Anne with an E

What's the title? Anne with an E

Who created it? Moira Walley-Beckett

When did it air? 2017 - Present

What’s it rated? TV-PG

Would I recommend it? No. I mean, maybe. Yes. I don’t know. It’s complicated. Why are you bothering me with these hard questions? Leave me alone.

Fine, I guess if I had to answer I’d say that I’d hesitantly recommend Anne to older children or to adults who don’t have a deep attachment to LM Montgomery’s books or the 1985 TV Movie. If you are an adult who does have a deep attachment to either of those things, I’d say proceed only if you are ready to meet this adaptation on its own merits. If you just want a redux of previous, beloved incarnations of Anne, then do not watch this.

There, I think that answer covers my tookus sufficiently.

What's it about? (non-spoilers) Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert are two elderly siblings who have decided to adopt a boy to help them run their farm, Green Gables, in the idyllic Canadian hamlet of Avonlea. But when Matthew arrives at the train station he finds waiting for him, not a boy, but precocious, imaginative, and impossibly talkative Anne Shirley. And so begins the story of Anne of Green Gables.

What did you think? (spoilers) This was hard, you guys. So hard for me. I love story and story craft and consequently find the act of adaptation fascinating. We tell different stories in different formats because those differing formats influence what kind of stories can be told. Novellas can accomplish things that web series cannot and graphic novels can achieve things that poems cannot and so on and so forth. Switching across formats will consequently require something to be lost in translation, though perhaps the new format will allow the story to advance in new ways that the previous incarnation couldn’t accommodate.

I know this. I know all this. I always shake my head when people bemoan that the film adaptation didn’t include every little scene from their beloved novel because that desire ignores the fact that to do so would require a thirty-hour film and that is just not feasible. If you want to experience the story you fell in love with, then read the original book or watch the original movie and don’t bother with the new adaptation.

And yet…

There are a few characters I have met over the years with whom I have fallen so irrevocably in love that the mere mention of their name gives my heart the pitter-patters. These characters I call my beloveds, and Anne Shirley is most definitely a beloved. Ever since I was a small girl I have loved her. I wanted to have red hair and live on Prince Edward Island and read Tennyson while walking along the Lake of Shining Waters. I knew what it was to have an academic rivalry with that one boy in class. I knew what it was to love your raven-haired best friend with an intense phileo love. I knew what it was to find one of your first kindred spirits with a kind grandfatherly figure. I simultaneously felt like I was Anne, aspired to be Anne, and was as frustrated with Anne’s flaws as she was. And while I have since read and loved L.M. Montgomery’s novels, I first met and fell in love with the world of Avonlea via the 1985 TV movie. So, yes, I love Anne. But I specifically love Megan Follows’s Anne.

So when I heard that Netflix was releasing a new Anne series I was overjoyed. I love these characters and their stories, and the thought of spending more time with them was thrilling. But I was also afraid, afraid that this series would underwhelm, that it wouldn’t hold the same magic for me that the old movie had. What if in this new series when I went to find the hug of my old and dear friend I found myself in the arms of a stranger?

Now, I knew very well what advice I would give someone else were they in my shoes. “If you don’t like the new adaptation, it’s no problem. You can always just watch the 1985 movie.” And, yes, I know. I know that that’s the advice I give to other people when their loves are being bastardized by giving them an update that nobody asked for, and it’s all very well and good when it’s the Potterheads whining about the movies or Janeites refusing to acknowledge the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, but this was different. This was my beloved Anne! Every time I meet her I’m supposed to meet the her I know and love. People can’t just go around plastering Anne’s name on things when it’s not the real her! This would be unfair and unjust! And, yes, I knew it was ridiculous to feel this way, but this is how I felt.

It was with these ridiculous feelings that I watched Anne with an E. And you know what? It wasn’t the Anne I loved, but it was the Anne I knew. For the most part anyway. Do I love Amybeth McNulty the way I love Megan Follows? No. But she didn’t feel like an imposter. And so it was with nearly all the characters, and so it was with Avonlea.

The 1985 movie of Green Gables feels like a summer afternoon, while Anne with an E feels more like a winter sunrise. The sun shines on both, but the former is warm and hazy and the latter is piercing and cold. Regardless of the marked differences, I can still recognize the familiar vistas and feel at home.

