"Take a moment. Enjoy the awesome. And the adorbs!"

Continuing my discussion about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, I'd like to move on to the youngest Bennet sister: Lydia (and if you think that I'm reserving Lizzie for last, you'd be right!) One of the main reasons I even started watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is because my friend told me that it had the best version of Lydia that she had ever seen. And she was totally right. Lydia is awesome. She’s funny and silly and crazy. She says ridiculous things. She’s wild. She’s unpredictable. But the best thing about Lydia is that she has character depth. In the books, Lydia is simply the fifth sister, the obnoxious sister, the loud and flirtatious and tactless and embarrassing sister. She's the one who makes all of the stupid decisions. Yet, for all of the impact she has on the plot, Lydia has very little character depth in the novel (this is, again, my opinion). She never changes or grows. She never learns anything. We are told that Lydia is boy-crazy and spoiled and that's pretty much all she ever is. In the show, Lydia is all of that but she is much more. Underneath all of the crazy and silly and “adorbs” is a very lonely girl who desperately wants her sisters to notice her. From starting her own video diaries to dating her older sister’s ex-boyfriend, it’s painfully obvious that Lydia wants to be like Lizzie and, more than anything, wants her approval. Lydia's character arc is the most dramatic out of all the characters. She starts out virtually exploding on the screen, fuels that energy into anger and malice, loses all of her energy by dedicating herself to a selfish person, and then manages to heal and grow from her experiences. It's pretty fantastic.

With all of the characters but specifically Lydia and Lizzie, I really like that the writers of the show weren't afraid to make them flawed. More on Lizzie's character later, but Lydia is an imperfect person. I like that she's imperfect because it makes her more relatable, more real. However, for all of her flaws, she is a good character and one that I was definitely rooting for. Lydia is smart (she outwits Mr. Collins - being one of two people in the entire show who knows how to deal with him), she is loyal (defending Mary, being the only person in the show who even remembers Mary), and she's kind (she rescues Lizzie's favorite necklace). The writers also turned a plot point into a character point by having Lydia suggest that Bing Lee host a party in order to get Jane and Bing together. In the book, Lydia's suggestion seems to stem from a desire to party; in the show, it's a matchmaking ploy (and, in my opinion, one of the best matchmaking ploys in the entire show).

Throughout her relationship with George Wickham, Lydia’s biggest fear is that her sisters will discover it and will disapprove. In the book, Lydia goes along with Mr. Wickham because she’s flighty and flirty and has zero common sense. In the show, we see George manipulate her by isolating her from people who truly care about her, persuading her to distrust them more than she already does, and he gives her just the right kind of attention that she winds up depending on him like she would a drug. All through her videos with him, she looks at him hungrily as if she’s afraid he’ll disappear at any second. She loses all of her vivacity and color as he basically drains the energy out of her by making her fully dependent on him.

 

Lydia’s another character that I worried about when the book ended. She’s a teenager, for crying out loud! And now she’s strapped to an irresponsible, horrid, selfish, greedy, manipulative jerk for life. How long will that last? It’s no surprise that she’s always having to ask Jane and Lizzie for financial help and I worry about her future happiness. In the show, Lydia gets a much better ending. Her relationship with George Wickham leaves her emotionally scarred but she has a better relationship with her sisters and a better understanding of herself. I do wish we could see her with the pep she had at the beginning of the show but I can see how that wouldn’t be very realistic. At least I know she’s on her way to happiness. In the book, Darcy and Lizzie pretty much refuse to have Lydia over to their house but in the show, Darcy comes around to Lydia’s good points so we know she won’t be ostracized by any of her family (And I get the feeling that she’d eventually meet Gigi and totally hit it off with her).

All right, so Lydia is not one of the strongest characters in the show. But, I'd argue that she's one of the most interesting and most complex. I realize there aren't a ton of Lydia fans out there but I'm curious what everyone else's feelings are about her? Love her? Hate her? Both?

"Everyone deserves tea."

Hello!
I hope everyone is enjoying these posts! There's a very good chance that I'm just talking to myself. But I like to think that I'm not the only person in the world who likes to discuss fictional characters at length. Right? Any other LBD fans out there - please comment and add to the discussion!

