Hello everyone and welcome to the penultimate discussion post for A series of Unfortunate events looking at episodes 5 and 6 of season 3, aptly titled The penultimate Peril parts one and two. “Is County not my daddy any more?” “He’s not mine either”. That was an exchange from Esme to Carmelita that was both hilarious and shudder inducing at the same time. The implosion of “Team Olaf” was just one of the numerous highlights of the episodes though. We got to actually see Lemony Snicket interact with other characters and be present in the ongoing story, as well as an array of other familiar characters returning to the fold. It was particularly nice to see the judge back as she always seemed a genuine and caring individual. I know she was tricked by Count Olaf but it didn’t make her seem as stupid as some of the other characters seemed when they were tricked. Lemony Snicket himself didn’t actually come across as very likeable though which was a bit of a shame.

They managed to pull off a great twist that should have been so obvious, leaving me shocked both at the reveal and that I didn’t notice it earlier. I am of course talking about the twin hotel workers actually turning out to be triplets. They showed three different events that all happened at the same time which each featured one of the “twins” and with them putting such an emphasis on not knowing which was which (also adding that one was good and one was bad) you were too distracted to realise what was right in front of you: that is the best type of twist. A less welcome twist was the children somehow murdering one of the triplets with a harpoon gun which in my opinion at least felt like one unfortunate event too many.

We got to see flashbacks of a pre-evil Olaf where you actually ended up feeling bad for him as his dad ended up caught in the middle and paying for it with his life. It gave some explanation for his motivation and showing that he was not always as evil as he is now helped to round out his character. It was also odd finally seeing Beatrice and it being the lady from Firefly and Deadpool. She is quite a well known actress for such a minor role so it caught me of guard.

The a good chunk of the second part was took of by the court case which went from very tense to very random to then irritatingly ridiculous. Let’s work through those adjectives shall we? First of all, it really did feel like the culmination of all that had occurred with Olaf finally being held responsible for his actions and everyone actually starting to believe the truth for a change. This part I really enjoyed. Now I get that the whole sausage thing was supposed to highlight how petty Esme was but it just felt really weird and random and not in the good way which the show usually does so well and I love. Things didn’t pick up unfortunately as the whole blindfold thing was just stupid and made everyone look moronic beyond belief. It just made you hate basically all of the characters for being idiots. We ended with a rather unexpected team up between the Orphans and Olaf to escape and setting up the finale which I am still looking forward to. It is just a shame that there were a few too many hiccups and bumps on the final stretch to it.

DD Rating: 6/10