I'll be honest, this show could be better. It's solid and has been faithful to the books in terms of how things happen, and I love the VFD additions which helps connect it as a cohesive story. It's been satisfying in a lot of areas. It's just I'm let down by Harris as Olaf. I've realized he's become what I feared when he was cast. Olaf is still pretty silly and over the top. He's not on constant over the top mode like Carey was, and Harris tries, it's just he's his own type of over the top. I just don't think he gets the idea of this character. He's miscast. Or rather, he fits into Sonnenfeld's vision for the show, which I'll get to why I don't totally agree with it. Harris plays him more as a pathetic loser where we see the seams of him. Olaf knows his disguises are bad and he's fumbling through them, surprised by how much they're working, like we might think, except the books didn't take what we already know and make that as part of this eye winking humor at the narrative's expense. In the books, Olaf is a bad actor who actually thinks he's great while he's fooling the ignorant self absorbed adults around the smart orphans. And it's played totally straight. I remember as a kid, reading from the Baudelaire's perspectives being scared about Olaf showing up, because of how no one would believe them and then had to wait to see how they would get out of it.
Which goes into my bigger problem with how this has been treated. It seems Sonnenfeld treats these as more whimsical and more cartoonish than these stories were written as. There's eye winking. To the point where characters break the forth wall. For all the film's faults, the material was played straight. Here, it seems like the adult filmmakers see this material and just see it being that this is a kids book series, that gives them license to make it more broad. Which is a pretty old fashioned way of thinking. It's not just show in the direction, which for as much as I like it for what it is, the fact this goes against the books prevents me from fully accepting it. You even see it in the performances. The guy who played Nero was totally wrong. Jesus Christ, how he played that violin tells you a lot about the thinking of this. Esme, as much as I like Lucy Punch, is over the top.
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