A Series Of Unfortunate Events “The Reptile Room: Part One”

So, yeah, Count Olaf was defeated last episode, so he’ll just quit and give up, right?

Neil Patrick Harris’ name comes first in the opening credits.  That alone means he sticks around.

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny are going to a new guardian, one Uncle Monty Montgomery, the long lost childhood friend of their parents that the Baudelaire orphans have never heard of before.  He even has a photo of himself with the parents when they were kids.  Sure, it looks like a piano, but the three of them were locked inside.  Who took that picture anyway?

As it is, Monty has a new assistant show up, one Stefano that the Baudelaires instantly recognize as Count Olaf.  Oh, and he took that picture.

After Monty returns from a shopping trip, he and Stefano get to talking and Monty realizes immediately that Stefano is up to no good.  Could it be that some benevolent soul finally recognizes evil when he sees it and is competent enough to stop the Count and help the kids?

Duh, of course not.  It turns out Monty believes Olaf is a spy from the scientific society he more or less belongs to and the man is there to steal Monty’s research, not the Baudelaire’s fortune.

What science does Monty work in?  Herpetology, the study of snakes.  Hence, you know, the reptile room.  He has a new breed of snake in there, the ironically named Incredibly Deadly Viper.  It’s actually super-friendly.

Meanwhile, the parents escape from their holding cell in Peru.  Monty got a message from the subtitles of a crappy movie telling him to take the kids to Peru.

But there was a moment when Lemony Snicket, our narrator, explained what dramatic irony was, referring to it as something where we know something a character doesn’t, and Monty said something about how safe the reptile room was, and then at the end of the episode he goes into the reptile room and, well…