The Grim Grotto: Part One

"The Grim Grotto: Part One"
Adapted from:	The Grim Grotto
Main character(s):	Violet, Klaus, Sunny
Baudelaire guardian:	Fiona
Main enemy:	Count Olaf
Main setting:	Under the sea
Key crew
Producer:	Neil Patrick Harris
Release details
Story number:	2a
Season/series:	Season 3
Premiere network:	Netflix
Release date:	January 1, 2019
Format:	?
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A Series of Unfortunate Events
"The Slippery Slope: Part Two"	"The Grim Grotto: Part Two"

"The Grim Grotto: Part One" is the twenty-first episode of Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events. It covered the first half of The Grim Grotto.

Dedication

For Beatrice –

     Dead women tell no tales.

     Sad men write them down.

Plot

Note: this plot summary follows the books and Widdershins does not appear in the TV Series- instead, the Queequeg is captained by Fiona. It is unknown when Part One ends.

The episode should begin immediately after the events of The Slippery Slope with the Baudelaires traveling on a collapsing toboggan down the stream of the Mortmain Mountains. The fire that they helped Count Olaf begin at Caligari Carnival is spreading through the hinterlands, and the children have trouble avoiding it, even on the stream. Just as hope seems lost, they are caught on a submarine which rises from the waters. Climbing over to the hatch a voice within asks if the orphans are friends or foes. They declare that they are friends. The same voice asks for the password, and Violet guesses correctly the V.F.D. motto: The world is quiet here. The children descend into the submarine, which they discover is the Queequeg captained by Captain Widdershins, a V.F.D. member and old friend of the Baudelaire parents. Also on board is Widdershins' stepdaughter Fiona and the ship's cook, Phil, the optimist who met the children while working at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill in Paltryville.

The Baudelaires are welcomed on board, where they discover that the crew wears uniforms with a picture of Herman Melville on them - are searching for the mysterious sugar bowl that was thrown downstream. They have less than a week before the meeting at the Hotel Denouement which contains certain people that could destroy the V.F.D. forever. Widdershins runs on the moral. He who hesitates is lost and Fiona, an expert mycologist, begins to fall for Klaus, who returns the favor. Sunny, meanwhile, helps Phil cook dinner for everyone. Violet also learns that Fiona and Widdershins have learned of the Baudelaires' plight via their telegram device, which is now broken. Although she tries to fix it, she realizes that someone - likely Olaf - is disrupting V.F.D. communications, explaining why the Baudelaires' telegram to Mr. Poe in The Hostile Hospital went unread. (The story of this is explained in Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography.)

Klaus, meanwhile, has examined the tidal charts to estimate the location of the sugar bowl given the water cycle. He suspects it to be in the Gorgonian Grotto, located near Anwhistle Aquatics. Widdershins explains that that aquatics center was founded by Aunt Josephine's brother-in-law, Gregor Anwhistle. At this time, the group are interrupted by an approaching submarine vessel on the sonar. It is a ship in the shape of a giant octopus with many tentacles, and inside they can see Count Olaf. Luckily, due to quick thinking, all the engines on the Queequeg are turned off and Olaf does not notice them. Before long, however, a third shape appears on the sonar, a mysterious object shaped like a question mark (possibly the Bombinating Beast) that the crew do not see, but which clearly scares off Olaf's vessel.

Over dinner, Widdershins attempts to match make Klaus and Fiona, to everyone's discomfort. Fiona explains her family situation - her brother Fernald has been missing for many years. Her real father left when Fiona was small and Widdershins claims her mother died in a manatee accident, although this may be untrue. Widdershins mentions the Snicket siblings, who fought on the noble side of V.F.D.: Jacques Snicket, whom the children saw murdered in the Village of Fowl Devotees, was a researcher similar to Klaus; Kit Snicket, who helped build the Queequeg; and briefly mentions the third sibling before being cut off by Fiona.

