Netflix A Series of Unfortunate Reviews, The Austere Academy

I too read the series rather late and while I agree for the most part I must say that my take on the series as a whole was Handler being honest with children that adults are terrible at recognising child abuse and abusive situations. Or that if they do recognise it they act like they can’t do anything to help, that it’s none of their business, stuff like that because most of the adults in the series do this (Mr Poe being a recurring one)

I loved the books and am enjoying the series. I will admit, when I found the book series, I was in the middle of a nasty lawsuit against a school system that was discriminating against kids with learning/ developmental disabilities. I won't go into too many details, but the school system was keeping all of us in one class and treating us like crap. I was in the fourth grade at the time, but I seemed to be one of the few kids who knew something was wrong. I told my parents, who are very kind and loving, about it, but they didn't believe me until they visited my class one day. I read the books and saw them having the same conversations with adults about the wrongness of their situation I was. Dom, you may have seen the plot as silly and stupid, but I lived a situation that could have come out of these books. (Which should terrify every sane human on the planet.) Reading the books helped me deal with the absurdity of what I was going through in real life. As an adult, I see the books for simple fair they are, but I owe these books for helping me get through a tough time. That alone gives them a special place for me.

A. M. Paulson

I guess I just treated the series as one big mystery and wanted to know what the whole point was. Book 6 was new when I was 12, so I grew up invested in each volume's release. It made the ending that much more disappointing though.

Your Librarian

OOO Crossover for Interview with a Vampire!

David Phillips

I love the series and the books. Mostly because they are so surreal and make no sense. That's what I love about them. The later books I think after circus are not as good as the earlier ones. But it is still interesting for me to watch your review even though you disagree with me. It doesn't stop me from loving the series or the books.

To be honest, I love the series. I know it’s stupid at times, and the animation is terrible, but I can’t not love it, don’t know why. If I were allowed to plug my stardust, in fact, I would tell people that I have made reactions of some of the episodes there and that I’d love it if they checked it out

Dom complains about deadpan delivery, then hits me with the hilarious reading of ‘come at me bro’. Well played, sir, well played. (Clap)

Praise him, for he is mighty!

Paweł Kacprzyk

I remembered my favourite thing about this book was the breaking of formula where the kids immediately identify Olaf and no one else believes them; changing to the Baudelaire 's going along with the disguise and pretending they don't recognise him. I was pretty disappointed that they left it out of the Netflix show.

Chelsea Monk

ASOUE for me committed the one sin that I can't accept in a series. I can't bear where there's a character that I want to reach into the story and shake violently until their brains start working or strangle them to put them out of all our misery. Gatsby from the Great Gatsby and Sheldon from Big Bang Theory are characters that hit these similar buttons, and the fact that 90% of the adults in these books also make me want to strangle them kills all enjoyment for me. I know I am mirroring the Dom's point, but I don't think it can be emphasized enough.

Paul Bernard

In fairness to the Netflix series, at least the crowbarred-in VFD characters and plotlines IS a plot. The VFD’s mystery in season two’s books isn’t a mystery, it’s a single fact being repeatedly concealed behind a series of identical red herrings, which is really lazy writing no matter how much it's supposed to be a joke or part of the 'theme' in my opinion. But on the other hand in the books it takes up much less of the story so I suppose it evens out.

Tara Kay

ASOUE is a series that I loathe in a way but can't not watch. I listened through the audiobooks a couple years ago to finally finish the series I started as a kid. There is one lingering hope I have for the Netflix series and that is to give a better conclusion. The final good had some great catharsis but there were still unanswered questions. Though I give the Netflix series this. It has me invested and I'm looking forward to the conclusion next year.

JZBeasty the Huggable Snep

I think their building off some stuff established in Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, which tries to connect stuff from the earlier books to later ones. There it turned out Jacques Snicket had been trailing behind the orphans.

WillRigby

I love Maven! You guys need to do a crossover!

Katie Rishel

Praise be to the YouTube Algorithm God

David Phillips

Interesting to hear that so many kids from troubled childhoods loved the books. I had a very troubled and unhappy childhood, and couldn't get past the fifth book because it all hit too close to home. I enjoyed dark books about kids from miserable/abusive situations who eventually overcame it; not kids trapped in the cycle like I felt.

I liked the books because it wasn't the typical happy-sappy kids books. Though I haven't reread them so maybe my opinion would change. Obviously, I was an adult when I read them. I later went on to read Handler's adult novels - Shut Your Mouth which is about a guy who's dating this chick only to realize her family was hugely into incest and yet at the same time the mother was so angry about her husband fucking their daughter (even though she was fucking their son) that she made a golem to deal with them - and The Basic 8 which is one of those "absinthe makes you go crazy and murder people" books. Both were - strange. I haven't seen the Netflix series. I'm in love with your shirt, by the way.

I was a fan of the books because of the utter Gothic nature of the setting, which is something that I think the film actually nailed, whereas the show does seem to be giving off a very big Tim Burton vibe, at least at the start.