Headscratchers / A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017)

• So...does Jacquelyn not understand how theatre works? In episode 2, Count Olaf—in-character, onstage—says he is "literally standing at the edge of a pond". Jacquelyn angrily corrects that Count Olaf was figuratively standing at the edge of a pond, and it is treated as a true statement on her part. HOWEVER, Count Olaf was, at the time, playing a character who was standing at the edge of a pond. Since both the character and the pond are meant to be real within the play, the whole "figuratively vs literally" statement that Jacquelyn made was incorrect.
  • This may be because she knows Count Olaf's play is just a plot to get Violet to marry him, and so doesn't take his status as a character in a play into account. Although without her saying something to the effect of a refusal to acknowledge this fact on principle it is still very odd.
  • Alternatively, she was right because Olaf was standing a few feet in front of the pond, not on the edge.
• How does marrying Violet get Olaf anywhere closer to the fortune? Doesn't he still have to wait for his "wife" to reach 18?
  • This troper is admittedly ignorant of both inheritance and nuptial law, but I always assumed Olaf could claim it right away because the money belonged to Violet, but she was too young to be allowed to use it. Violet "owns" the money as inheritance, nobody else can claim it as theirs, but she can't actually take it out of the bank because she's too young. When Olaf marries her, all of her things become his by law, and since he is old enough to take it out of the bank, there would be nothing to stop him from doing so.
• In "The Wide Window", after his identity was blown, why didn't Olaf just order his men to attack and possibly kill Mr. Poe and run off with the kids? The paperwork was already signed and done.
  • Poe is the man who directly oversees the Beaudelaires' case and represents whatever official systems are in charge of their wellbeing. He's also an arrogant moron who has the most authority over what happens to the children. Tricking Poe is easy. Killing him risks putting the Baudelaires' case in the hands of someone far more competent.
• What was Olaf's plan once he and the Baudelaires got to Peru? If they all died, the money would go to nobody, and as children they couldn't legally write up a will. Even if Olaf produced fake documents saying "We leave all of our parents' money to this man", it wouldn't stick and Olaf would lose his chance at the fortune forever.
  • I always assumed he was going to go through with the same plan as before, marry Violet and then return for the fortune. Take the children out of the country to dodge the authorities, hold them in captivity until Violet came of age, then force her to marry him overseas by threatening the other two (or, through fake documentation, marry her immediately) and then return and claim the inheritance. Peru itself was just a place to keep them away from the law so no one could meddle in his plans.
  • Maybe that's the point: Despite his resilience and his increasing cruelty, Olaf is getting farther and farther from the fortune as the story progresses. Immediately after the fire, he has the Baudelaires in his house as their fully legal guardian, but he can't just wait four years so he resorts to an overly theatrical (literally) plan that goes wrong mostly because of his Complexity Addiction. Then, he has to take advantage of Peru's lax adoption laws to even get there, at Lake Lachrymose he doesn't even have the quick and convenient exit strategy and would probably have to come up with a plan to get the children out of the country after conning Mr Poe into declaring "Captain Julio Sham" their guardian. The show takes it even further in the Miserable Mill, Sir and Charles aren't even the Baudelaires' guardians! It goes back to "become their guardian under a fake name and plan the rest in Prufrock Prep, and then things get slightly easier with Esme as the legal guardian but obviously, Olaf can't count on orphans to remain "in" that long so he might as well throw all logic out the window. And then Count Olaf fakes his own death, and his plans grow even more unhinged from there.
• In "The Austere Academy", the Quagmires mention having a previous guardian ("Our last guardian locked it in a safe after she lost her wife") before Prufrock Prep. But how can that possibly be when their parents' death happened on the last day the Baudelaires were at the lumbermill?
  • It probably took a while before Poe booked the Baudelaires into Prufrock. Before that, the Quagmires were sent to live with that guardian before she shipped them off to Prufrock or was murdered.
• The Heimlich Hospital nametag plot point in the last episode of Season Two confuses me. How is it evidence the Baudelaires have been there? Olaf's Troupe also just returned from Heimich, isn't it far less far-fetched for Olaf to think one of his henchpeople picked this up and later dropped it in Madame Lulu's tent??
