“When we were researching Count Olaf’s history, we found something terrible!”
One of TvTropes’ many pages is called “Wham Line,” named for that one shred of dialogue that turns the entire story on its head. It doesn’t have to be a “gotcha” twist or reveal — I sort of prefer when it isn’t — but it’s a (literal) line from which there’s no going back. It immediately and irrevocably alters the course of the story, sometimes through a change in character motivation, or sometimes by changing the scale or nature of the story. Those last ones, the ones that stop you in your tracks by introducing a whole new element, are the best. I’m thinking of lines like, “Kill the spare,” in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which signals 1. Voldemort’s presence, and 2. the point where death can just happen in the series, or “He wasn’t on the plane.” in LOST, the first time the show eludes to The Others. The Wham Line marks a point where the story is somehow bigger than it was just a paragraph ago.
So it is with the above, which introduces the nebulous V.F.D. to A Series of Unfortunate Events. To be honest, since I’m writing these as I go, I actually don’t know the true meaning behind V.F.D. yet, but as we’ll find out, it is not Very Fancy Doilies or a Village of Fowl Devotees. It is, however, a hell of a hook: the arrival of V.F.D. signifies the point where the series of events don’t stop being unfortunate, but they stop feeling incidental. Everything’s happening for a reason. The Baudelaires’ world immediately feels deeper, the slightest bit of thread about Count Olaf’s backstory creep up, we have to save the Quagmires, and try to look into this mystery. That’s one hell of a closing.
But The Austere Academy gets more right than last minute series escalation. It’s a solid bounce back for the series after the muddled headtrip of The Miserable Mill that works pretty well as a transition point in the series; gone are the one-shot “Guardian of the Book” machinations of books 1 through 4 (even if Sir was super hands-off, he was still ostensibly a guardian), and instead, the Baudelaires are more or less left to fend for themselves in a new environment. We’ll touch on that environment, as well as Olaf’s most recent scheme, but first, let’s talk about the other big introduction in The Austere Academy: the Quagmire triplets.
The Quagmire triplets — well, they’re triplets but function as a duo of Isadora and Duncan because Quigley is believed to be dead — add a shock of energy to The Austere Academy by being the first real friends that the Baudelaires encounter throughout the entire series. The Quagmires are cool for a couple of reasons. First of all, they’re the first peer friends that the Baudelaires meet, and while Uncle Monty was cool, making friends your own age is always cooler. Secondly, the Quagmires are a great example of middle childhood friends, or friends you end up making due to similar or shared hobbies and personalities instead of based purely on proximity, and seeing those done well in a book for kids in middle school is encouraging. And lastly, the Quagmires act as an emblem for what the Baudelaires could be. Granted, they don’t have a madman dogging them at every step and constantly inflicting new traumas, but they also experienced the loss of their parents and home to virulent, fiery destruction and are heirs to a fortune, and yet, they’re still kind, empathetic people. They pull the Baudelaires away from the threat of isolation, and implicitly demonstrate that the misery that follows them doesn’t have to define them.
Let’s not dance around this next point: isn’t a boarding school a fucking perfect setting for ASOUE? In popular imagination, boarding schools call to mind byzantine rules, callous instructors, cruel students, rotted institutions, and a nightmarish Anglo-aesthetic, all of which mesh seamlessly with the series’ grimly absurd tone. The book is able to justify Prufrock Prep’s tombstone-shaped buildings, inane lessons (Violet’s class has to copy down stories the teacher tells while eating a banana, while Klaus’ always measures things), and asinine rules about cutlery and violin recital attendance with the umbrella term “it’s a boarding school; isn’t everything here odd and vicious?” That explanation, along with the Baudelaire’s regular luck, means that no one bats an eye when the children are forced to live in the “Orphan Shack” because no parent or guardian is able to sign their permission slips to live in the dorm*, or when the vice princpal mocks students to their face. Unlike The Miserable Mill, the setting isn’t burdened with convincing you of its plausibility, so you’re free to ridealong while the Baudelaires duck Carmelita Spats (the school brat who calls people “cakesniffers”) and trade silverware with the Quagmires.