I knew going in that Anne with an E would be darker than previous incarnations of the character. The show’s creator, Moira Walley-Beckett, got her bona fides on Breaking Bad, a show that never shied away from shining a light on the dark potential lurking within the heart of man. In Walley-Beckett’s hands, the world of Green Gables isn’t dark per se, but it is more raw and discomfiting in ways that are only all too human. Anne with an E presses into the aspects of the story that were always there but were always more subtext than text.

I remember watching the 1985 movie and wondering at Anne’s relative composure at the threat of being sent back and at the cruelty of Marilla to even suggest it. Wasn’t Anne an orphan? Didn’t the text plainly say that her previous foster situation was not only unloving but essentially as indentured servitude? How could Marilla Cuthbert, a bastion of salt-of-the-earth goodness, conceive of sending a child back into a position of abuse? But the 1985 movie quickly clips by that pesky business of Anne’s orphan upbringing and envelops her into the warm fold of fairytale-esque Avonlea toot sweet. Anne with an E doesn’t gloss over Anne’s past. The show lets Anne’s trauma hang over the series, informing her decisions and reactions throughout. The audience is given view to her abuse via flashbacks, and mean girl bullies and drunken foster fathers are too common of monsters even today to be dismissed as inventions of artistic license. This very likely would have been Anne’s experience had Anne not been fictional. Consequently, Anne is harder here, more street savvy. She knows to run away from what is strongly implied to be a child predator when he approaches her at a train station (a scene that was not out of place in the narrative but terrified me nonetheless). She has built a strong outer armor to protect her tender and wounded heart. But not all of her lessons have been ones of strength. When her emotional coping mechanisms come into play at later points in the series, my viewing buddy voiced her discomfort at seeing Anne so unhinged, but what behaviors would a bright child turn to in such situations when left to defend herself? Her reactions aren’t easy or fun to watch, but they never feel unearned or dishonest.

In addition to Anne’s PTSD, Anne with an E presses into the flaws of the Cuthberts. In some ways, this worked. Marilla has always seemed to me beyond reproach, but while I love Colleen Dewhurst’s stoic and infallible interpretation of the character, Geraldine James’s incarnation felt all the more human for her failings. In Anne with an E, Marilla and Anne are kindred spirits; they both learn from each other and grow together. Now while I was fine with the adaptation of Marilla’s character, I was decidedly less so with that of Matthew. I accepted that R.H. Thomson’s Matthew would feel a little off to me on the mere fact that he wasn’t Richard Farnsworth, but I was willing to meet him on his own merits. I was fine with him being more socially anxious as opposed to being merely shy. I allowed that this Matthew had once been a little boy in love and that perhaps after all these years those feelings remained. But when you have Matthew Cuthbert attempt suicide – that is where I draw the line. I am fine with placing Anne in a grimmer, more realistic world, and I know suicide is – heartbreakingly – all too common an occurrence. BUT MATTHEW CUTHBERT WOULD NEVER TRY TO KILL HIMSELF AND TO SAY OTHERWISE REQUIRES A COMPLETE MISUNDERSTANDING OF HIS CHARACTER.

Ahem

Anyway, back to the show. In Anne with an E, the fine residents of Avonlea are not very fine at all but rather small-minded and judgmental, which, frankly, doesn’t feel out of place for a small insular town. I thought Rachel Lynde was served well by this adaptation. I never understood why Marilla put up with such an insufferable character, but in Anne with an E Rachel is a flawed but competent and loyal friend who you’d definitely want on your side in any fight. I’d also say that Dalila Bela’s Diana is the best Diana I’ve ever encountered. I’ve always loved Diana for the simple reason that Anne loves her. However, while I’ve appreciated Diana’s loyalty and goodness, I’ve always thought her a little insipid. Not so in Anne with an E, where Bela imbues Diana with healthy doses of backbone and imagination herself. She’s a leader amongst her female classmates, and no longer does it feel like Anne leads her by the nose but rather like the two bosom sisters walk in an equal partnership hand in hand. I was conflicted about the introduction of Jerry’s character. On the one hand, the introduction of a French character into a Canadian story feels appropriate. Also, Aymeric Jett Montaz is adorable, and his dynamic with Anne brought some of my favorite moments of the series. However, his introduction couldn’t help but feel to me like the set up for a love triangle. There is an abundance of love triangles in serial storytelling for a reason – they are an easy way to insert dramatic tension into a story. Expanding Green Gables from a novel or even a movie into a TV series is going to require some narrative padding – I get that. But, this brings us to the Gil of it all.

