Pour yourself a parsley soda because Season 2 of A Series of Unfortunate Events is an
entertainingly dark ride that's positively jam-packed with easter eggs!
Yippee ki-yay movie lovers, it's Jan here, and today I'm going to run through some very
cool things you might have missed in the new series including references, cameos, and connections
to TV shows, movies, and the original books.
Obviously, spoilers ahead if you're not up-to-date with Season 2.
At the start of the first episode, Mr Poe mentions how he simply can't put down a book
called The Pony Party, which, if you look at the jacket, seems to be the first in a
series of cheerful stories about 'the Luckiest Kids in the World!'
written by Loney M Setnick.
However, in reality, there is no Pony Party book, it's just a reversible cover for hardback
editions of Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, and Pony Party author Loney
M Setnick is an anagram of Lemony Snicket.
If you've read the original books, you'll know that Olivia Caliban is a rather different
character in the TV series.
In the novels, she only appears in the 9th book, The Carnivorous Carnival, where she's
known as the fortune-teller Madame Lulu and she turns out to be the person who's been
giving Count Olaf information on where he can find the Baudelaire orphans each time
they escape from him.
And she's the one who reveals to Olaf that Beverley, Elliot, and Chabo are actually Violet,
Klaus, and Sunny!
However, in the TV show, Olivia Caliban pops up at the start of Season 2 in The Austere
Academy episodes, where she's a librarian who later joins up with Jacques Snicket to
try and help the Baudelaires, and later again she takes on the alias of fortune-teller Madame
Lulu, which is a rotating position for any VFD agent staying at the Carnival.
By the way, the Caligari Carnival and Madame Lulu's Caligari Cabinet get their names from
a silent horror movie called The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
As Mr Poe drives the Baudelaires to their next guardians in the Village of Fowl Devotees,
he talks to them about Count Omar, which you might think was just a slip of the tongue.
"Thanks to the constant coverage in my wife's newspaper, I'm sure Count Omar will be captured
in no time at all."
"Olaf."
"Yes, I meant to say Omar."
"Besides ..." However, in the 7th book, The Vile Village,
the Daily Punctilio newspaper gets Count Olaf's name wrong, calling him Count Omar, which
leads the people living in the Village of Fowl Devotees to repeatedly refer to Count
Olaf as Count Omar, much to the frustration of the Baudelaires.
Although the VFD villagers in the TV series don't do this, Mr Poe does refer to Count
Omar a couple of times in Part One and Two of The Vile Village.
"But you know that Count Omar was far from innocent."
"Count Olaf."
"Yes, see?
Even the name gives the shivers."
"That bushy eyebrow and tattoo of that eye on his ankle."
And the Daily Punctilio also gets Olaf's name wrong in several articles.
In Part 2 of The Ersatz Elevator, there's a clever call-back when, to gain access to
the "In Auction", Jacquelyn recycles the trick that Count Olaf played on her in the first
season by using the fake name he made up to get an appointment with Mr Poe.
"I have an appointment."
"Name?"
"Haircut."
"Haircut?"
"Yes... sica Haircut is my name."
"Yessica Haircut?"
"Yes."
"Yessica."
"Larry Your-Waiter."
"Did you get past the bouncer?"
"Not yet.
He has to let me in."
"I'm on the list."
"Yessica Haircut."
When Lemony Snicket is in the tunnels, there's a sign for DENOUEMENT, which is a nod to the
Hotel Denouement, the main location of the 12th book, The Penultimate Peril, which will
be part of Season 3.
The sign is also a reference to triplets Ernest, Frank, and Dewey Denouement who own that hotel.
And the word 'dénouement' is a literary term meaning the final part of a film, play, or
story that brings together strands of the plot.
Also, when Klaus and Violet are searching for the Snicket files at Heimlich Hospital,
there's a file labelled 'Slippery Slopes', which is a nod to the 10th book, The Slippery
Slope, which will be adapted in the first episodes of Season 3.