(*Okay, this is all the way a sidebar, but: the way TAA handles “lol, no one will sign this permission slip for you” is so much less bullshitty than the way Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban does. The Baudelaires flat out have no one to sign for them, so they get the shack because ha ha, that’s just how their lives work. Meanwhile, Harry’s abusive aunt and uncle don’t sign the form to let him go visit a wizarding village before they throw him out of the house, but at the end of the book, he gets permission from his uncle Sirius Black. Which is bullshit, because the only people who knew that Sirius isn’t basically the wizarding Unabomber are the same people who knew damn well that Harry’s aunt and uncle would rather break their fingers than do something for the sake of Harry’s happiness, and plus, it’s not like Hogwarts didn’t skirt rules for Harry like he was a star athlete at a D-1 school.)
But of course, cutting through the boarding school hijinks and sapping joy from the Baudelaires’ newfound friendship is, as always, Count Olaf. The count returns as Prufrock’s new gym teacher Coach Genghis, and while I loathe giving a man with such avarice credit, the scheme-hatchery in TAA is pretty on-point. His plan is to literally make the Baudelaires run laps each night to the point of exhaustion, which will cause their grades to slip, which will cause Vice Principal Nero to expel them, and at which point Coach Genghis will offer to homeschool them. Olaf plays with the Baudelaires’ and the reader’s expectations in TAA by playing the long game; while he shows up rather early, all he does is make the kids run laps, and his plan only reveals itself through its results. His scheme here is a(n un)happy medium between the active hostility from the first three books, and his hands-off approach in The Miserable Mill, where his mechaniations were opaque almost to the point of detriment (it also helps that his modus operandi this time isn’t as unwieldy as hypnotism). Olaf’s plan makes for an intriguing book, and it also regulates him somewhat out of the spotlight so that the reader and Baudelaires can spend more time getting to be with the Quagmires.
Which makes the book’s end that much sadder. The Quagmires, the first non-Baudelaireian examples of unblemished goodness in this entire series, are kidnapped by Count Olaf after he sees through their attempt to disguise themselves as the Baudelaires for another night of running laps. The Baudelaires try to chase him down to prevent Olaf from escaping with their new friends, and — in a thrilling move — actually perform better because of those accursed exercises. A struggle ensues at Olaf’s getaway car, giving the Quagmires time to impart the quote up top about V.F.D., but the count and the two women in pale-faced makeup are able to make good on their escape in a tense sequence that shines due to Snicket’s incredible pacing. The climactic chase is the first hard fight; after standing by and shouting for authorities in books 1–3 and the off-the-wall oddness of book 4, The Austere Academy ends with a straight up action sequence and I tell you what, it’s the first time in the series that I’ve wanted the Baudelaires to win. Not that I’ve ever not wanted them to prevail against Olaf, but Violet screaming through tears about having to follow the car as it pulls away with her only friends just hurts. The Austere Academy is the first time that the Baudelaires aren’t fighting for their lives at the end of one of the books, and it also marks their first out and out defeat.
But now, they have something to go on. With the kidnapping of the Quagmires and the mysterious arrival of V.F.D., the story of the Baudelaires is about to get bigger. From their low point at the end of The Austere Academy, alone and exhausted in the shadows of Prufrock Prep’s tombstone-like buildings, they have nowhere to go but up. And up and up and up, as we’ll see in the next book, The Ersatz Elevator. Welcome back, dear reader.
The Sinister Shootaround (loose notes and stray thoughts)
-”For Beatrice — You will always be in my heart, in my mind, and in your grave.” If that isn’t some prime Rule of 3 shit, then I don’t know.
-Olaf Disguise Rating: 5 out of 10 pairs of expensive-looking running shoes. He lost points for the turban being a bit much.
-Another cool thing about Count Olaf’s plan is that it’s the first one that seems like an applied lesson from the last book. The Baudelaires proved themselves adaptable at Lucky Smells, so reducing their capabilities is a pretty smart bet.
-I’m getting this out ahead of the show’s second season. I think after [first season spoiler alert] the switcheroo the show pulled with the parents, the Quagmires may factor into The Austere Academy and beyond in an even bigger way.
-Related: last year, a friend and I were fan-casting season 2, and I think that Will Ferrell would have been a perfect Vice Principal Nero. He has the right mix of blowhard and manchild for the role, plus he’s one of like 3 people I could see making the mimick-y voice thing work.
