Anne With An "E"

[grundyscribbling]

My sister kindly informed me this evening that Netflix's Anne of Green Gables series is available. I just watched the whole thing, although I'm not sure why.

I do not mind dark and gritty. I do not even mind a less sunshiney version of Anne than the Disney version of the 1980s. What I do not like is relentlessly gritty and dark claiming to be Anne of Green Gables. If you love the books, skip this mess.

Highlights:
-Mr. Hammond expires in the middle of beating Anne with a strap.
-The other girls at school, except Diana, don't like Anne. While I will grant that Josie Pye is supposed to be on the spiteful side, Ruby Gillis and Jane Andrews definitely weren't.
-Billy Andrews tries to beat her up after Anne inadvertently spreads a rumor that Prissy is 'intimate' with Mr. Phillips. (Yes, seriously to both halves of that sentence.)
-The majority of Avonlea are horrible snobs who look down on the orphan girl and openly gossip about her at the Sunday School picnic.
-Everybody old has tragic romantic backstory. Except the Lyndes, who appear to be happily married. (Not complaining about the Lyndes.)
-Anne gets her first period, and by her reaction, you'd think she was Sansa Stark.
-While Charlie Sloan and Moody Spurgeon do indeed get an intro, Gilbert Blythe is really the only boy who is not a jerk.
-Above statement should be qualified with "at school". Quite honestly, if I continued with this, I'd be shipping Anne/Jerry. As in Jerry Baynard, who is the Green Gables hired boy. (For some reason, he got a name change from the book's Buote. He's still French but I guess his original last name wasn't French enough?) They actually talk more than Anne and Gilbert, and Jerry has better advice.
-Speaking of Anne and Gilbert, she doesn't so much break her slate over his head as clock him upside the head with it. For a second, I thought she'd killed him, and thought 'that's taking this darker grittier thing a bit far'.
-Gilbert's father dies, and he shuts up the house and takes up working on boats.
-Anne appears to have PTSD
-The dangers of child snatchers, violent muggings, and conmen seems ridiculously high for 1880s PEI. This isn't Boston or New York City.
-Matthew attempts to commit suicide with a revolver
-The same lowlifes who beat the crap out of Jerry and stole the proceeds from the sale of a Green Gables horse are posing as would-be lodgers at the end of the last episode.

And now I want to read the book as a palate cleanser. But it's kind of late for that, and I have to work in the morning.

Comments

[sulien]

You watched the whole thing? I watched the first episode and thought it was an interesting start to a more realistic treatment of the lot of an orphan in that era (they were obviously evil sinners, otherwise God would never have taken their parents from them, at least according to common belief at the time) and decided to read a variety of reviews to see if I wanted to watch the rest. What I read sounded like the issue isn't so much gritty darkness, but that they figuratively bludgeon viewers about the head and shoulders with the gritty darkness, so I gave it a pass. Reading your review reinforces my decision. Thank you for the heads up!

[grundyscribbling]

I watched all of what's up on Netflix, which I believe is the entire first season. (If there's any more, I'm giving it a miss.) Not my best decision this weekend! :P

It was very bludgeon-y, and a lot of the 'drama' was unnecessary adaptation addition. Book Anne managed to find plenty of trouble without having to invent a feud with the Andrews family or all the girls at school except Diana disliking her. And the 'Matthew mortgages the farm arc' was just plain stupid. (Given that book Matthew died of a heart attack on learning the bank where he kept his money had failed, 'Green Gables at risk' was already a thing, so the unnecessary amping up of it was just ridiculous.) And assuming the show gets renewed, they're clearly planning on going even further off-piste, what with having killed off Gilbert's father so early on.

I really don't understand what the folks writing the adaptation were thinking. The market for a fresh Anne series done right would be massive. (And not just in Canada and the US- Anne's got a worldwide following.) But this one is a hot mess. The grimness is the antithesis of the Anne books, which despite the roughness of Anne's early life were upbeat and hopeful. The 80's Anne adaptation may have played down the stuff that's subtle in the books, like the anti-orphan and anti-French stuff, but it got the upbeat part right and Anne was dreamy and imaginative without coming off as a weirdo.

[sulien]

Agreed, I don't understand the entertainment industry's obsession with 'darker and grittier' either, and it seems like they're trying to make everything 'darker and grittier', even where it just doesn't fit. I recall Battlestar Gallactica was a big influence on a lot of the sci-fi/fantasy television productions and everyone scrambled to copy them.

The '80's adaptation of the Anne stories was a bit too saccharine for my tastes and I'd really love to see an adaptation made as you described. Unfortunately, subtlety is just not in the repertoire of most productions these days. :-/

[grundyscribbling]

Yeah, it's like the production powers that be missed that BSG-style dark and gritty isn't appropriate for everything. BSG's dark and gritty came about at least in part as a reaction to ST:Voyager, in which despite being on the other side of the galaxy from home and allegedly holding it together with duct tape and hope, the ship never really looked like it was falling apart and the crew were mostly ok. (Except for alternate timeline deaths, which got old fast.) 80's Anne was too saccharine, but the solution to that should be 'dial down the Disney factor' not 'let's make Battlestar Green Gables!"

[sulien]

80's Anne was too saccharine, but the solution to that should be'dial down the Disney factor' not 'let's make Battlestar Green Gables!"

Dude, you win the internets with that comment! *g* 'Battlestar Green Gables' *laughs out loud some more*