Rewatches will never fully recreate the experience of the first time around, for good and for bad. Sometimes, a rewatch strips away some of the joy from a well executed plot twist. Sometimes, it adds entirely new dimensions that could not possibly have been noticed on the first pass. Sometimes the art itself has “changed” in the interim, due to cultural or technical development. No matter what, the viewing experience will be different.
For popular media - and more specifically popular media with involved fandoms - a huge factor can be the post-show narrative. Any good fan will know that a show doesn’t have to be currently airing in order to have an active fandom (Star Trek, anyone?), but there is immense weight to how a longform story that has grown and changed over time is perceived by its longterm fandom. Some shows have huge followings while they’re airing and then basically disappear from the cultural consciousness soon after they finish, often due to burning bridges with their own fanbase or having endings that don’t live up to their earlier seasons (Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother), some shows simply fizzle out and nobody remembers that they still exist (I loved Call the Midwife, but I’m about four seasons behind and it very much no longer has the active fandom it had a decade ago...), and then there are the shows that keep chugging along, maintaining their own moderate success and cultural appeal even years after completion (The Office, a show I expected would not have a lasting impact, remains confidently present).
What’s this to say about the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, though?
When it began airing, LBD felt like a minor media earthquake. The show leaned into its vlog-style presentation, integrated different social media platforms as an active part of its storytelling (”transmedia”), bounced between different accounts without minding if someone suddenly missed a part of the story (but trusting their ex-world media to do the job, and also trusting the viewer to find what needed to be found), and doing so in a way that felt shockingly believable. There’s a reason that LBD sparked the imaginations of so many different young creators across the world, who wanted to emulate this sort of storytelling. LBD set the stage.
A common narrative that’s emerged in the years since LBD ended is one that admires how it set that stage, but then adds a caveat about its implementation. Hardcore fans of what became known as “literary inspired webseries” (LIWs) will often point out that LBD was a “flawed” show, obviously not their favorite, “not very good” in retrospect, and so on. I’ve seen countless posts and tags to this extent and have even on occasion caught myself thinking that too. Of course I liked LBD, I would tell myself, but I didn’t love it the way that I went on to love other shows. As time passed and the LBD-specific fandom quieted down, I accepted this narrative as truth.
And this is where a unique benefit of rewatches comes into play: Rewatches can set the record straight.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is, ultimately, still not my favorite webseries. It’s still not what I would call the “best” literary webseries I’ve seen, either. It doesn’t have the best transmedia. It isn’t the best adaptation of a webseries I’ve seen, nor the best adaptation of the original work itself. (Some might argue that it’s not even the best modernized adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but here I find myself disagreeing somewhat; I’ll elaborate on that some other time.) Lizzie Bennet Diaries was, in a way, eclipsed in my mind by some of the series that came after it.
All that being said, it’s also a very good series. And it’s not a stretch to say that I loved this rewatch.
I’ve gone through some of the show’s features and flaws in my previous posts (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), but a recurring theme from my recap posts was that a lot of things that I remembered being bad simply weren’t there. I remembered Lydia’s transformation into her Wickham arc being abrupt, but it wasn’t; her loneliness and sense of not fitting in start extremely early on. I remembered Lizzie as being presented much more kindly/positively than what she actually is, in part because of her growth during the series and attempt to be less judgemental (which is all explicitly laid out in the text!). I remembered the show feeling slow, but it wasn’t. I remembered the parts that were/weren’t on camera feeling like MASSIVE stretches, but they’re mostly discussed in-text. I remembered feeling like there was a clumsiness in the show actually feeling real and fresh, especially compared to shows that came afterward, in terms of acting.
A lot of these stem from two main issues: 1) the last part of the show is a lot less well paced than the beginning, and 2) there are acting inconsistencies with the medium. The first of these is something similar to what I described earlier in terms of the end of the show being weaker than the beginning. The second is a problem that recurs across the vast majority of webseries that I’ve watched, but I think I remembered it being worse for LBD is because of how good the good parts are.
So here are some of those good parts: Ashley Clements’ Lizzie is absolutely brilliant. I feel like she’s rarely remembered for being tremendously well-acted, I think because it’s sort of assumed to be an easy role, while someone like Mary Kate Wiles garnered obvious (mostly justified) admiration for the more obvious work she did as Lydia. Meanwhile, Laura Spencer and Julia Cho are also both excellent in their respective roles as Jane and Charlotte, rounding out the main cast in a way that feels almost unbelievably good. Of the lead four, I actually continue to have the most nitpicks with small things in Lydia’s acting (which could also be about directing), but these also feel unimportant in the grand scheme of how her story played out so richly. It seems trivial to say it now, more than a decade since LBD first aired, but the active choice to make Lydia a second lead character is inspired, even if I’m still a little uncomfortable with how some of her story played out. And none of this would have worked without good acting and writing, especially in how Lizzie builds and presents her story.
The acting inconsistencies mostly occur in the side characters and much of that is also down to the show’s insistence on having people show up on camera when they frankly didn’t need to. Having Fitz be a random friend who shows up on camera with Lizzie was fun because he wasn’t a plot-central character, he was just sort of... there. His appearances feel casual. (It’s helps that he’s one of the characters who is clearly most comfortable being filmed.) But I cringed just a little bit every time Bing appeared onscreen, and Gigi too for the most part. It’s not necessarily poor acting, to be clear, but it’s inconsistent with their environment and it makes it harder to buy into the “real”ness of those videos. Darcy, at least, carries his obvious discomfort with being on camera like an absolute burden (which is entirely believable), but this didn’t help alleviate my sense that Lizzie should not have been uploading those videos.
