again---period. Or so everyone thinks.
The denouements of the story are these
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Olaf sends Carmelita deep sea diving, and tells her to give anything she finds to him. After she asks "Like what?" he explodes at her, and the sugar bowl slowly drifts by the current they are in, and she goes diving in.
When she reports nothing is found, Olaf suspects she is up to something, until he sends Colette diving in and she finds nothing as well, except for a rusty old long paring knife, a smelly old black boot, two dead eels and a pair of goggles and a snorkel.
Count Olaf decides to use the paring knife as a weapon against Klaus unless Kit surrenders the sugar bowl, which he thinks she has. Finally, she rescues Klaus by giving Olaf a fake sugar bowl with a substance that she says you have to drink until you can't drink "no more."
It turns out the liquid is a sleeping drink, and Olaf is knocked out for a few hours while Kit figures out what to do next.
She suggests they all take the SSHAMH and escape, leaving Olaf behind.
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