Comedy
Peacemaker
Peacemaker is to superhero as ringworm is to earthworm. It might seem like these two things are related based on their names, but they aren’t.
It’s been said that when life gives us lemons, we should make lemonade.
But why, asks Anne Shirley, stop there? Why not make lemon drops? Lemon merengue pie? Lemon-scented cleaner? What’s to stop anyone from doing anything with lemons they want—sometimes even squeezing the juice straight into your mouth? Sure, it’ll make you pucker up something awful. But Anne believes that life should be experienced to its fullest—even the painful puckering parts.
So maybe it’s not too surprising that Anne’s own Netflix show, while often sweet, has its sour moments, too.
Anne with an “E” is a Canadian Netflix retelling—or, perhaps, more accurately, reimagining—of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables.
Not that the core characters have changed much, at least on the surface. Anne seems a faithful embodiment of Montgomery’s indelible heroine, full of optimism and life and a certain untamable verve. She’s an exuberant, Victorian-era drama queen whose life is absolutely wonderful except on the rare occasions when its unbearably tragic—perhaps not much out of step with most other girls in their early teens.
Though she sometimes flashes back to what appears to be a truly horrific boarding school environment, her life is mainly wonderful right now—largely because she’s living with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, elderly brother-and-sister farmers who eke out a living on Prince Edward Island, near the picturesque town of Avonlea.
Their mutual relationship didn’t get off on the best of footing, given that the Cuthberts were expecting the school to send them a strapping young lad who could help with the farm. Instead, they got a wildly imaginative (and very talkative) girl. But after a few early hiccups, Anne’s settled into farm life quite nicely—making friends (and perhaps an enemy or two) with her school chums, reading with unbridled passion and soaking in all the nature she can (sometimes quite literally, such as when she falls into a nearby stream).
No, life in Avonlea isn’t always as beautiful or as tranquil as Anne would like, or even as much as she sometimes believes. Farming in this Canadian outpost isn’t easy work, and most of the folks there, including the Cuthberts, aren’t that far away from abject poverty. Neither Avonlea’s residents nor the community’s occasional visitors always mean well or do well. And when the story shifts to the lands off the coast of Prince Edward Island (as it sometimes does), life can look difficult indeed.
All that said, however, Anne’s cheery outlook brings a blush to even the most pale of worlds, as the Cuthberts and Avonlea are beginning to discover.
I’ve not read the original Anne of Green Gables, but some familiar with that version and this one say that this Netflix reimagining manages to be both “darker and sweeter” than the original novel. And those are not its only departures.
While the first season stuck reasonably close to the source material, Anne With an “E” moved away from the book in its second season, plunging its characters into new problems and whisking them off on heretofore untold adventures.
The show also attempts to make Anne’s turn-of-the-last-century story relevant to 21st-century audiences, arguably in both positive and negative ways.
The second season, for instance, finds one of Anne’s friends, a young lad named Gilbert, dashing off to shovel coal on a steamer. There, he works shoulder to shoulder with a black man named Sebastian Lacroix, the first person of color ever depicted in any Anne story or adaptation. Through their relationship, viewers may learn something about racism, both then and now.
“You’re a white boy,” Sebastian tells Gilbert, explaining why he doesn’t want him antagonizing the boss. “You’ve got options. I need this. … Don’t lose this work for me.”
But we also get some occasional references to physical intimacy, and issues related to same-sex attraction receive a surprising and, for many families, disheartening, amount of attention. That subject receives almost a full episode dedicated to it in Season 2. Detailed below, the seventh episode feels less like an organic part of the overall story and more like a secular sermon celebrating LGBTQ relationships. (“I think I learned some things about love, too,” Anne says. “It doesn’t look the same for everyone.”)
Anne With an “E” doesn’t look much like its source material at such times. A story firmly rooted in the late Victorian era is unceremoniously, and puzzlingly, stripped of its 19th Century sensibilities and given a secular 21st-century outlook. For those who want to introduce their children to a timeless character without wading into messy, of-the-moment issues, Anne With an “E” is bound to disappoint.
Still, families that choose to engage the show’s unexpected forays into sexual themes will find that Anne With an “E” minds its manners better than some shows dealing with similar agendas. And it’s buoyed by Anne’s irrepressible attitude.
Yes, Anne With an “E” can indeed be a bit sour sometimes, and that’s a shame. But it has its share of sweetness, too. We’ll let you decide whether you and your family can make something of it.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
In the seventh episode, Anne, Diana and Cole finagle and lie themselves into a sumptuous party thrown by Diana’s Aunt Josephine. She’s a rich woman whom viewers met last season, where it was hinted she may have had a longtime female lover. While she’s away, Marilla suffers from a migraine, along with disturbing visions of the past.
Josephine leaves no doubt in this episode about her sexual inclinations. She considered herself and her former partner, Gertrude, to be “married” in every sense except legally. The two women slept in the same bed, and the party she throws is, essentially, in Gertrude’s honor. One of the guests calls Josephine and Gertrude her “romantic ideal.” Anne is thrilled by the relationship, but Diana is shocked: She figures that if they hid their relationship, it “must mean it’s wrong,” and she tells Anne that it’s “unnatural.” Anne and Cole disagree. “There was nothing wrong with her, and she was fine,” one says. “Shouldn’t we be happy for her?” Before leaving, Cole confesses to Josephine that he might be like her and Gertrude (i.e. gay). Josephine says that he won’t be able to trust everyone with his secret, but adds, “When you find people to trust, the bond will be that much greater.”
