A Series of Unfortunate Writeups: The Hostile Hospital
No one has a good time at a hospital.

Life-saving treatments are agonizing and come with a litany of side effects, but, the argument goes, they’re literally saving your life, so they can feel as bad as they want because they aren’t actual death. Speaking of, dying is (largely) not considered a good time, and what is a hospital if not a place that’s lousy with death? “Ah,” I hear you say, “But what about birth, the very miracle of life itself?” Well yes, birth is wonderful, but birth is also, by most accounts, abjectly terrifying for everyone involved; ergo, not a good time. X-rays and cat scans are one-way radiation trips, and no one likes getting a cast. And even life-altering surgery involves getting cut up and/or naked in front of a bunch of strangers, so hard pass. And don’t even get me started on the staff.
So it goes without saying that the Baudelaires are in for a bad time in book number eight, The Hostile Hospital. As the opener for the series’ back half and its first entry after blowing up the formula in the spirited The Vile Village, The Hostile Hospital is…well, I won’t lie to you dear readers, it’s okay. The hospital setting is fun without being as inspired or inventive as 667 Dark Ave, the Village of Fowl Devotees, Prufrock Prep, or Uncle Monty’s, and the book’s plot drifts toward formless without the series’ established framework. Nothing here lands with as loud a thud as most of The Miserable Mill or Olaf’s Coach Genghis disguise from The Austere Academy, but by the same token, there isn’t one story element that pops, you know? As far as bad hospital trips go, the Baudelaires time at Heimlich is a little nondescript.
In the absence of a defining aspect or image, The Hostile Hospital aims for top to bottom novelty: for the first time, we pick up right where we left off, and the script gets flipped on the Baudelaires, as they have to lie a bunch and disguise themselves while evading Olaf and his troupe. Snicket’s choice to have the children framed for Olaf’s murder in The Vile Village was a risky one since it gave the outside world a level of involvement it didn’t have before, but as of The Hostile Hospital it’s paying off nicely. The Baudelaire’s status as murderers at-large adds a hint of danger every time they talk to someone; we see this in action right off the bat in their conversation with the general store worker because it’s a pleasant chat that’s also a countdown until The Daily Punctilio arrives and announces them as (alleged) criminals. And, to Snicket’s credit, a hospital is a pretty slick setting for a book where your protagonists might be recognized by wandering strangers but also have room to blend into a crowd.
And so, the Baudelaires do what they’ve gotta do in response and fight a little dirty. They tell a few lies and omit a few things when talking to the Volunteers Fighting Disease (this book’s V.F.D. red herring), but by the time Violet makes an ersatz keyring to fool the Library of Records worker Hal (whose eyesight isn’t what it used to be), they’ve graduated to full-blown deception. Klaus and Sunny disguise themselves later, Klaus manipulates a crowd, and Sunny ends up giving Hal the gentlest of bites so that the kids can escape an angry mob. Of course, all of this is done in service to ultimately noble goals, like finding out about V.F.D. and the Snicket File, avoiding Count Olaf, and saving Violet, but the Baudelaires are discomforted to know that not only are they using Olaf’s tactics, but they’re good at them. On one hand, I think The Hostile Hospital drives the “The Baudelaires acted JUST LIKE OLAF” point home a little too hard, but these are also still kids books, so they’re allowed to be unsubtle sometimes. But underlined or not, it’s still notable that this book shows the Baudelaires trafficking in grey morality for the first time.
There’s also some novelty to it being Violet’s turn to take one for the team. Much as Klaus was sidelined by hypnosis in The Miserable Mill, Violet gets caught by Esme Squalor in the Library of Records, which means it’s up to Sunny and Klaus to save her in the book’s second half. Violet’s kidnapping works as a good escalation point since it shows the Baudelaires straight up failing to wriggle out of a situation for once, and her absence leaves a Violet-sized hole in her siblings’ exploits while she’s sidelined. Sunny and Klaus’ decision-making is less assured since they usually defer to the eldest Baudelaire, and their ability to improvise is significantly hampered without her inventive mind. But, they piece together that Violet is being kept at the hospital under an anagram, and they discover where she is just in time for the book’s climax.
