Awesome / A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017)

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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The Bad Beginning

• We're introduced to Canon Foreigner Jacqueline, who quickly proves her bona fides as a huge Determinator. After being tied to a tree, she somehow rips it right out of the ground and uses her feet to make a phone call when it's too big to let her into a phone booth. She then continues on her mission while still carrying it around until she's able to get free with Gustav's help.
• Violet turned a grandfather clock into a toaster, with Klaus's help after apparent problems with the "gears". We never learn why she did this. Presumably she was bored or saw it as a challenge.

The Reptile Room

• When Monty is returning to the theater, he is attacked by two of Olaf's henchmen. But just before Olaf leaves with the children, Monty shows up, having beaten and subdued said henchmen, and then actually confronts Stephano before leaving him at the theater.
• The Reptile Room itself. It's a beautiful, fascinating place filled with incredible creatures that Monty studies. This, combined with Monty's speech to the children when they arrive, evokes a feeling of The World Is Just Awesome. In another world, the Baudelaires would've been incredibly happy there.
• At the end of the Reptile Room, just when Count Olaf seems to have won, what happens? Uncle Monty's reptiles attack him and his cronies and send them running. Looks like they aren't too happy about Olaf killing their owner.
• One for Mr. Poe, of all people, when he demands that Stephano roll up his pant leg so he can wipe away the makeup that was hiding his tattoo. Even a blind squirrel can find a nut sometimes.
  • And to add insult to injury, he licks his handkerchief just to make Olaf feel more uncomfortable when wiping his ankle.
• Just how do you fit three people - child, teenager or adult - into a piano? Somehow, Monty and the Baudelaire Parents managed it.

The Wide Window

• At the end of the Wide Window, the orphans quickly realize how useless Mr. Poe is and immediately abandon him by stowing away on a truck for the Lucky Smells Lumbermill.
• Aunt Josephine stands up to Count Olaf instead of letting him take the orphans, even if it was mainly to correct his grammar.
• While he's not able to do much in his situation, Larry still finds a way to help out the Baudelaire orphans and get the word out that the Anxious Clown is no longer safe.
• How does Aunt Josephine escape Olaf? She throws her statue through the window, jumps through the hole it made and then jet-skis away to Curdled Cave!

The Miserable Mill

• This lovely demolishing of the Freudian Excuse.
  Charles: You have to understand, [Sir] had a very terrible childhood.
  Klaus: I understand. I'm having a very terrible childhood right now.
• Once Violet breaks the lumbermill workers free of Dr. Orwell's hypnotism, the entire staff revolts for their unfair treatment and Sir is left to deal with some very angry employees.
• Dr. Orwell falling backwards into the furnace. It's incredibly satisfying to watch someone so horrible receive their comeuppance.
• A very unexpected one — just when things seem bleakest, Lemony Snicket, then the entire main cast join together in song to send off the first season.

The Austere Academy

• The introduction of Jacques Snicket. He kicks down the door to the freezer where Larry is being kept prisoner, and steps out of the shadows, ready to come to the rescue, with a badass instrumental playing in the background.
  Jacques: Jacques Snicket. Did somebody call for a taxi?
  • In his next scene, he tells off Carmelita Spats!
    Jacques: Oh, and I believe it takes one to know one, cake-sniffer.
• The Baudelaires goad Count Olaf into an arm-wrestling contest, and win.

The Ersatz Elevator

• Sunny frees her siblings from an elevator shaft by climbing up the ladder (including using her teeth when the railings get too slippery), tricking her way past the Hook-Handed Man both in and out, and parachuting back down.
• New villain Esmé Squalor shows her stuff since as soon as she joins, the crew are able to put together by far their most effective scheme yet: staging a huge bidding war over a box labeled VFD, which is all just a ploy to distract the various heroes from where the Quagmires have really been hidden while they're driven away under everyone's noses in a literal Red Herring.

