Rewatches will never fully recreate the experience of the first time around, for good and for bad. Sometimes, a rewatch strips away some of the joy from a well executed plot twist. Sometimes, it adds entirely new dimensions that could not possibly have been noticed on the first pass. Sometimes the art itself has āchangedā in the interim, due to cultural or technical development. No matter what, the viewing experience will be different.
For popular media - and more specifically popular media with involved fandoms - a huge factor can be the post-show narrative. Any good fan will know that a show doesnāt have to be currently airing in order to have an active fandom (Star Trek, anyone?), but there is immense weight to how a longform story that has grown and changed over time is perceived by its longterm fandom. Some shows have huge followings while theyāre airing and then basically disappear from the cultural consciousness soon after they finish, often due to burning bridges with their own fanbase or having endings that donāt live up to their earlier seasons (Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother), some shows simply fizzle out and nobody remembers that they still exist (I loved Call the Midwife, but Iām about four seasons behind and it very much no longer has the active fandom it had a decade ago...), and then there are the shows that keep chugging along, maintaining their own moderate success and cultural appeal even years after completion (The Office, a show I expected would not have a lasting impact, remains confidently present).
Whatās this to say about the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, though?
When it began airing, LBD felt like a minor media earthquake. The show leaned into its vlog-style presentation, integrated different social media platforms as an active part of its storytelling (ātransmediaā), bounced between different accounts without minding if someone suddenly missed a part of the story (but trusting their ex-world media to do the job, and also trusting the viewer to find what needed to be found), and doing so in a way that felt shockingly believable. Thereās a reason that LBD sparked the imaginations of so many different young creators across the world, who wanted to emulate this sort of storytelling. LBD set the stage.
A common narrative thatās emerged in the years since LBD ended is one that admires how it set that stage, but then adds a caveat about its implementation. Hardcore fans of what became known as āliterary inspired webseriesā (LIWs) will often point out that LBD was a āflawedā show, obviously not their favorite, ānot very goodā in retrospect, and so on. Iāve seen countless posts and tags to this extent and have even on occasion caught myself thinking that too. Of course I liked LBD, I would tell myself, but I didnāt love it the way that I went on to love other shows. As time passed and the LBD-specific fandom quieted down, I accepted this narrative as truth.
And this is where a unique benefit of rewatches comes into play: Rewatches can set the record straight.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is, ultimately, still not my favorite webseries. Itās still not what I would call the ābestā literary webseries Iāve seen, either. It doesnāt have the best transmedia. It isnāt the best adaptation of a webseries Iāve seen, nor the best adaptation of the original work itself. (Some might argue that itās not even the best modernized adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but here I find myself disagreeing somewhat; Iāll elaborate on that some other time.) Lizzie Bennet Diaries was, in a way, eclipsed in my mind by some of the series that came after it.
All that being said, itās also a very good series. And itās not a stretch to say that I loved this rewatch.
Iāve gone through some of the showās features and flaws in my previous posts (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), but a recurring theme from my recap posts was that a lot of things that I remembered being bad simply werenāt there. I remembered Lydiaās transformation into her Wickham arc being abrupt, but it wasnāt; her loneliness and sense of not fitting in start extremely early on. I remembered Lizzie as being presented much more kindly/positively than what she actually is, in part because of her growth during the series and attempt to be less judgemental (which is all explicitly laid out in the text!). I remembered the show feeling slow, but it wasnāt. I remembered the parts that were/werenāt on camera feeling like MASSIVE stretches, but theyāre mostly discussed in-text. I remembered feeling like there was a clumsiness in the show actually feeling real and fresh, especially compared to shows that came afterward, in terms of acting.
A lot of these stem from two main issues: 1) the last part of the show is a lot less well paced than the beginning, and 2) there are acting inconsistencies with the medium. The first of these is something similar to what I described earlier in terms of the end of the show being weaker than the beginning. The second is a problem that recurs across the vast majority of webseries that Iāve watched, but I think I remembered it being worse for LBD is because of how good the good parts are.Ā
So here are some of those good parts: Ashley Clementsā Lizzie is absolutely brilliant. I feel like sheās rarely remembered for being tremendously well-acted, I think because itās sort of assumed to be an easy role, while someone like Mary Kate Wiles garnered obvious (mostly justified) admiration for the more obvious work she did as Lydia. Meanwhile, Laura Spencer and Julia Cho are also both excellent in their respective roles as Jane and Charlotte, rounding out the main cast in a way that feels almost unbelievably good. Of the lead four, I actually continue to have the most nitpicks with small things in Lydiaās acting (which could also be about directing), but these also feel unimportant in the grand scheme of how her story played out so richly. It seems trivial to say it now, more than a decade since LBD first aired, but the active choice to make Lydia a second lead character is inspired, even if Iām still a little uncomfortable with how some of her story played out. And none of this would have worked without good acting and writing, especially in how Lizzie builds and presents her story.
The acting inconsistencies mostly occur in the side characters and much of that is also down to the showās insistence on having people show up on camera when they frankly didnāt need to. Having Fitz be a random friend who shows up on camera with Lizzie was fun because he wasnāt a plot-central character, he was just sort of... there. His appearances feel casual. (Itās helps that heās one of the characters who is clearly most comfortable being filmed.) But I cringed just a little bit every time Bing appeared onscreen, and Gigi too for the most part. Itās not necessarily poor acting, to be clear, but itās inconsistent with their environment and it makes it harder to buy into the ārealāness of those videos. Darcy, at least, carries his obvious discomfort with being on camera like an absolute burden (which is entirely believable), but this didnāt help alleviate my sense that Lizzie should not have been uploading those videos.
The fact that the ending is weaker than the entire run of the show is a more serious issue, I think, and certainly helped contribute to my sense of the show being less well-paced than it actually was. One of the things Iām grateful for, at least, is that āThe Endā is an episode that centers around Lizzie, Charlotte, and Lydia. Part of what didnāt work for me with LBDās end was the fact that it felt like the show forgot that it wasnāt actually a romance, but more Lizzieās becoming and growth process, with Lydia, Jane, and Charlotte as crucial linchpins during this process. Darcy is an obvious presence in the story, but the Lizzie Bennet Diaries as a show isnāt about Lizzie and Darcy getting together, just like Pride and Prejudice isnāt a romance novel. The problem with ending LBD within a couple of episodes of Lizzie and Darcy getting together is that it makes it seem like that was the whole point of the story.
But on this point, thereās also a reminder of the fact that for the most part, Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a good adaptation. Iād remembered feeling like it was old-fashioned because of things like the Jane/Bing subplot and how Lizzie and Darcy spoke with each other (...stiffly), but the majority of the show does a really nice job of loosening up Pride and Prejudice to match the modern day. The way that many of the romantic gestures end up tied to jobs is a nice nod to the fact that modern women have aspirations and goals that arenāt just about bagging a rich husband (coughcough). I also still really admire that the show decided to fully humanize Lydia, without stripping away the weight of what happens to her. Except instead of it being a burden on others and All About Lizzie, itās actually a story about the ways in which a young womanās value can be easily erased and recognizing that event as the abuse that it is. I still donāt love all the ways in which that arc plays out, but the fact that it exists? Excellent.
This rewatch was the obvious choice to start my Great Webseries Rewatch and it earns its stripes; even more than a decade later, the Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a mostly well-made, well-written, and well-acted show. It also has the distinct honor of being a show that had genuine widespread appeal, garnering attention beyond a small fanbase of loyal viewers. LBD set the stage, performed, and earned its standing ovation. The fact that others came up onto that stage afterward and performed their own wonderful art should not take away from its achievements.
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