The end of an era

[osprey_archer]

We have robins! And daffodils! The recent snowpocalypse decapitated many of the daffodils, sad sad, but fortunately many of them had not bloomed yet and those are beginning to come along.

It is SPRING!

And also the end of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. I am sad it's over, but all good things must come to an end. And anyway...



LIZZIE'S MOTHER SHOWED UP AT THE END. Ha ha that was perfect, such a great way to bookend the series.

And I liked that it happened after Lizzie had decided to end her diaries: it would have been utterly anticlimactic for her to end them because her mother found out. Having the diaries end because Lizzie a) feels she's reached a natural conclusion and b) thinks maybe the diaries have caused some of the drama that year, shows her character growth much better.

And cameos by Lydia and Charlotte, yay! Lydia still seems sad. I feel like Wickham has really damaged her, in a way he didn't manage to in the book - I think because he never betrays her trust like he does in LBD - he was planning to seduce and abandon her, but Lydia doesn't know that and is totally delighted to be the first in her family to get married.

But Charlotte has become the head of Collins and Collins! Maybe she will move it out to San Francisco to be close to Lizzie and Darcy? I like this idea. (Unless C&C was already in San Francisco? Sometimes I get confused about details.)

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Your post here got me to go back and look at, of all things, the Lydia Bennet videos. I loved them! I loved Mary so much, and I loved Mary and Lydia together.

And I do like--without having seen *most* of the videos--the wrap-up with Charlotte and Lydia. I'm glad Charlotte ends up happy and productive! Much better than in the original novel :-)

So how does Darcy help save Lydia in the adaptation?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I was a little sorry they didn't bring back Mary in the later videos to help support Lydia in her difficulties. They had a lot of other things going on, but...I thought Mary and Lydia had a really nice rapport, and also it would have been fun to see Mary, for once, being the one dragging Lydia out of the house.

Darcy ends up buying the whole company that was going to release Wickham's sex video of him and Lydia. O.o

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oooh, sex video is a good updating of the whole seduction thing. Very nice! Does Darcy have prior history with Wickham in the adaptation the way he did in the novel?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes! It's pretty much the same, except instead of eloping with Georgiana (called Gigi in this version), he just dates her for her money, till Darcy offers him money to go away.

[silverusagi]

But Charlotte has become the head of Collins and Collins! Maybe she will move it out to San Francisco to be close to Lizzie and Darcy?

I think once Lizzy is rich and famous (company wise), she will poach Charlotte and get Charlotte for her company, lol.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

That would also work! Assuming Charlotte doesn't somehow take over all of Collins & Collins for herself. Perhaps there could be a merger?

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

I think I want to see more of Lydia, but I liked that towards the end she was finding more of her natural voice. Yeah, at the beginning she was bouncy and brash, but that came at the cost of silencing the bit of her that ever felt hurt, that talked the way her sisters did, that expressed anything but exuberance and a show of self-esteem. She started to find that voice not because of Wickham, but because of Mary. And now she's getting louder, and finding some of her old bounce again.

I wonder if we'll ever see a modern adaptation of P&P in which Lydia considers herself to have a Happily Ever After with Wickham. I think it requires a Lydia either much stupider or much more calculating than modern Lydias tend to be.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I would call Lydia's voice at the end closer to her natural voice than what she was at the beginning? I just can't read pre-Wickham Lydia as silencing the bit of her that ever felt hurt: look at the way she ripped into Lizzie after Christmas.

I suppose that was more anger than straight-up hurt, but I don't think anger was an inappropriate reaction to the realization that Lizzie really did think very poorly of Lydia. In any case, given that Lydia's hurt and anger was probably visible from space, she was anything but silent.

So my feeling about Lydia is that she's learned that sharing her feelings indiscriminately will get her hurt. So now rather than warding off pain by acting invincible, she's trying to ward it off by acting smaller and more tentative. Like, "Okay, world, you got me, I have been punished for my hubris, you don't need to hurt me anymore."

I don't think the change is entirely a bad thing, because it's not like Lydia's original method of dealing with the world was very functional - Lizzie hated it, and it blew up in Lydia's face with Mary - but I still feel bad for her.