Anne With an E: Season 1 Review

My summer has been wholly occupied with the job of cleaning house (you may think I'm exaggerating when I say that it only gets cleaned when I'm at home, but I can assure you, I am not). And in my daily duties, I have come to love cleaning, if for one seemingly unrelated reason: audiobooks (and podcasts.) See, I am not an auditory learner by any stretch of the imagination. It takes so much concentration for me to be able to focus on something I'm listening to, and until this summer, the only thing I could do that would allow me the concentration to listen to a podcast was coloring. But now I have discovered that cleaning while listening is absolutely splendid. I can get so wrapped up in listening to something that I completely forget I'm even cleaning, and before I know it, I've listened to five chapters of a book and cleaned the entire bathroom. It is glorious. In fact, it makes me WANT to clean so that I get to listen again.

All this is preface to say that I just finished listening to Anne of Green Gables on audiobook (that's ten hours of cleaning ladies and gents) and it was such a great experience. That story never ever fails to remind me how beautiful the world is and how much I want to be able to share Anne Shirley with a daughter someday. It really has been one of my greatest inspirations since I was a little girl when my mother and grandmother first introduced me to the wonderful world of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island. In reading (nay, listening to) the book all over again, I remembered that there was a blog post about the recent Netflix adaptation of Anne of Green Gables that I had never finished or published!!!! So, here is that post, though a month or so late.

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I've never been good admitting when I was wrong. Who likes that feeling? But, it must be done: I was thoroughly convinced that I was going to hate Netflix's new adaptation of Anne of Green Gables, that it wouldn't even be able to hold a CANDLE to the masterpiece that is the 80s version of my most beloved book series. But I was very wrong. In fact, I watched over 60% of the entire first season in one night, that's how enthralled I was. NOW that being said, the first two episodes were not good indicators of the show as a whole. In fact, I barely continued watching after the second episode. They were honestly just plain bad in my opinion. It's like nobody in the cast or the production team had quite locked in exactly what they were going for yet. But by the third episode, it all seemed to fall in place, and I enjoyed it greatly once I got past those first two sorry episodes. Also, and I must just say this for the sake of principle, it's still nowhere near as perfect and wonderful and classic and lifechanging and heart-wrenching and sentimental and nostalgic and exquisite as the 1980s version. But I dare say it's the closest anybody's come, barring the first two episodes.

Why the first two episodes sucked:

-Anne is not herself! It felt like the actress was just reciting lines and not really feeling the character yet
-There were lots of unnecessary flashbacks that are not consistent with Anne's character in any of the originals.
-There was a weird tangent story line about her getting sent back?? I mean come on, that was so unneeded, and so far from the original it almost kept me from watching the rest
-Anne and the entire atmosphere felt so hopeless, which is pretty much the exact opposite of the whole point of the story. If you know Anne at all, you know the defining characteristic of her personality is her pervasive optimism even in the grimmest of adversities. Of course she is capable of giving into overly dramatic symbolic despair, but the show makes her despair seem far too genuine.

Why the rest of it didn't suck:

-Truly, truly, there was great casting, particularly in the character of Marilla. When I first saw who was going to play Anne, I didn't think she fit her at all. She was too skinny and homely, whereas Anne is so doe-eyed and stylish. But then again, in the beginning of the story, she IS very skinny and homely, so it actually ended up being to the actress's credit. Also, everybody knows the person they choose for Gilbert can make or break the whole thing, and though I was skeptical at first, I think the kid they picked embodied Gilbert astutely.
-Probably my favorite part about this new adaptation is the exploration of previously unexplored characters and story lines. I know that every time I watch the 80s version, or read the books, I always wonder what the hired French boy Jerry was like, and I want to know more about the forgotten romance between Marilla and Gilbert's father, not to mention what happened in Marilla and Matthew's lives that brought them to the point of living together as two old maids (or rather, an old maid and an old bachelor). Netflix FINALLY gives me some possible answers to those questions, and I wholeheartedly appreciated it.

-Aside from more fleshed out story lines that were present in the original, this new Netflix version also opens up story lines that, though not present in the book or original movie, seem fitting to the universe of the story, and actually just serve to add to the richness and adventure of Anne's life, rather than seem out of place or blasphemous to original material. One of the most notable new story arcs was the episode where Anne got her first period, and you know, it made so much sense! I mean, here is this little orphan girl who's been passed back and forth between families who don't want her and asylums that don't care about her, and now she's almost a teenager and no doubt never got the chance to learn about "becoming a woman" or whatever from her mother. So that part really made sense to me and added a humor and richness to my beloved tale.

That being said, here are a few nit picky things:

-This adaptation is trying SO HARD to be overtly feminist, even though Anne of Green Gables has literally always been super intrinsically feminist without anybody having to point it out! (single woman raising an orphan on her own, orphan girl with no intentions to marry but rather intends to further her career, stands up to men all the time, doesn't confine herself to the social conventions of the day, Aunt Josephine: single all her life and a millionaire, opinionated neighbor lady who basically runs the whole town, JUST TO NAME A FEW THINGS). Literally as I was rereading the first book this past week, I was struck over and over again by how ahead-of-its-time this story truly is! The women RULE the little town of Avonlea and thereby, the entire plot. There's only two men who get any noteworthy character development, and even they (Gilbert and Matthew) are gladly under the rule of the bewitching Anne. It's marvelous, and books just weren't written like that back then, and still aren't really.
-Because the Netflix version is striving to be more "realistic" and "gritty" about what life was like in the early 1900s (or late 1800s...there is some discrepancy over when L.M. Montgomery intended the story to take place) the new series doesn't show enough of the beauty of the story: the scenery, Anne's love for nature, the quaint beauty of Green Gables. Instead it made PEI seem dark and dirty, which I'm sure it was in those days, but this story has always served to look past that and point out all the hidden and overlooked beauty in life! Literally every chapter of the book opens up with an overly flowery and detailed description of some little spruce grove or lake or walkway. It's such a beautiful, floral, nature-filled story, yet I don't recall a single flower from this new version, just white washed walls and flickering candles and dark cinematography. Anne herself would be dismayed at the lack of beauty and imagination.
-Anne and Gilbert become friends a bit too fast...I mean come on, she pretended to hate him for SO LONG in the originals, but in this one, they're right good chums by the end of season one, when it's still basically her first year at Green Gables! And if there are more seasons to come, which I really hope there are, then what does that mean? That they'll just go on living as if they're best friends? That's not true to the story AT ALL! They were rivals for the entire first book until the very last chapter!

Anyway, I would highly recommend watching the Netflix series, as I'm sure none of you will be nearly as picky as I am about this absolute classic. But, if you, like me, come to realize the first two episodes are just not doing it for you, skip them and start at the third installment. You'll thank me later. I hope you end up falling in love with and learning to appreciate this story as much as I do.

VaughnDL