  • Olaf probably already suspected the identities of Beverly/Eliot and Chabo and the name tag just another clue. It could also have been just an odd leap of logic that happened to be right.
  • It's possible he checked with his henchmen offscreen after his talk with Lulu. But really, none of them had any reason to have one. Those tags were worn by patients, and they were disguised as doctors and nurses. Olaf knew Violet had a tag, he knew Lulu claimed it was hers (and thus was likely trying to cover for the owner -why would she do that for one of his henchmen?) and the Baudelaires' disguise probably wasn't hard to see through once the idea was in his head.
    • You're probably right. Although about the Madame Lulu element, I meant it was weird he'd ask Madame Lulu in the first place — obviously, the Henchpeople explanation was right out once Olivia began to lie about it.
  • This troper always assumed that it was the name on the tag that gave them away. It would have said “Laura V. Bleediote,” which was the alias Olaf made up for Violet and so he would have recognized it. Olivia grabbed it away quickly to keep him from being able to read it too closely, but he had already read it when he picked it up.
  • This troper believes that the tag was a random blank one that Sunny picked up in the break room, not Laura V. Bleediote's identification. Olaf growing mistrustful of Madame Lulu and the freaks' disguises being about as elaborate as Olaf's own would have played a bigger part.
• In "The Ersatz Elevator" Jacqueline and Larry pressure Olaf (in his Gunther disguise) to sing a song for Secretary's Day. The rest of the restaurant favors this plan. This also includes Esmé...even though Esmé A) is actively cooperating with Olaf, B) is aware the Quagmires are hidden in the elevator shaft and C) presumably knows that Larry and Jacqueline are VFD agents. So why is she going along with a plan that, even if she didn't know it was a distraction pushed by members of VFD, would unnecessarily prolong their stay?
  • She loves Olaf, so she might just want to hear him sing.
  • She also loves going along with popular opinion and being considered "in" no matter what may be sacrificed
• "The Vile Village": How could Mr. Poe possibly mistake Jacques for Count Olaf? He's been face to face with the real one many times and only saw Jacques once. Does he, like, have no sense of face or voice recognition or what?
  • Mr. Poe is kinda dumb.
  • Mr. Poe can't see through Olaf's disguises, so he relies on the distinguishing features of Olaf's unibrow and ankle tattoo to tell it's really him. Jacques (so it seems) has both. So what if his voice and face don't match? Maybe it's a disguise.
  • In season 3, Mr Poe outright says that he can't remember faces. There are a few Real Life face-blindness conditions, and considering this guy fails to recognise Sunny in a concierge uniform or Count Olaf (going by his real name) in a ringmaster costume, it's possible that his brain is literally incapable of something like that.
• Why don't the Baudelaires or the "volunteer" agents just kill or physically maim Count Olaf? They never physically attack him when he is revealed by the Baudelaires. Instead everyone stands around and waits for him to escape. If the Baudelaires had common sense, they would have just carried knives around all the time. One skinny ass adult who lost an arm wrestle versus two smallish children and a toddler wouldn't be a match for all three of them armed with pocket knives. Sure, it may be morally wrong to them, but considering the shit Olaf has pulled off and continues to try to pull off, the people he's killed and the lives he's ruined, it'd be worth it. I'm sure the Baudelaires would not be even charged with murder either as this guy is a wanted criminal who keeps pursuing them. I know the show's and the books' point is to highlight how the adults let the kids down all the time over and over, but it becomes ridiculous that they don't just take it into their own hands. Olaf gets close to them over and over. Just hide knives in your pockets and stab the shit out of him when he gets close to gloat/monologue while looming over them or whatever. It's clear that Count Olaf never had the makings of a varsity athlete, he failed Phys Ed at Prufrock, and clearly hasn't been working out since. His only dangerous skill is stealth and disguise which doesn't even work on the kids in the first place.
