#0549

The most controversial change brought about by this episode was the decision to remove Captain Widdershins from the cast altogether. Fans were understandably worried when they first heard of this choice, as they expected Fiona to become a completely different character and the Captain's character to be deleted. What we got instead is a more practical solution as the character who was "deleted" was rather Fiona's and Fernald's mother. The (supposed and questioned) death of Mrs. Widdershins casts a shadow of suspicion and pain over the tragedy of the Widdershins' family, but we know very little about her. She's essentially, for lack of screentime, a "woman in a refrigirator", or rather a "woman in a manatee's belly which may or may not be real". That is, an object meant to exacerbate the tension between her three remaining family members. Her death is the reason behind Fiona's pathological need to reunite her family at any cost. In that sense, conflating her role with that of the Captain is quite astute

While some plot points regarding Captain Widdershins were given to Fiona, they mostly have to do with whoever is in charge of the Queequeg at a given moment. In the books, Fiona decides to endorse a persona as soon as she proclaims herself Captain and essentially becomes a caricature of her stepfather. Therefore making Fiona the captain from the get-go is just cutting out the middle-man, and her actions in the double-episode are identical to the book. She's considerably more bossy and entitled in the Netflix show, but that's mostly due to character exaggeration. As she herself admits, she's just a teenager way in over her head who has to take on a persona. She knows very little about what she's been asked to do, and compensates by refusing to hesitate over anything. On that topic, the idea of Fiona prentending to know what's inside the sugar bowl when she really doesn't is very in line with the books. Fiona wants to be treated like an adult, but in this series, most adults have not figured anything out.

A big pay-off this episode is Fernald's bromance with Sunny. While we would opine that a little too much time was taken to indulge this relationship, it does help set up his betrayal quite nicely. There's surprisingly little time devoted to Fernald's interactions with Fiona, but their dynamic smooths out nicely. Their reactions make sense considering what the viewer already knows about them.

And that's Season 3's overlooked quality of : its flow. It's especially noticeable in the writing of Olaf's personality. One of our biggest complaints about the show is that the writers never quite know whether to paint Olaf as a psychopatic buffoon or a psychopath pretending to be a buffoon. The books do contain some throwaway jokes about Olaf being dumb, but most of them have to do with his horrible spelling or his inability to grasp cultural references. For the most part, he's a terrifyingly clever villain who seldom makes mistakes. In the Netflix series (and the 2004 movie), the physical comedy and overall obliviousness really takes a toll on the character's aura of menace. Olaf is a ridiculous idiot or a scary genius depending on whatever the plot requires him to be ("The Hostil Hospital" is the most extreme example). In Season 3, this problem is a lot less noticeable. Neil Patrick Harris plays up Olaf's petulance and desperation to justify his reactions, and the script backs it up.

Nowhere is it more appreciable than in the depiction of Olaf's forced laughter. Many criticisms have been thrown at "The Grim Grotto" over the years, from its (deliberate) repetitions about the water cycle, to Captain Widdershins' irritating catchphrases, and, most of all, to Olaf's cackles. It's so unfunny it got funny then unfunny again. "The Grim Grotto" was published just before the release of the 2004 Paramount movie adaptation, and it shows. Daniel Handler had been working on the eleventh book while Jim Carrey was interpreting Olaf, and it's from that moment that even the author began reconceiving the count as a more funny, incompetent character. The forced villainous laughter is textbook Carrey. What the Netflix show did was find a middle ground to even out the scales: Olaf's antics are justified by the plot, and they're given a emotional resonance. Olaf is at all-time emotional bash after the events of "The Slippery Slope", and his cackles are his way of dealing with that. Special brownie points go to the writers for rescuing that plot-point.

"The Grim Grotto" also reiterates that Olaf is a formidable presence: two teenagers are no match for his upper-body strength and Fernald also gets a taste of what it costs to anger the Count. This helps justify the power dynamics inside the two submarines... until the Snow Scouts appear, that is. One really wonders why they hadn't started their mutiny before the Baudelaire orphans arrived: they're not even restrained, and they've only got Carmelita and Esme to oversee their rowing.

Another controversial change is the decision to show the Great Unknown. Granted, it’s hardly a spoiler for readers of “All The Wrong Questions” who already know by now that the mysterious question mark on the radar is some sort of sea monster (though whether it’s the same sea monster as the one Hangfire bred is debatable). Nevertheless there’s some missed opportunities in this reveal. The book played the ominous and unfathomable menace of the Question Mark as lovecraftian horror. Here it’s more of a classical “20′000 leagues under the sea” action sequence. We even get the death metaphor spelled out for us. Of course the reason the writers undermined the presence of the Great Unknown is because they never had plans to reuse it in their adaptation of “The End”. It’s just there to make a cameo and justify the overhyped “All the Wrong Questions” adaptation. Kind of cynical. It does detract from the emotional resonance of the book and we do agree that reducing the Great Unknown to a footnote is a terrible mistake. The entire series centers around the uncertainty of death, why delete such an essential archetype? We’ll get back to this topic in our review of “The End”, but suffice it to say that removing the Great Unknown from the narrative diminishes the adaptation both narratively and thematically. As pleasant as it is to see the Quagmires and Widdershins surviving, it’s edging dangerously close to fanservice. The inclusion of Quigley in the double-episode is nice, but eventually brings out little in terms of substance. He and Violet share too little screentime in the double-episode for their relationship to really evolve.

That being said, the double-episode does not suffer from lack of tension. It’s one of the most atmospheric and well-directed episodes along with “The Hostile Hospital”, with a strong emphasis on claustrophobia and sickly lighting. The action scenes are genuinely gripping and the CGI looks great (much more so than what we eventually got for “The End”, although photorealism was never the series’ priority). The Medusoid looks a bit silly, but that may have been deliberate. Reading the descriptions of a baby slowly choking on the mushrooms growing inside her throat was bad enough in the books, seeing it on screen would have been horrible. Again, the books are dark, and the Netflix writers have had to infuse copious amounts of silliness and whimsy to make the series watchable by younger audiences.