Today, I'm going to discuss one of my absolute favorite characters in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (and Pride and Prejudice): Jane Bennet. My main problem with Jane is that, in the book, being the nice sister makes Jane a bit of a doormat. Mr. Bingley breaks her heart and when he comes back and proposes, she accepts, apparently without the slightest hesitation. Now, I appreciate that she doesn’t let her pride get in the way of her happiness but I’m not sure Jane has any pride to speak of. In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Jane actually has backbone, self-respect, and complexity of character. In one of my favorite episodes in the show, she tells Lizzie, “I won’t let one failed relationship define me.” It’s such a good line - not only as a life lesson - but because in the book, Jane’s one bad relationship completely ruins her life until Mr. Bingley comes back and patches it up.

In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Jane starts off completely in tune with her literary counterpart: she’s sweet, she’s patient, she’s motherly, and she falls for Bing Lee as soundly as you please. However, from the get-go, her character has a bit more spunk than she does in the book. Again, don't get me wrong: I find nothing wrong in having a sweet, kind, mild-mannered, polite, patient heroine (Snow White and Cinderella are totally underrated) but I do think it's important for a character to have self-respect. From the earlier episodes of the show, we see that Jane is not afraid to speak her mind. She constantly defends Darcy, even though no one likes him, she calls Lizzie out frequently on having too narrow or skewed a mind-set, and she unapologetically stands up for her family. In one of the best episodes in the show, Charlotte makes a joke about Lydia being drunk and Jane immediately shuts her down. As Dumbledore taught us, it takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your friends. This little character moments pave the way for a stronger Jane than we have known in the books.

In Lydia's episodes, she takes a trip to visit Jane. Her choice in companionship is not accidental. In the show, Jane is a rock. She's kind and giving and wise. She's a sister Lydia can turn to who won't criticize or scold for skipping school, who will provide guidance and advice, but gives her the freedom to be her own person. Jane is a remarkable older sister and the way she treats both of her sisters reveal what an awesome person she is.

Jane's character starts to really develop different than her literary counterpart after she follows Bingley out of town. In the book, Jane goes to London immediately after Mr. Bingley’s departure in the hopes of running into him and winning him back. She returns home unsuccessful and unhappy and basically pines away until she has something more urgent to do, like worry about Lydia. In the show, Jane follows Bing to LA. However, once she’s there, she changes. She comes home for the holidays having discovered what it’s like to be independent and be in a job that appreciates her. She has the confidence to council Lizzie on her own future and by the final act of the show, no one is really sure if “new” Jane would even accept Bing. The best part is: she doesn’t! It’s one of my favorite things in the show: when Bing asks Jane if he can go with her to New York and she turns him down. Ultimately, she does agree to it but with conditions and it’s made very clear that she plays a dominant role in their relationship. Later, when we’re given an update on how the couple is doing in NYC, we find that Jane is loving her new job and that Bing is very good “arm candy” when he accompanies her for a business dinner. I love it! Jane moves across the country to further her career and Bing follows her there, agreeing to the rules and limits she establishes for their relationship. We already know that they’re compatible because they’re both so sweet and kind and see the good in people. And we know that they truly love each other. In the show, I’m confident their relationship will work out. In the book, I’m confident it will work out too but mostly because the characters have developed so little from the beginning that their relationship is basically the same as it was during their initial courtship.

P.S. Can we talk about Jane's clothes and hair? Everything she wears is absolute perfection! She has a couple of dress that look like they've been dip dyed or something - so cute!

 

“You had 96 episodes to think of a costume for me, and you came up with pigtails and a book?”

First real post today! Hooray! Today, I'm going to start discussing a show that is very near and dear to my heart. It's also the reason I started this blog in the first place: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. It's a modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. In this version, Lizzie is a grad student who starts a vlog to talk about her life. Quite spectacularly, life happens whenever she turns on the camera, and it's kind of amazing. It's so funny and true to the story, the theme, and the main characters of the novel. There are some things that change as the story is rebooted for a modern audience but I like these changes. Now, I should say straight out that if you haven’t watched the show, you should. Not only because it’s a good show but because this post is going to be full of spoilers. I'll be posting the playlist here so you can stop everything and go watch this show. It's truly wonderful.

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There are many, many things I love about this show but one of my favorite things about it is the empowerment given to the female characters. Austen made Elizabeth Bennet a strong female protagonist who takes charge of her life but in the book she’s pretty much the only character who truly follows her heart. I’ll be talking more about Lizzie’s evolution in the show but for this week, I'll be discussing some of the other female characters in the story. So first up... Charlotte.