Of course, at the end of Season 2, the Baudelaires also literally find themselves on a slippery
slope.
There's a lovely meta-moment in episode 9 when Neil Patrick Harris drops a reference
to his previous big TV show, How I Met Your Mother, which ran for nine seasons and was
set in New York City.
"If she's so good at fortune-telling, why does she live here instead of having her own
show in the city?"
"I tried that for nine years.
Look where it got me."
On top of that, Season 1 featured Harris's How I Met Your Mother co-star Cobie Smulders
playing the Quagmire children's mother!
And Season 2 brings another reunion for Harris and a former co-star when Olaf confronts Nathan
Fillion's Jacques Snicket in the Village of Fowl Devotees.
Harris and Fillion previously worked together in Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, where Harris
played an aspiring supervillain to Fillion's superhero Captain Hammer.
And they're not the only shows that Neil Patrick Harris once starred in that get a hat-tip
this season.
In episode 8, when Count Olaf meets Doctor Faustus, who's actually Klaus in disguise,
Olaf tells Faustus that he looks 'terribly young to be a doctor'.
Which is funny because as a young actor Harris's breakthrough role was playing a teen genius
doctor in the comedy-drama, Doogie Howser, MD, which ran from 1989 to 1993.
Oh, and by the way, the name Doctor Faustus is a literary reference to a 16th-century
English play about a man who makes a deal with the devil.
Esmé Squalor gets to wear some pretty memorable outfits in the series, including one that
seems to draw inspiration from the villainous Cruella de Vil.
And, later, when Esmé tells Madame Lulu that she was forced to 'make [her] own dress from
a few scraps of tent', and then the camera reveals holes cut out of a tent, it's reminiscent
of Disney's Enchanted, where Giselle made herself a dress out of a set of curtains,
leaving an outline visible in the remaining material.
Now, you might think that's a stretch, but Enchanted was produced by Barry Sonnenfeld
and he's the showrunner for A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Indeed, Barry Sonnenfeld also pops up several times, including in a cameo as Aunt Josephine's
husband Ike Anwhistle; on a poster for 'Barry the Pinhead' at the Caligari Carnival; and
he also provides the voice of Mr Tamerlane during Mr Poe's phone conversation about The
Pony Party.
"Poe, are you there?"
"Focus, Poe."
"What about the Baudelaires?"
"Ah, yes, the Baudelaires."
"Put down the book."
"I'll put this down."
And speaking of cameos, Neil Patrick Harris's real-life husband, David Burtka, plays a rather
vocal audience member during the Carnivorous Carnival episodes and they're joined in the
season finale by their actual children Harper and Gideon.
The makers of A Series of Unfortunate Events are obviously big fans of director Stanley
Kubrick's The Shining because they already included a nod to the famous horror movie
in Season 1.
"Here's Shammy!"
And they pay tribute to it again, not once but twice in Season 2!
In Part One of the Hostile Hospital, administrator Babs is wandering the hospital's corridors
in the dark when she's frightened by the two identically-dressed White-Faced Women who
suddenly appear ahead of her.
"Hello, Babs, come and play with us."
This scene is a clear hat-tip to the Grady sisters in The Shining, who appear to young
Danny asking him to come and play with them as he's tricycling along the hotel's corridors.
In the second part of the Baudelaire's story at Heimlich Hospital, the Henchperson of Indeterminate
Gender smashes down the door to a room where Violet, Klaus and Sunny are hiding.
"Here I am, Nurse Lucafont."
Which is a parody of Jack Nicholson's famous line, 'Here's Johnny'.
Now, what were your favourite easter eggs and moments in the show?
And what are you most looking forward to in season 3?
I can't wait to read your comments below!
You can also tweet me @Jan_Gilbert or @FlicksCity.
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And you can click here for more videos you'll like, including my Season 1 Unfortunate Events
easter eggs!
Thanks for watching and see ya next time!
Yippee ki-yay movie lovers!