We see men dancing with other men and men dressed as women at the party. Diana sneaks into Josephine’s bedroom and finds a picture of Josephine and Gertrude, with Gertrude dressed as a man.
A woman smokes a cigarette, and several characters drink champagne and other unnamed alcoholic beverages. Josephine suggests to Diana that she need not have a life that looks like those of her parents:. “Marriage is wonderful if love is why you marry,” she says. “But perhaps you’d like something more than simply keeping a house.”
To get to the party, Anne takes out a writing implement (given by Mr. Dunlap) that she calls the “pen of duplicity. A perfect tool for concocting the most perfect lie. Fib. For a good cause.” She writes lines of dialogue for both Cole and Diana to justify them leaving Avonlea, with much of what she pens being outright falsehoods. When they return, Anne redubs her writing implement the “pen of possibility,” telling Cole that its duplicity has been “exorcised.” Diana misuses God’s name.
Marilla falls down the stairs, suffering a cut on her forehead. She and Matthew recall their childhood, when their mother, grieving a lost child, refused to get out of bed. (That refusal forced Marilla into the role of caregiver for both she and Matthew.) Marilla worries that she, too, might wind up in bed and be unable to care for Anne.
A schoolteacher continues to exchange meaningful glances with a student. He refuses to help a newly returned Gilbert in catching up on his schooling. Gilbert insults his teacher in class. Cole throws drawings into the fire. We hear about fictional murdered protagonists.
Borders Nate and Mr. Dunlop continue to talk up the supposed gold in Avonlea, hoping to fleece the residents and run off with the money used to test the soil. But Mr. Dunlop’s allegiance to Nate wavers as he grows closer to Anne. Anne writes a scary story that works a little too well on its author. Meanwhile, Anne’s old friend Gilbert arrives on the island of Trinidad with his new, black friend Bash, and he confronts the island’s lingering allegiance to slavery (even though it technically ended in 1833).
Bash’s mother feeds him and Gilbert, but pretends not to know Bash at all when her master’s boy comes out and asks if Bash is stealing something. (Bash later tells Gilbert that her mother raised the children of the house, but he barely knew her.) A man calls Bash “boy” and tries to get him to take care of his horse.
Nate and Dunlop get into a fight: Nate suggests that Dunlop’s killed people before, and Dunlop punches Nate square in the mouth. Anne, trying to impress Nate, lies about seeing gold flakes in a microscopic version of the local soil. School bully Billy Andrews tips a bottle of ink on a pencil drawing of his sensitive classmate, Cole (who, admittedly, gets in trouble for doodling in class). Anne and her female friends—some of whom find Cole quite attractive—share lunch with the lad in an effort to make him feel better. Billy calls Cole a “sissy” and throws a baseball into the gut of one of his friends. Anne’s schoolteacher and another student exchange meaningful glances with each other. A student feels a love poem about Lancelot and Guinevere is inappropriate, given that Guinevere was married to someone else.
Anne’s somewhat dark story includes skeleton trees and eventually involves ghosts that claim living victims for their own. When she hears a fox, she mistakes it for a ghost and begs, “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.” When she hears that Dunlop’s aunt died (possibly a lie), she tries to comfort Dunlop by telling her that she’ll be a “lovely ghost.” We hear the word “h—.”
Even though the Cuthberts were forced to sell off some of their assets, including Anne’s beloved Birdie (a horse), the teen is optimistic they’ll buy Birdie back. She’s also quite charmed by the Cuthberts’ current boarders—blustery Mr. Dunlop and a handsome, rather rakish geologist named Nate.
One problem, though: Dunlop and Nate are con men who tell the residents of Avonlea that their land is filled with gold. They plan to milk the lie for all it’s worth and, presumably, run off with the townsfolks’ money. (Not that they have very much of it to begin with.) Only Jerry, a French boy who works on the Cuthbert farm, has any clue how dastardly Nate really is.
Elderly Marilla Cuthbert also seems attracted to Nate—blushing when he catches her washing her hair (she’s fully clothed, but she covers her rarely-exposed upper chest with a towel anyway). She grows flustered when she sees the younger man shirtless, and Nate seems to egg on her obvious attraction. Elsewhere, Anne and Matthew Cuthbert frolic in the sea in their skivvies (Victorian underwear, mind you, so it covers more on both of them than your average basketball uniform). Anne plunges perilously underwater at one point, but she’s quickly rescued by Matthew. “I got so excited I forgot I don’t know how to swim!” she exclaims.
Nate (in a very Eddie Haskell-like move) offers to lead grace at the Cuthbert family dinner table. It’s apparently an unusual occurrence for the Cuthberts: Both of them, along with Mr. Dunlop, keep their eyes open during the prayer. Anne’s enthusiastic, though: “It does seem like we have an awful lot to be grateful for, especially at harvest time,” she says, asking that Nate call God our “gracious heavenly Father,” because it sounds “so much more romantical.” But while Marilla may not habitually say a prayer before mealtime, she does remind Anne to say hers before she goes to sleep.
Anne talks with a couple of her friends about the stories they’re writing, with one telling another that she always kills off all her own characters because she has no idea what to do with them. In flashback, we see Anne punished (by holding books for hours while kneeling) and hear her classmates talk about a kitten that someone killed. Nate and Mr. Dunlop lament Anne’s curiosity and how it could spoil their plans: There’s a vague reference to “killing” a curious cat. Nate insults and seems to threaten someone. Nate also smokes often, and he and Dunlop drink from a flask. We hear the word “a–.”
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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