Fiona asks about the message Violet and Klaus found for the mysterious J.S. at the former V.F.D. headquarters. Widdershins doubts it would be for Jacques, who is dead, which gets the group wondering about whose initials J.S. stands for. Fiona then looks in her mycological textbooks to discover information about the Gorgonian Grotto. It is a cone-shaped cave which houses a rare species of poisonous mushroom, the Medusoid Mycelium. They wax and wane periodically, but when waxing - as a poet says in her text - A single spore has such grim power/That you may die within the hour. Because the Grotto is so remote, it acts as a quarantine for the Medusoid Mycelium which would otherwise be unstoppable, although Fiona suspects there is an antidote. Widdershins sends the children off to get some sleep, but steadfastly refuses to tell them about the sugar bowl's purpose in the plot.

Later, the children wake to find the submarine has arrived abruptly at the Grotto, and has been damaged on the journey. Widdershins and Phil are too tall to fit into the smaller areas of the grotto so Fiona, Klaus, Violet and Sunny (who cannot fit into a diving suit but instead floats in a diving helmet) are sent in. Inside the grotto, the children find an area without water, an undersea cave that appears to have belonged to someone in V.F.D. It is filled with items, mostly junk and various food items, but is also - as Fiona discovers - the breeding ground of the Medusoid Mycelium, which send the children scurrying into the far corner where they are safe while the mushrooms rise out of the earth. The children start fighting over what to do next, which gets the Baudelaires remembering their parents again.

At last, Klaus finds a poetry book - Versed Furtive Disclosure - and begins going through it to see if it relates to V.F.D. As the three older children begin researching while they wait for the mushrooms to die down, Sunny cooks a meal–pesto lo mein. Later, over dinner, they discuss their findings. Klaus has found partial information of a code used by V.F.D. but not enough to figure it out. Violet has found a letter to the now deceased Gregor Anwhistle from Kit Snicket. It seems Gregor was going to use the mushroom to poison the enemies of V.F.D. Kit was working on a way to dilute the poison, in a factory in Lousy Lane, but Gregor insisted on cultivating them as they were in the Grotto. The mushrooms apparently poisoned the entire Aquatics center. The children contemplate for a while how everything links together. But when Fiona asks Violet about the newspaper article, Violet pretends it is too blurred to read. She can read it perfectly, and whatever is on it concerns her.

Cast

Starring

• Count Olaf - Neil Patrick Harris
• Lemony Snicket - Patrick Warburton
• Violet Baudelaire - Malina Weissman
• Klaus Baudelaire - Louis Hynes
• Sunny Baudelaire - Presley Smith
• Esmé Squalor - Lucy Punch

Crew

to be added

References

to be added

Story notes

to be added

Filming locations

to be added

Production errors

to be added

Deviations from the novel

• The Baudelaires did a lot more begging to try and get inside the submarine instead of secret debating.
• In the book, the password was "The world is quiet here", and Violet figured it out, leading to the people inside knowing who they were. In the series, it's not correct when Klaus says it, so Sunny is the one to get them access when she identifies all three of them by last name.
• Fiona is the captain instead of Captain Widdershins himself. She is also the one to say "Shiver me timbers!" before Sunny does.
• Captain Widdershins was the one to go through the manatee accident instead of Mrs. Widdrshins (although she was devoured and he went to go answer a distress call), as opposed to following a mysterious woman by the end, so he doesn't physically appear. Phil does come back and Fiona calls him Cookie because of the aforementioned.
• Fiona seems a bit snippier in the series, probably because she is on her own. Violet doesn't ask to be taken back to shore in the book, nor does she like the way she is ordered around (therefore Violet's bad feeling about Fiona is introduced earlier). Klaus must play peacemaker.
• Olaf, Esmé, Fernald, and Carmelita have to get in disguise to obtain a submarine. But the Man and Woman paid ahead of time and Esme is in charge instead of Olaf because of the previous events.
• Phil doesn't limp because he was bitten by a shark, he has a peg leg because the shark ate it.
• Violet is not given anything to do because Fiona can handle her own in mechanical experise, even though in the book, she can't do it as well.
• "Or she" was not added to the philisophy, and it comes to Violet when the uniforms are on. Everyone also says "Aye-aye!" instead of just "Aye!"
• They have separate uniforms from the diving suits.
• For obvious reasons, Sunny has a full suit instead of curling up in a helmet.

Continuity

to be added

Behind the scenes

to be added

Home video releases

DVD releases

to be added

Blu-ray releases

to be added

External links

• Watch The Grim Grotto: Part One on Netflix