It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

This time vampire is one that I will never repeat (if I can help it).  Truth be told, I knew it was a bad idea.

Once upon a time, a dude named Kevin Sullivan made two fabulous miniseries portraying much of the Anne of Green Gables series.  It was not completely true to the books, but the creative license taken was forgiveable.

Then came a third series.  We try not to talk about this one.  It diverges to far from the actual books as to make it a travesty.  Rather than use the plethora of material in the books and bring to life the characters we knew and loved, this third installment utterly screwed the timeline (moving Anne a full generation later) and had no characters or plot remotely resembling the real thing.  I own the DVD ONLY because I could not obtain the original two mini-series without it.

So, when I found out that Mr. S was making a prequel to Anne, I knew this would be a train wreck.  After all, the pre-Green Gables period in Anne’s life is summed up in a chapter in Anne of Green Gables and a tiny pilgrimage in Anne of the Island.  In order to build a prequel, we would again be subject to completely non-canon material.

I avoided this one like the plague for several years.  But, when I stumbled on it at the library today, it jumped out at me.  After all, I’d gone through the other travesty and survived.  I might as well complete the full cycle, right?

ZOMG.

WRONG.

The scenery is gorgeous (as one would expect–it’s the same parts of Ontario as featured in prior productions).  And the cast is quite good (Shirley MacLaine is always awesome, of course, but there’s no weak link in the cast–even the kids do a good job).  But no amount of scenery and acting makes up for the weakness in the material.  The timeline is still screwed up, it’s full of anachronisms and multiple key moments in the show are clearly cribbed from either prior Anne series or Jane Eyre.  Even the relationships themselves are clearly shadows of those in the real Anne series (Mrs. Thomas and Anne is a poorly drawn Marilla and Anne).

If I was able to completely set aside everything I know about Anne and treat this as a true stand alone story, it might not be too horrible (other than the anachronisms, but even those could partly be overlooked).  A family-friendly kind of costume drama.  The trouble is, they throw the Anne part in your face so much with those cribbed moments and copied snippets of dialog (and the care to cast the same Mrs. Hammond).  It’s like  Anne is being used as a marketing tool to sell something that someone wasn’t sure would stand up on its own (when, really, without that, it may have done better).

More than two hours hoover’d outta my life to see one of my favorite literary universes subjected to a Mary Sue prequel.  This is to Anne fans what Star Wars I-III were to those of us who grew up in a world that started with Episode IV.

Cammy:  I am a huge fan of the works of L.M. Montgomery.  I didn’t stop with just Anne of Green Gables.  I’ve read every novel the woman’s penned (except Rilla of Ingleside–but I have a reason for not having read that one), 8 of her collections of short stories, The Alpine Path and as soon as I can get my greedy little hands on the remainder of the short stories and her journals, you better believe I will devour them with the same gusto.  And for me, someone who generally avoids poetry, I’d even consent to read the collections of her poetry if I came across them.

Say what you will about her work, it strikes a personal chord with me.  The gently humorous picture she paints of PEI’s inhabitants gives me the warm and fuzzies, possibly because even though several decades and several thousand mile separate my mother’s rural south Texas family from PEI, the tales I hear sitting around with my Mom’s family about the small-town antics of friends and relatives are so similar to the sorts of stories Montgomery relates.  Most importantly, the King cousins in The Story Girl and The Golden Road are the closest any form of literature has come to capturing the childhood adventures I had with my own cousins.

And yet, despite all this….I’m still not sure I’d actually wan to have coffee with the woman.  I’m almost ashamed to say it, but I can’t help it.  I just have no clue what I’d ask her.  So much of her own life was wrapped up in the stories she wrote, at least as far as childhood and family legends go.  I don’t want to talk about the deeper, philosophical meanings behind Pat or Emily or Anne–they already have a meaning for me that doesn’t need validation even from the author.  And, though I was not at all shocked at the recent revelations about Montgomery’s deep depression later in life, I don’t want to ask about it.  I don’t want to pry because I don’t think she’d talk.  Not over coffee.

So no coffee with Maud.  No tea, no chatting.  BUT.

I would become pen-pal.  Montgomery was a writer for a reason.  Maybe she was a great conversationalist, maybe she wasn’t, but I have zero doubts about her ability to communicate in writing.  Both her real-life letters with pen-pals and her published works in epistolary style are enough to convince me that she might be one pen-pal who would be as wordy and in-depth as I am.  And if she drinks coffee while she writes me and I drink coffee while I read…that could count, right?

Kristy:  I have to admit this is probably a less weighted question for me, because I don’t think my love or knowledge of Ms. Montgomery goes as deep as Cammy’s.  I read Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island.  And I read The Story Girl and loved it.  I grew up on the first two Anne miniseries, and loved Avonlea until my parents got rid of the Disney channel.  But there’s a lot of her stuff that I’ve read, but a lot I haven’t.  And I know next to nothing about her as a person.

So with all that in mind, I say, yes, I would have coffee with L.M. Montgomery.  She seems interesting and pleasant enough.  Her works have an almost ethnographic bent to them, and I think she’d like to chat about folklore.  But I wish there was a way we could skip the Spatial Anomaly Coffee Bar and Refueling Station and have coffee on a porch somewhere on Prince Edward Island.  Because if there’s anything I’ve gathered from watching reading the books, watching Avonlea, and the little bits of actual knowledge I have, it’s that PEI is beautiful.  I’d go as much for the scenery as the company.