I was not a fan of Archive 81 when the Netflix series was released but through the online discourse I quickly determined “podcast good, adaptation bad” and added the podcast to my listen later pile. My family, around the time floated the idea of watching the series, I quickly explained why thing bad based off of what I’d gathered online and left it at that. Two months later they started watching it anyway while I was out of the house. Determined to prove that the adaptation had both straightwashed the lead and failed to adapt its proclaimed source material I decided to finally listen to the podcast. 

I listened to the first season in a day, probably not the intended way of consuming the show but I did anyway. It was fantastic, I was taken by the world and the ideas being presented in the work. I watched the first two episodes that night and let me tell you, what? A huge part of the original show was the idea of layers of story, my interpretation of the first season hinged heavily on this. On the top layer was yourself, the listener, then Mark’s story of releasing the audio, then Dan’s of cleaning the audio, then Melody’s of recording it, then the people of the Visser building, and finally, the Song. Each layer gets weirder, more abstract, the people of the Visser blatantly discuss the overarching themes of the show and are weird actualizations of them. The final abstraction is just a melody, a song that speaks of such powerful ideas that it has the power to reshape the world, this song is being pulled out of a realm of truly abstract concepts by the Visser building itself and the stories told within. Every layer is trapped inside the story once they start to consume it because it speaks to them so deeply. 

Let’s talk about the Netflix show. For starters the audience isn’t so involved, that’s fine, that’s even something that later seasons mostly drop. Second, the themes of the original have all been changed to the point where this isn’t the same story. Lastly, half the characters are unrecognizable and some have different names for no reason. What was wrong with Liam Davenport, I thought that was a perfectly good name. Why’s he Virgil now? Alexa is now Annabelle, which I do actually understand, it’s Amazon’s fault. I’ll talk more extensively about the changes to them and the rest of the cast after I quickly touch on the changes of theme.

(the following paragraph is the only time I will resort to swearing in this essay so that the true depths of my anger directed at the following change can be felt)

WHO THE FUCK IS KALEGO OR WHATEVER THE FUCK. They grounded it in demonology and witchcraft for no reason, the metaphor of story and art was beautiful but James Wan loves his Christian devils, demons, and ghosts, oh my! So much of the theme is lost in the clusterfuck of lore and history that’s entirely pointless. Why is all this bloated dog shit being stuffed inside of a tight story? I’ll tell you why, it’s because they had to make a 2.5hr podcast into an 8hr TV show because that’s what makes good bingeable content. That’s what all TV shows have to be now if they want to be popular, fuck making good art. Also Dan can just fucking leave now, just waltz right out of those big intimidating mental gates and have a nice little chat in a coffee shop away from Melody and all that drama. It would be one thing if he was talking with Davenport but he’s talking with Mark another level headed person who can give him serious advice. 

On many other levels the adaptation fails to understand the very blatantly displayed themes from the show. The show doesn’t shy away from talking about themes almost directly with the audience, in what is admittedly my least favourite moment of the show the podcast addresses that audience, condescending on theories deemed stupid and generally dishing shit on some people, but this is blatant, barely hidden, and most importantly it’s doing something. Here’s a quick quote from the second episode “I’m interested the totality of human experience, and how difficult that is to stuff into a narrative. The ideas that can’t be expressed in language, how something greater than a story can shift the way we see the world, like, like calling someone by a wrong name so many times that it becomes the right name. So that they believe it.. The idea of the piece is to create music that can demolish barriers. And to get people to build their houses with the debris.” That’s it, that is a core component of the podcast, that’s what makes it what it is and it’s completely absent from the Netflix show. Added in are themes of family legacy which are over there in season 3 of the podcast but have no place here in season 1. The Baldung Witches are more of this theme of legacy and they’re replacing of the Cult of Purity removes yet more themes of no one really being good. Alright, now we can talk about what’s left of the characters from the podcast.

