

Jerome avoids disputes with Esmé, as he hates arguing with her, and follows her instructions. He offers them " aqueous martinis", (water garnished with an olive served in a fancy glass), and introduces them to his wife, Esmé Squalor, the city's sixth most important financial adviser, who is concerned about what's "in" and what's "out".

Jerome Squalor welcomes the children to their new home. The elevators in the apartment building are not working, as elevators are "out", leaving the Baudelaires to walk up several dozen flights of stairs to the penthouse where the Squalors live. The street is dark, as light is "out", or unpopular. Poe takes the Baudelaire orphans to their new home on 667 Dark Avenue. The Baudelaires are sent to live with the wealthy Esmé and Jerome Squalor. The Ersatz Elevator is the sixth novel of the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. “I was like: ‘So what period are we in? Are we moving around in periods? Are we futuristic? Are we fantasy?’” And Sonnefeld’s answer, according to Summers, guided everything she did next.Wikiquote has quotations related to The Ersatz Elevator. But it doesn’t feel entirely real, either.īecause Summers was new to A Series of Unfortunate Events for its second season, she told Inverse that nailing down the time period was one of the first things she asked executive producer Barry Sonnenfeld.

From Count Olaf’s beatnik poet detective in “The Vile Village,” to the Great Gatsby-esque styles of Esme Squalor in “The Ersatz Elevator,” to retro superspy confidence of Jacques Snicket and Olivia Caliban, nothing about the series feels contemporary. The second season just dropped last weekend and ended on a cliffhanger, but what about the time period itself? Whenabouts is all of this supposed to take place? The costume designer for the second season of the Netflix hit - Cynthia Ann Summers - thinks the key to understanding the show is something she calls “period fantasy.”īecause elaborate disguises are such a huge part of A Series of Unfortunate Events, the costumes themselves are nearly as important as the characters who wear them. Omniscient narrator Lemony Snicket is also a fictional character who participated in the backstory of the series, making the chronology of the unfortunate events almost deliberately confusing.

Figuring out the internal timelines of A Series of Unfortunate Events can be maddening.
