Viewing: Anne with an E

 My sickbed marathon continues. Because I am trying to push myself enough to get things moving without pushing myself too far and getting sicker again, it was a good day for episodic TV, each piece long enough to recoup before I tried moving around and doing things again. 

 

Today I finished Anne with an E, which I had already watched most of. It's an adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. People either love it or hate it. Which seems to depend on whether you loved the books as a child, or the earlier TV adaptation. 

 

I read the books as a child, and liked them, but they aren't among my heart's books. They're too nice for me, I think. Decorous. I saw at least some of the older TV series and it was a very faithful adaptation. Neither the books nor the old TV series is so bad as to be called saccharine, but both definitely gloss over any real ugliness. 

 

This series doesn't do that. In the three seasons I've watched on Netflix, we've seen how Anne's life before her arrival at the Cuthbert's might have gone. It wasn't pretty. It ranged from actively abusive to neglectful at best. In that light, Anne's relentless optimism and joy in life definitely come across as a choice, a coping mechanism even. That changes things considerably. 

 

Critics say that this show goes too far the other way, making everything too grim and dark. But for a series with a young adolescent girl at its center, I think it's spot on to how those troubles feel. It really is the end of the word when you blurt out the wrong thing at school and everyone remembers, or when you accidentally dye your hair green, or when you are the one who figures out what's going on, but no one will believe you because you're just a little girl. 

 

One of the great things about the series is how nuanced nearly everyone is. Everyone behaves badly in one way or another, and a lot of the show is about making amends and learning to move on when you've hurt someone. Many times characters are their own worst enemies, and this is exacerbated by the small town politics where everyone knows and remembers everything about each other, and wants to keep each other pigeonholed. 

 

This isn't Green Gables as I remember it from childhood. And from me, that's a compliment. 

Smile a Day: No More Fever

 #smileaday Not having a fever. The bar is pretty low  for smile a day when I'm sick. But I'll definitely take fever-gone. It's nice to feel like I can think.