The fact that the ending is weaker than the entire run of the show is a more serious issue, I think, and certainly helped contribute to my sense of the show being less well-paced than it actually was. One of the things I’m grateful for, at least, is that “The End” is an episode that centers around Lizzie, Charlotte, and Lydia. Part of what didn’t work for me with LBD’s end was the fact that it felt like the show forgot that it wasn’t actually a romance, but more Lizzie’s becoming and growth process, with Lydia, Jane, and Charlotte as crucial linchpins during this process. Darcy is an obvious presence in the story, but the Lizzie Bennet Diaries as a show isn’t about Lizzie and Darcy getting together, just like Pride and Prejudice isn’t a romance novel. The problem with ending LBD within a couple of episodes of Lizzie and Darcy getting together is that it makes it seem like that was the whole point of the story.
But on this point, there’s also a reminder of the fact that for the most part, Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a good adaptation. I’d remembered feeling like it was old-fashioned because of things like the Jane/Bing subplot and how Lizzie and Darcy spoke with each other (...stiffly), but the majority of the show does a really nice job of loosening up Pride and Prejudice to match the modern day. The way that many of the romantic gestures end up tied to jobs is a nice nod to the fact that modern women have aspirations and goals that aren’t just about bagging a rich husband (coughcough). I also still really admire that the show decided to fully humanize Lydia, without stripping away the weight of what happens to her. Except instead of it being a burden on others and All About Lizzie, it’s actually a story about the ways in which a young woman’s value can be easily erased and recognizing that event as the abuse that it is. I still don’t love all the ways in which that arc plays out, but the fact that it exists? Excellent.
This rewatch was the obvious choice to start my Great Webseries Rewatch and it earns its stripes; even more than a decade later, the Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a mostly well-made, well-written, and well-acted show. It also has the distinct honor of being a show that had genuine widespread appeal, garnering attention beyond a small fanbase of loyal viewers. LBD set the stage, performed, and earned its standing ovation. The fact that others came up onto that stage afterward and performed their own wonderful art should not take away from its achievements.
Note: I started writing this post a few months ago. Things have happened since which affected my ability to get this post out. I haven't picked up The Great Webseries Rewatch since, but I intend to, once things... settle. In the meantime, I'll wrap up this loose thread.
I didn't even process how quickly the end was coming up. I sped through the last batch of Green Gables Fables episodes with such ease that it just... happened.
GGF has aged remarkably well.
More than so many other shows, GGF has an excellent sense of environment and world. Its side characters exist in a way that makes them feel entirely alive and not just when they're on the screen for Anne-the-blogger's sake. There is a sense that Avonlea is richly populated, even beyond what Anne specifically shows us and shares with us. Things like the writing group, Anne having her friends show up on camera (as young people are wont to do), and the creative writing class project that has everyone doing vlogs (which really is unfair when everyone knows Anne already has a vlog, it's totally favoritism!) all give space for characters to exist on their own terms.
GGF also does one thing which at the time distinguished it from other amateur (and not-amateur webseries): It included an adult. The fact that GGF shows Matthew as a living, breathing, awkward character is delightful. It's lovely because it also shows that Anne's life and choices and mistakes don't exist in a vacuum. When GGF was airing, it struck me as "okay, that's nice" rather than something which actually helps make GGF an excellent adaptation.
There's not all that much effort to modernize, truthfully. GGF never strays too far from the original text (or its intention). Because Anne of Green Gables is still fairly modern itself (or at least still resonates fairly well with the modern reader, all things considered), there aren't needs for huge leaps in order to get the story to work.
Even the romance! Where a lot of the literary webseries needed to make sure that their characters were neatly packed off to relationships by the end (some of which didn't necessarily make sense and some of which were expressly changed so that they could make sense), Anne of Green Gables has no such demand. Anne and Gilbert have the ultimate realistic relationship, in terms of its ups and downs and complications. It's slow. It's powerful. It continues to enchant young readers. GGF sticks to the original script, which I think helps keep it feeling relevant and earned.
GGF also does an excellent job with... minutiae. Ruby remains one of my favorite adapted characters, in large part because she appears on screen as someone whole, who just happened to have not yet been featured and then continues to develop with the confidence and ease of a fully-drawn character. (She's also very well-acted.) Her vlogs don't amount to a subplot (in this season, at least) and they just give space to a human being. It doesn't feel like there's a message that needs to come across or a niche that needs filling (a la Maria Lu in LBD). This is evident in Anne's vlogs as well, where the ever-engaging Mandy Harmon sometimes vlogs about things that really don't fit to any expected plot points, but still give you a rich sense of the character and her world. It's good storytelling.
Ultimately, I'm left with little to say other than... yeah, this has held up. Green Gable Fables feels richer and smarter and deeper almost a decade after the fact than when it first aired, which I think is a combination of my increased appreciation for what it does so well, my better understanding of the source text (I actually hadn't read AoGG when I first started watching GGF and indeed read it because of GGF!), and the way I've seen other shows try to do what GGF is able to do so seamlessly here. I'm exceedingly pleased that I chose this as my second show for the rewatch project; it has held up so well and was just a wonderful rewatch overall. And if you've never seen it before? You're in for a great time.