  • For the Baudelaires...they're children. It takes the threat of them being thrown to two starving lions for them to even consider murder as a solution. Forget "morally wrong", to most kids (one of whom is a baby) it would be the absolute last resort even with all the crap they've been put through, especially when it's been reinforced over and over what fundamentally good people they are. Hell, they basically have a mini Heroic BSoD when they're made to just burn down a tent. For the Volunteers...well, they did all used to be friends. Jacques even tells Olaf that if he turns himself in, they "won't throw the book at him". The books and the series have almost cartoonish ideas about the difference between right and wrong, and murder (even in self-defence) is put quite firmly on the "wrong" side, as in: only something Olaf and his ilk would do. Also, in this world? You bet the children would be found guilty of murder regardless of the situation between them and Olaf. They already were, after all.
  • Pretty much the case for the Volunteers yeah, and Olaf knows it. When Jacqueline threatens him with a harpoon gun at the end of Reptile Room he doesn't believe for a second that she'll use it. Hell, he even presses his neck onto the harpoon just to make the point.
  • The Volunteers might not have wanted to get charged with murder.
• How on Earth did the Baudelaires make it to the top of the elevator shaft after their makeshift hot air balloon not only fell a significant distance back down, but also shortly after BLEW UP!? I'll accept them not being killed in the explosion, sure, that fits the tone well enough. But for a series where they constantly need to figure out clever ways out of situations, how are we led into one so casually handwaved beyond all reason?
• Ok, so, why didn't the Baudelaires stay at Prufrock? They actually succeeded in something and exposed Olaf without a death or being forcibly removed. They passed the tests, so weren't they supposed to stay there for the remaining trimester or whatever? At least a line about the Squalors taking them out of school or something would've helped. You could even have Esmé say boarding school wasn't "in." But there's always a reason they get forced out of one location and thrust into the next one, but Austere Academy had them succeed too well to the point where it doesn't really make sense; they're not forced out of Prufrock for any reason by the end.
  • This troper just assumed that since the school wasn't technically their legal guardian, the Squalors trumped it in terms of who gets custody. Jerome mentions that he's wanted to become their guardian since the fire but orphans have only just become "in". I agree it definitely could have used some better explanation in the series though. Or at least not have had them pass the tests.
  • Is this not obvious? Olaf had kidnapped the Quagmires, the Baudelaires were trying to rescue them. They couldn’t stay at Prufrock since they knew the Quagmires weren’t there.
  • The Baudelaires didn’t get to choose whether or not they stayed at Prufrock. Mr. Poe pulled them out because it had been demonstrated that, despite the advanced computer system, Olaf could infiltrate the school and the children weren’t safe there.
    • Seeing that every non-Baudelaire there has the memory and intelligence of a goldfish, especially Mr. Poe, Olaf could have infiltrated the school again as a counselor, a groundskeeper or a Chinese teacher, with all non-Baudelaire none the wiser. Poe and the Baudelaires clearly don't want to risk him returning with whatever "brilliant" disguise.
  • Prufrock is clearly a miserable place where the Baudelaires live in a run-down shack, are frequently ridiculed and bullied by their peers and vice principal and take worthless classes. Even if safe, which is very debatable, the Baudelaires would probably gladly leave it in the dust, especially if their next prospective parents are nice and rich.
• In the books, when demanding Dewey tell her where the sugar bowl is, Esmé says that he knows "how difficult it was to find a container that could hold it safely, securely, and attractively", and her focus isn't on the bowl, but what's inside, which was implied to be something of sentimental value to her - even though in the previous book, she'd dismissed Carmelita's complaint that she and Olaf cared more about the sugar bowl than her as nonsense and said the bowl meant nothing to them. The series revealing that the "it" was in fact sugar and that it had been the bowl alone, not its contents, that had belonged to Esmé results in that making considerably less sense. Why on Earth did Lemony and Beatrice steal Esmé's sugar bowl when literally any other container would have worked just as well - maybe even better, seeing as the lid of the sugar bowl could have fallen off anywhere? Why was Esmé so obsessed with finding it and getting it back if the only reason she didn't let Beatrice have it was because it looked great in her tea set, especially when you consider how quickly she discards things that are no longer in fashion and how quickly things go out of fashion?
  • Unless I'm wrong, the series did actually imply that the contents had belonged to Esmé, and she clearly knows what's in it. They talk about Esmé protecting the sugar ("it's okay because I'm rich and beautiful"), Beatrice discusses the importance of the valuable sugar being used for good rather than hidden away, and Esmé refuses to let it go (on the vain and selfish grounds that "it completes my tea set."). My guess is that Esmé's anger is partially based on the fact that Beatrice stole something valuable that belonged to her, and partially from feeling like Beatrice didn't trust her to look after it and didn't respect her opinion that it should stay hidden away.