Melody, aside from being straight washed, which don’t worry, I’ll get to, is now an uncaring asshole for no reason who turns on her friends and barely cares about anyone in the Visser. Podcast Melody grew attached to the people of the Visser, she wanted to fight for them even though she was getting no material gain from it. And when she fought she was cunning, she outsmarted Samuel in their final confrontation and defeated an eldritch Leviathan, leading her to becoming a fearful and powerful force in the Unexplored Territory. To really put the cherry on the cake Netflix Melody becomes the antithesis to who she was in the podcast by becoming a damsel in distress, trapped in the Otherworld cradling her childhood memory of being abandoned by her mother. This moment resulted in the following comment from my mother; “Oh she’s like Will in Stranger Things now.”

I suppose Melody disliking the residents is reasonably justified because the people of the Visser are for the most part completely different, which is to say that they’re all members of Samuel’s cult now for no real reason. Jesse is Jessica now because a young black girl living in poverty is less threatening than a teenage black boy living in poverty. She’s also a sacrificial lamb instead of someone who Melody unnecessarily brings into this and ends up getting killed. Chris is really depressed and gets pushed off the building by a member of the cult, Chris who, while going through withdrawal was still cracking jokes and being at least interesting. Chris and his other nameless, lineless druggie friends are way creepier, made insane by the power of the mold in the Visser building. All around Chris is a lot less fun which is annoying because he was such a Character in the podcast, like what a guy. All the other interesting people in the Visser are gone except for Tamara who is the same but is now part of the cult and gets sacrificed by Samuel in Jessica’s place. 

Speaking of Samuel he’s now just openly lying to people and whining and sniveling like a kicked puppy, instead of cleverly avoiding people by using the building’s free flowing architecture and knowing how stories work and that this is a story so certain things are going to happen. The final confrontation between Melody and Samuel is one of the coolest in the podcast but in the show I can neither hate Samuel for his villainy or really feel like I can cheer for Melody because now they both suck. I don’t care about Samuel’s big evil plan because Samuel doesn’t know what he’s doing and not in the cool podcast way of “he can just barely begin to truly understand the implications of his actions” but in the “he’s an idiot who is trying too hard to act manipulative. 

Dan has a tragic backstory tying him to the Visser building now. Why? (because they hired a popular actor and needed to beef up his role) He was just an unfortunate guy with the skills Davenport needed in the podcast, none of this family legacy bullshit, same goes for Melody really. I’ve already touched on the Baldung Witches aspect of this but it bears repeating, the Cult of Purity which they replace was explicitly villainous, they are one of the main antagonists of season 3 and are consistently described as extremists. In the Netflix show, the witches burned down Dan’s house killing everyone in his family but him. This is barely a twist and doesn’t play any real role in whether or not Dan trusts them because now they’re out of time and they need to wrap it all up with a nice cliffhanger. 

I’m not going to talk about Alexa/Annabelle, her remaining gay, her character “arc”, or the fact that she does nothing for 30 years but paint in a mental hospital while seemingly having full mental function, because that would take up a whole new essay. 

That leaves us with one last thing to talk about. Melody Pendras and her straight washing. Like so many of the other changes I’ve discussed this comes from an attempt to appeal to the general public with a nice straight relationship between the two leads. Dan falling in love with Melody serves as essentially his only motivator for doing the ritual and venturing into the Otherworld to rescue her. Their relationship bends space and time and while yes, time travel does briefly feature in the podcast this just comes across as a failed attempt to make the plot seem so confusing that you can’t understand it, let alone find any holes. This fails rather spectacularly and just become annoying. Enough said about the weird time mechanics of the show. Of course, I’d be remised not to mention the brief plotline where Samuel attempts to woo Melody, though this is so quickly dropped it seems like the writers must have had at least some self awareness. 

So there you have it, the issue with the Netflix adaptation of Archive 81 is that it attempts to appeal to a large audience like the directors other projects do. This is something that the source material never does, as it always tries to find new and interesting stories to tell in a narrative that remains malleable and tonally distinct between seasons. Netflix tried to take a bunch of their most popular shows and weld them into a cohesive series but ended up with project that has an artistic sheen but no real core. It’s almost funny looking at season three of the podcast as a commentary on the Netflix adaptation, especially the finale, though I’ll give no further spoilers. Netflix also rather hilariously represents LMG which might be another reason why they failed in adapting so many themes.