There Are No Happy Endings in <i>A Series of Unfortunate Events</i>
The Netflix adaptation of the popular Lemony Snicket children’s book series is a weird, hyper-self-aware, bleak bit of fun.
Since its debut in 1999, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Eventshas stood out for being a children’s series that didn’t believe in happy endings. The popular books followed three young siblings whose parents die in a fire and who are placed in the care of one hapless or unsavory guardian after another, all the while being hunted by an evil distant relative hungry for their enormous fortune. Page after page proved verbose, fatalistic, dark—and utterly engrossing, thanks in part to the series’s enigmatic narrator, its macabre sensibility, and its wonky literariness. But more than anything it always seemed to assume the best of its young readers, believing they possessed the emotional and intellectual maturity to enjoy such a tale.