  • Why Lemony didn't take the sugar out of the Sugar Bowl is a good question, though my guess would be that most of the hybrid-sugar wasn't in the form of cubes, but as powdered sugar — so, at least, it would have been hard to steal the sugar right there at the opera without stealing the bowl. As for why Esmé is so obsessed with getting it back… Evil Is Petty. It's not the Sugar Bowl itself; as you say yourself, it's probably out of fashion by now, anyway; it's the outrage that BEATRICE STOLE FROM MEEEEEEE. And since the theft initiates this reaction immediately right there at the Opera (remember, moments after noticing the theft, she flips out, screams loud enough to bust your TV and then jumps to using poison darts), there would have been no point in giving the bowl back to her past that point with the contents taken out. Oh, and incidentally, concerning Esmé's monologue in the books, you may want to investigate The Snicket Sleuth's theory of what's in the Sugar Bowl, which implies that Esmé has no flipping clue and is just talking nonsense there to make it seem like she knows.
    • Except she clearly does know what's in it: she and Beatrice talk about how important it is to be used for good and kept safe, and she puts some in Kit's tea intentionally.
    • Stop mixing canons. It's Book!Esmé who may not know its contents. Netflix!Esmé, as you said, definitely does.
    • It may also be that there’s something bad about physically touching the sugar with your skin (we only see it being handled with tongs, even when Beatrice is trying to get the sugar out quickly)—maybe it’s bad for your skin, maybe it messes with the hybrid to be touched, who knows. I only bring this up because Kit says that the hybrid apples do something to unborn babies, so it’s possible that this particular method of creating hybrids has weird side effects. So they had to take the bowl as well as the sugar.
• In "The Penultimate Peril" we see a flashback of Lemony breaking up with Beatrice. This contradicts "The Miserable Mill", where Lemony told us it was Beatrice who broke up with him and wrote a 200-page book explaining why.
  • The book probably came from a different breakup.
  • It's possible that the 'break up' we see in the Penultimate Peril is the first one (since it seems they still love each other in the scene), and later on, after Lemony has gone on the lam, he contacts her or w/e, and she gives the essay at this point (which would make sense, because she could be with Bertrand at this point).
• Kit says the sugar bowl contains sugar from apples that permanently immunizes against the Medusoid Mycellium, and she ends up dying because the Baudelaires cannot get an apple to her in time. But in the opera flashback in "Penultimate Peril", we saw Esmé put the sugar in Kit's cup of tea. So why did Kit die?
  • If you watch closely, Kit never drank the tea. She held it in her lap for a bit and then put it back on the tray. Probably to clear up precisely this plot hole.
  • Also as Kit is dying she says that the apple isn't working, implying that she ate some of it after giving birth but it had no effect on the Medusoid Mycelium. Maybe the immunization doesn't affect everyone.
    • The apples cure the infection, but the sugar immunizes the person. The sugar doesn’t come from the apples. Two different things. The apple didn’t work because Kit ate it too late.
    • No, you're mixing canons. The show is pretty clear that its version of the hybrid apples are a recreation of the same hybrid that the Sugar was made from, and thus that it immunizes you, not just cure you. It's in the books that the hybrid apples were just an easier-to-produce alternative to horseradish with no additional effects.
    • How is that mixing canons? The show isn’t clear about that at all. And no, the apples and the sugar are still two very different things. One cures the fungus, the other immunizes you from it. Kit didn’t eat the sugar, and she ate the apple too late. Hence, she died. They were probably made and developed by the same people, but different things with different end results.
    • I have no idea what you're talking about. Yes, in the books, there's no hybrid sugar at all, and the hybrid apples were created as a substitute for horseradish. But in the show, horseradish/wasabi cures you, but the next step was the creation of the hybrid sugar, which immunizes you. The hybrid apples are introduced to us in The End through Beatrice's journal mentioning that she "recreated the hybrid in the tuberous canopy"; the only hybrid we know so far to exist is the sugar. This suggests very heavily that in this version of events the hybrid apples are equivalent to the hybrid sugar, not to basic horseradish. And therefore it stands to reason to assume that they render you immune rather than just cure you.