Anne Shirley is my dearest beloved, but she isn’t the only one from Green Gables that has a special place in my heart. The Cuthberts are there too, and so is Gilbert Blythe. I freaking love Gilbert Blythe. You can have your Darcys. You can keep your Rochesters and your Heathcliffes. For me, Gilbert Blythe always has and always will be the pinnacle of romantic aspirations. Gilbert is goals. In the 1985 movie, Jonathan Crombie is a sweetheart, and I love him dearly, but I more so loved his dynamic with Follows’s Anne. In Anne with an E, Lucas Jade Zumann’s Gilbert has a more broody lothario-ness than his previous incarnation, but he still has the golden-hearted center that makes Gil, Gil. That said, I found his dynamic with McNulty less compelling than that of their predecessors. I don’t think this is the fault of the actors, but of the script.

I hate when fans nitpick adaptations. You know that one friend who leans over every five minutes to say things like “that’s not in the book” or “that’s not how it happened in the book” or “I can’t believe they left out xyz from the book”. Yeah, those people drive me nuts. But that is exactly how I behaved watching Anne with an E. I tried not to behave this way, honestly. I tried to appreciate the changes to the narrative that the show made. For some of the changes I didn’t even have to try that hard. I’ve read criticisms of the feminist messages thrust into the show, and, yeah, some of the girl power messages are a little ham-fisted and awkward, but some of them were poignant. I loved the episode where Marilla has to contend with the fact that she was never given a choice as to how she would live her life, and when Anne comes in with questions about her future Marilla encourages her ward to take her agency into her own hands, to make the choice for herself. However, as we got further into the season I kept wondering, when is Anne going to dye her hair green? When will she and Diana wear their puffed-sleeved dresses to the winter dance? When were all these scenes that happened in the book going to show up on the screen? Why was the show wasting its time showing me all this new stuff but not showing me some of the classic moments from the book? I tried to give the show the benefit of the doubt and assume that these hallmarks of the story were being saved for next season, but as the show went on, the story began verging more and more from the book’s canon, and I couldn’t help but think that the show was going to make its own path entirely and veer completely from the story I knew. Needless to say, this bothered me. Nowhere was this feeling more obvious than when it came to Gilbert’s story.

Sure we get Anne breaking her chalkboard over Gilbert’s head, and we get to see their academic rivalry but this is no longer the primary bonding agent for them as it was in the books. Now Anne and Gil are given common ground, not by intellectual endeavor, but by their being orphaned. Mr. Blythe dies in this adaptation, which, okay, fair enough, but then Gil leaves school to go work on the docks because he has wanderlust, and you know what? No. I do not accept this. Gil has to stay at school because he has to go to college because he has to give the Avonlea teaching job to Anne. This series of events is crucial to their relationship and to the story and it’s canon so…

Also, Gil, is what? Maybe fifteen. What the doo-daddy is he doing working on the docks? If you want to make Gil less jovial and more emotionally broody, that’s your prerogative, show. But you do not have the right to mess with Gil and Anne’s love story. I will not allow it. Watch yourself, show. WATCH YOURSELF.

Despite my qualms with the show, I did enjoy this adaptation. It won’t ever be my adaptation, of course. But the great thing about Anne with an E is that it very well may be someone else’s. I could so easily see some other little girl or boy watching this show and Amybeth McNulty being for them what Megan Follows was for me. I know it’s popular nowadays to lament the cannibalizing nature of production studios who are spitting out an unending stream of the same stories over and over again in a series of reboots and remakes. And fair enough. But there are some stories that are culturally resonant and there’s a reason we go back to them over and over again. For the production studios that reason is financial remuneration, but for audiences that reason is less mercenary. I believe the reason these stories prevail is that we want to share with a new generation the magic we’ve found in these stories.

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether or not I loved Anne with an E. What matters is whether the person who’s never met Anne before loved it. And I think it’s very like that she did.

Images: IMDb, giphy

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