 

In the novel, Charlotte Lucas launches into a sort of independence by marrying Mr. Collins and while it’s evident that she has a significant impact on her husband’s decisions, I’ve always wondered if Charlotte was truly happy. I mean, she’s an intelligent woman stuck in a presumably loveless marriage to an unintelligent man whom she has married solely for the sake of stability. Years down the road, would she get tired of having to encourage Mr. Collins to go on a walk? If they had children, would she have been ok with Lady Catherine telling them how children should be raised? Charlotte’s situation leaves much to be desired, in my opinion.


In the show, however, Charlotte accepts Mr. Collins’ proposal – not of marriage but of employment. I confess that when I first watched the show and got to the part where Mr. Collins proposes to Lizzie, I felt let down. And when she rejected him, I didn’t sympathize with her; I just thought, “how irresponsible!” It wasn’t until I watched the show a second time that I realized that this is exactly what the writers wanted me to think. They wanted me to be shocked that Lizzie didn’t accept such a lucrative proposal. In Austen’s day, rejecting an offer of marriage when you have little dowry and your family estate is to be entailed away would also be considered irresponsible and selfish. After I realized this, I thought about it a bit more and realized that the job offer isn’t just a job; it’s a career. Lizzie wouldn’t have been able to take the job for a few years until she found something more enjoyable; she’d be stuck with it for the rest of her life. And for that, I can certainly understand her point of view.

 

Now, when Charlotte is offered the job, it isn’t entirely Mr. Collins’ idea. The audience gets to see her basically manipulate him into offering it. So, when she accepts, we’re not terribly surprised. I like seeing the proposal and I like that Charlotte drives the whole situation because it makes her feel like more of a powerful character and it paves the way for her to be a more dominant role in their subsequent relationship. We see Charlotte, not as a housewife sending her pesky husband out for long walks so she can have some peace but as a right-hand man, making sure the company she works for succeeds. The dynamic changes when the relationship is moved from the home to the office and I think it works better. When Lizzie visits Collins & Collins, she sees her bestie impacting the business plan, the policies. And rather than belittling her employer, she encourages him and supports him; yes, he doesn’t realize that she’s controlling as much as she is but it’s pretty evident that the company is more successful with Charlotte in it. At the end of the show, when Charlotte becomes the head of Collins & Collins so that Mr. Collins can start a new branch of the company in Canada, we see a female executive who carved her own path. I’ve always liked the character of Charlotte and with this version of her, I can truly be happy for her when the story comes to an end.

Charlotte Lu is one of the first characters we meet in the show and one of the last characters we see. She's featured in more episodes than Darcy or Bing and the friendship between Lizzie and Charlotte is, in my opinion, more prominent than any of the romances. Charlotte is a voice of reason in a world filled with drama, emotion, and skewed perspective. With Lizzie as an unreliable narrator, Charlotte's viewpoint becomes important to the audience as she is a character we find we can trust. And while we may not always agree with Charlotte as opposed to Lizzie (as an optimist, I often found myself on Lizzie's side of a few discussions), the audience can trust Charlotte's word when it comes to story-telling. Basically, Charlotte has a lot of things going for her as a major female character. And in addition to all of these things, she's also incredibly strong. To be honest, all of the female characters are remarkably strong. I'll go into more details about each character later but Charlotte's strength shines through in the way she unapologetically stands up for the people she loves. She stands up to Darcy about his involvement in Jane and Bing's relationship, even though it could cost her job. And she more than adequately matches Caroline Lee in one of their only confrontations.

In other words, Charlotte is one of my favorite characters in the show. She's intelligent, strong, ambitious, kind, practical, and powerful.
 

Welcome!

Hi! So, I've started this new blog because, as the title suggests, I tend to watch movies and tv shows and pick them to pieces. A lot of people do this so I know it's not uncommon but I graduated from college five years ago vas I really miss having a platform on which to dissect fiction. So, after saying for the umpteenth time, "I could write a paper about this show!" I decided I would. It won't have the formality of a paper, there'll be no grade of course. But there will be the potential for interactivity as readers come and comment on my opinions (please be nice! They are just opinions) and we can have an in-depth conversation about movies, tv shows, maybe books that we feel passionate about. 

So the whole reason I started this blog now is because I was rewatching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and analyzing it all over again. And then I just decided to write out my thoughts on the subject and then I really wanted to share said thoughts... So here I am. 

I'd love to start posting opinions now but my internet is not being super cooperative right now. But if it doesn't work for me by the time I go to bed, at least I've gotten this thing started. 

So stay tuned and I'll be discussing my favorite YouTube show soon!