The Hostile Hospital’s climax is a decidedly mixed bag of syringes, saws, and arson. Klaus and Sunny disguise themselves as doctors with lab coats and face masks to get to the room where Violet’s being held, only to run into Esme, who thinks they are the powder-faced women in Olaf’s troupe. They find out that the plan is to cut Violet’s head off in an “experimental surgery” called a “cranioectomy” in lieu of the procedure’s regular name, “goddamn adolescent murder.” Esme puts them in charge of the surgery on an anesthetized Violet, and Klaus stalls by talking about different knives and the value of paperwork while Sunny gnaws at Violet’s neck to help her come around. This ruse only lasts so long, though, and the Baudelaires have to escape the operating theater on Violet’s gurney while the hospital burns because Count Olaf’s associates set the Library of Records on fire because they couldn’t find the Snicket File: the file that would incriminate them, and indicates that there was a survivor of the fire. And so the kids have to escape from the second floor of the hospital while it’s on fire, and a barely lucid Violet invents a fake intercom with a tin can to lure people away from a window so that the siblings can safely descend. But then, the only way to flee the smokey area is Count Olaf’s car, and so the book ends with the Baudelaires hiding themselves in Count Olaf’s trunk as he escapes with his associates (minus the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender, who possibly died in the fire).
Once the Baudelaires begin their escape from the vicious fiery disaster, the climax snaps into focus, but the scene in the operating theater lasts about two beats too long. Although this is a series famous for its antagonist’s paper thin disguises, a room full of adults mistaking a 12 year old and not-quite-toddler for doctors while focusing on them stretches credulity past its breaking point. Granted, almost every one of these books has something at or near the end that just breaks suspension of disbelief (I still go back and forth on The Vile Village jailbreak being ingenious or inane), but The Hostile Hospital has little else to focus on, so the weak moment just kinda hangs there in the air.
The V.F.D. bombshell this time around is the revelation from a loose Snicket File photograph that “there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor’s whereabouts are unknown,” which is…awfully vague. The reveal comes with a photo of the Baudelaires’ parents standing with Jacques Snicket and a man presumed to be Lemony (the book calls him a writerly type), and it doesn’t say which fire, so while the Baudelaires have latched onto the news that one of their parents are alive, I remain skeptical. I’ll make space to talk about what we do and don’t know about V.F.D. in our next writeup, but for now, I’ll say that even without any payoff in the three books since it was introduced, it’s still more intriguing than not and works as a guiding light for the Baudelaires (even we don’t really believe one of the parents survived…do we?).
It’s probably best to think of The Hostile Hospital as a transition period from the “Guardians, Disguises, Schemes” structure of the series’ first half into the long-running mystery that lies ahead. It tries a few new tricks, and Snicket’s writing is still as punchy as ever, but the book lacks color and definition in a way most of the other books don’t. The Volunteers Fighting Disease, with their relentless pep and Wood Guthrie references, are cutesy and feckless, but portrayed with just enough cynicism that the book dismisses them before you probably will, and the labyrinthine nature of Heimlich Hospital trips rather clumsily on the line between showing and telling. But still, with a snappy ending that finds the Baudelaires in a truly precarious position, I’m willing to follow the Baudelaires into their next bad time at a carnival.
The Sinister Shootaround (loose notes and stray thoughts)
-”For Beatrice: Summer without you is as cold as winter. Winter without you is even colder.” How apropos at the turning of the seasons.
-Olaf Disguise Rating: Honestly, I don’t know. Matthias is the never seen and always intercomed head of Human Resources for the hospital. He never speaks directly to the Baudelaires, and he only physically appears in the book’s last few pages, which is either a cop out or genius depending on what you want from him. Let’s go with either 0 out of 10 smiley heart balloons or 10 out of 10 smiley heart balloons.
-I considered putting this in the writeup proper, but: The Hostile Hospital is where a weirdly high amount of the show’s tone pops up for the first time. This is where we see the dysfunctionality of Olaf’s assistants; they argue with the Baudelaires about getting pizza or Chinese to celebrate, and Esme throws in a callback to The Ersatz Elevator.
-This is also where “Wait until the readers of The Daily Punctilio read this!” first inflicts itself upon us, although it’s said by a nameless reporter instead of Mr. Poe’s wife.
-The Baudelaires get the idea to look for anagrams from the few pages of the Quagmire notebooks they recovered, which is a nice touch.
-Canned asparagus, racks of fountain pens, barrels of onions, crates of peacock feathers…are we sure Last Chance General Store is a fictional setting and not just your nearest city’s most recently gentrified neighborhood?
-Violet came back from anesthesia and shortly thereafter pieced together an invention and a plan. I came back from anesthesia and watched Dancing with the Stars with my mom.
