Though this episode had a few more laughs in it than the last episode, it still felt rushed through, oddly paced, and oddly coordinated. Hopefully the next few episodes pick up the pace, but we'll see how it goes.

THINGS I LIKED ABOUT THIS EPISODE:

1) Sunny and the Hook Handed Man- Even though I'm not a fan of Sunny suddenly being fully mobile and having very good motor coordination (which I promise I'll get to later), I do love the interactions between these two. I don't know. They have a very strange chemistry that I love to watch. That and I love that the Hook Handed Man can understand exactly what Sunny is saying.

2) The Spyglass has other functions- I love how the spyglass kind of acts like a multi-functional pocket knife. It uses various features if you turn it a certain way. It's kind of fun actually. I wonder what else it does.

3) The tattoo still being Count Olaf's thing- I don't think that the kids understood Larry's eye gesture in the cafe, so I think I can still roll with this. The Baudelaires don't realize that their parents had tattoos of eyes on their ankles for the VFD organization, so when they see the eye on the ankle, they think it's Olaf when it's really Snicket. It demonstrates just how much in the dark they're still in, if you'll pardon my borrowing from Lemony Snicket's page.

4) Sunny- She was so freaking cute in this episode. From falling down the shaft or just sliding down a rope. I thought Sunny was unusually cute this episode. Plus she got the hook handed man a drink. Adorable!

5) The bidding war at the In-Auction- The way that this scene played out was so hilarious that I could watch it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.....And I'll admit that, while I do hate all of these VFD agents coming into the light, it was kind of funny to watch everyone fighting in a bid over a cardboard box that said V.F.D on it. Even Esme and Count Olaf got in on it. And of course, it ended with Sunny saying the legendary 'Thousand', though she didn't actually say it, so it was funny when everyone was like, "What did she say?"

6) The way Count Olaf's tattoo was revealed- I honestly liked this version better than the book version. In the book, Olaf slips on a few doilies which I personally don't think are that slippery. Plus, he'd have to have some loosely laced shoes for that to work. The fact that he accidentally cut his shoe open while putting his little sword cane away was very nicely done and I think it helps a little better with the credibility of the situation.

7) Olivia holds onto Jacques' shoulder when he says to hold onto something sturdy- And that's pretty much it. I thought that was cute and funny.

8) "Snicket...!"- That's it. I thought that line was funny.

9) Esme dragging Jerome up the stairs- I don't know why, but watching her drag and lift someone over her shoulders with ease, like a puppet, was kind of entertaining. No idea why, but it is.

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT THIS EPISODE:

1) Esme and Olaf's innuendo dancing- I was very uncomfortable watching this scene. Esme very clearly wanted something and Count Olaf was too stupid to understand what. Whether he was avoiding the situation or was that dumb I don't know, but I remember rolling my eyes and groaning throughout this scene.

2) The elevator shaft trick- The one thing that ruined the twist of Esme's betrayal was the elevator. There's two of them instead of one. One has an elevator while the other doesn't. In the book, there's one elevator with an up and down button, the up button being completely unnecessary since they're on the top floor. But it's this brief illusion of going on the elevator that helps set the scene up. In the episode, there's two elevators, so the kids should know and think it funny that Esme's leading them to the elevator doors without an elevator. Maybe I'm being picky, but that's how I saw it.

3) Sunny climbs up the elevator shaft with her hands- Violet said she used her teeth. She only used them to slow herself down. I mean, a baby climbing up an elevator shaft using her four teeth is as unrealistic as a baby climbing up an elevator shaft using her brute strength, but since she used them to hold onto the ledge earlier, I assumed this would be reused again. I was wrong.

4) Sunny's CGI biting- Oh for goodness sake. We all know the drill at this point. I'll just move on. I'm just thankful there's less of this.

5) V.F.D was a red herring- I didn't hate this as much as was already dreading this scene. We all know what's going to happen. Red herring. And the triplets were smuggled away to who knows where. I was sad watching it.

6) The fast dialogue- Maybe it was just me, but everyone seemed to talk and explain things at an abnormally fast pace in this episode. I actually had to pause it so that I could turn on the subtitles to hear what they were saying! I mean yeesh! This isn't a race! Take your time!

7) Mr. Poe picks out the VFD town while Count Olaf heads there with the red herring- I don't know why, but this annoyed me. The point is that Count Olaf follows the children wherever they go and the kids pick to go there because of this crazy VFD secret. And then Olivia and Jacques are waiting randomly behind a VFD sign like...how do you know they're going to show up there?! It felt very rushed and forced to me and I didn't like it.

8) Where the heck is Quigley?- If you've never read the books, sorry to spoil you, but in The Slippery Slope, Quigley mentions running into Jacques Snicket after his home burned down in the fire. Afterwards, Jacques leaves him to go find his triplet siblings and then goes missing. My thing is this: why hasn't this been mentioned at all with the Jacques scenes? I mean, not even a tiny hint? Like, 'How's he doing?' 'Fine, but we need to find the Quagmires. He can handle himself.' 'I hope you're right.' That's not very hard to sneak in there. They've already hinted at the Sugar Bowl and VFD twenty thousand times by the end of episode one, why not hint at Quigley at all? I just find that odd.

9) The Baudelaires Elevator fall foreshadowing- Yeah, way to spoil the twist Lemony Snicket. I mean, maybe this was in the book and I don't remember, but I remember Esme's betrayal being a surprise to me, so I don't think this was in the book. Anyway, I didn't think it was a necessary scene, so I kind of rolled my eyes as it played on the screen.

10) The stairs don't seem to take much of an effort to climb up- In the book, they place a lot of emphasis on how long the stairs take to climb. Here, they hint that the stairs take forever to climb up, but after that the stairs just seem like a regular pair of stairs. I mean, Esme dragged Jerome up all 47 flights easily! So...are the stairs exhausting or no?

So, it's not as bad as the previous one, despite still having cringey things in it. I hope things will improve from here, but we'll have to wait and see what happens and so far, my hopes are not too high. We're four episodes in and everything is pretty much a crazy mess at this point! But there's still six episodes to go, so we'll see what goes down next time in The Vile Village.