    • Immunization is not "curing you but more permanent" it's "keeping you from being infected in the first place." There's no point in getting a vaccine if you already have the illness, for example. If Kit ate the apple after she was already infected and the apples are just a different form of the hybrid sugar, it's not unreasonable that she died anyway. Of course that makes a plot hole anyway since it did cure the Bauldelaires. Maybe Kit also died as a combination of the mushrooms and the stress of giving birth.
    • Kit is poisoned before she goes into labor, and only eats the apple when her child is born. Considering the mushrooms are supposed to kill you in an hour, it’s very likely that it cured the Baudelaires and not her because they took it much sooner. Also, four other people had eaten the apple by then; maybe there just wasn’t enough antidote left for such a severe case.
• Why did Olivia, in her Madame Lulu disguise, go out of her way to antagonize Esmé in particular, after Esmé let her escape from jail in the Village of Fowl Devotees?
  • Esmé didn’t let her go out of the goodness of her heart, she let her go because she told her where the sugar bowl was. Olivia still thought (correctly) that Esmé was a bad person. She also probably assumed (again, correctly) that Esmé at least had something to do with Jacques’s death.
• I get the idea of killing or maiming Olaf being wrong but why not knock him out? Like in Penultimate Peril Justice Straus is holding a ginormously heavy book when Olaf kidnaps her, so why not whack him on the head and be done with it?
  • Knocking someone out with a hard blow on the head actually can be lethal, and Justice Strauss may not be desensitized enough to violence to try that.
  • She’s researched the Baudelaire’s suffering, but hasn’t seen any of the actual violence first-hand. I think if it had been Violet or Klaus in that position they would have done it, but they’ve been very forcibly shown there’s no other option.
  • Justice Strauss would never do that because it's against the law. This is the person who refused to flee a burning building because it's against the law to leave the scene of a crime.
• Why don't the Baudelaires and Hector try to rendezvous away from the Village of Fowl Devotees? They still have the fire truck with its ladder. It makes sense that they'd let the Quagmires escape rather than risk Esme shooting down the hot-air mobile home, but why doesn't Hector just follow the Baudelaires and try again at the earliest opportunity? For that matter, why did they wait before climbing the ladder in the first place? It's never said that the rope ladder has a weight limit, so why didn't they all grab onto it together before the villagers caught up with them, have Hector fly them out of range, and then climb the rest of the way once they were safe?
  • By the time the Baudelaires drove off, Hector and the Quagmires were too far up and away to be seen. As for the second, the Baudelaires could have simply concluded that the rope ladder will break if they all (or even 3) clamber on.
• How did Justice Strauss escape from the top floor of the hotel?
  • Three possiblities:
    • She fashioned a parachute and jumped down like Olaf and the Baudelaires did.
    • She took the elevator back down and left through the entrance.
  • Firefighters advised people against using a elevator when they are getting them off the top floor because elevators go haywire when a building is on fire and people are trapped in a tight moving box as the flames consumed it leaving whoever is in their a burned corpse. On the series Chicago Fire there’s a nightmare image fuel showing exactly why you shouldn’t use a elevator during a fire!
    • Firefighters arrived and brought her down and out.
• Why didn't VFD arrest or kill Ernest Denouement?
  • It's likely a combination of not having any official authority, not wanting to compromise their secret organization's "last safe place" with the kind of attention an arrest or murder of one of the managers would draw, Frank and Dewey not wanting to see harm befall their brother (and Ernest not posing a threat to either of them, seeing as he's visibly saddened by Dewey's death and seems to co-manage the hotel with Frank without incident when he could have murdered Frank at any time), and the VFD's "good" side sticking way too hard to their moral standards.
• Have the Baudelaires been publicly exonerated of Count Olaf's murder by the end of the series?
  • Not that we know of, but then, their post-island adventures are deliberately unknown. (As of the end of The Penultimate Peril it is likely that they, and for that matter Olaf, were officially assumed to have died in the hotel fire, even if Lemony knew better.)