The Vile Village

• Jacques and Olivia capturing Count Olaf. Complete with cowboy outfits and triumphant western music. It's enough to almost make you think you forgot what kind of events you're watching a series of.
• The Murder of Crows flying out, making a massive shape in the sky. In the words of Klaus, it truly is awesome.
• Violet making an invention with a noose meant for suicidal prisoners and really stale bread to make an improvised battering ram and break out of jail by literally making a hole in the wall. Soon after rescuing the Quagmires from the fountain.

The Hostile Hospital

• When Klaus has to stall for time to save Violet from a medical procedure that involves beheading her, he says to the gathered observers that he is going to explain the equipment he is going to use, as, in disguise as 'Dr. Faustus', he is a 'real doctor', as is 'Dr. Medical School', which he is keen to remind his fellow 'doctor'. Klaus gives a small bounce of his eyebrows when doing this, daring Olaf to challenge what he's saying and blow his cover.
  • When the crowd goes mad and starts gleefully chanting for the operation to start, Klaus calls for his old, reliable friend.....paperwork.
• When they are surrounded in the auditorium by people who want them arrested (or worse), Klaus manages to get himself and his sisters out by putting Sunny on the gurney with Violet and forcing their way out of the auditorium using the gurney as a barrier. Then, when they are in the corridor, he pauses to jam the doors so they can't be followed.
  • They are initially stopped by Hal, who Sunny gets out of the way by biting his finger.
• As Part 2 of The Carnivorous Carnival reveals, Kit Snicket managed to find the Sugar Bowl... in a hospital that is on fire. And burning to the ground. Amid the police and the fire services. And dozens of staff and patients. With no idea what room it's in.

The Carnivorous Carnival

• Madame Lulu is able to discern information about the various members of Olaf's crew through simple observation and guesswork, but when it comes to Olaf himself, appears to be possessed as she rattles off all of Olaf's crimes and endeavors in a glorious and creepy manner. Especially awesome in that Olaf is genuinely unnerved by this knowledge of his crimes.
• In their past, Olaf shoved Beatrice off a cliff. Beatrice, at the time, was wearing a costume of a dragonfly. Those wings actually worked.

The Slippery Slope

• Kit Snicket evading the Man with a Beard but No Hair and the Woman with Hair but No Beard, and their highly trained eagles, by jumping off a cliff and expertly landing in a frozen stream. While pregnant.
• The Powder-Faced Women refusing to follow Olaf's order to throw Sunny off a cliff, deciding they're officially done with him after realizing their parents and sister were killed in a fire similar to how the Baudelaires and Quagmires lost their parents too.
  Powder-Faced Woman 1: We love you-
  Powder-Faced Woman 2: And we'd do anything for love-
  Powder-Faced Women: But we won't do that!
  • Followed immediately by the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender and the Bald Henchman leaving too, feeling this is where they need to turn back before they cross the Moral Event Horizon.
    • It's quick, but the Bald Man makes Olaf flinch by holding out his fist. For most of the show, not much is made of his immense size other than the fact he can do heavy lifting, and Olaf arrogantly pushes him around like he does the others. The Count had been outsmarted in his schemes, but to watch him realize that this guy he'd abused and dismissed could beat him to a pulp if he wanted to... and could have the whole time is super satisfying. Of course, he was just showing off his ESME tattoo, but his "Take care of Esme for me" could possibly be read as a passive-aggressive threat.

The Penultimate Peril

• Count Olaf ripping into Carmelita for being a brat and dumping Esmé.
• The Baudelaires collectively pulling a Go Through Me to protect Dewey, and actually managing to disarm Count Olaf this way.
• You'll likely actually find yourself cheering for Olaf as he gives every useless adult in the Beaudelaires' lives a richly deserved "The Reason You Suck" Speech, pointing out how their collective idiocy was the only reason he was able to remain a Karma Houdini for so long. It's even more vicious than the one in the movie.
  • He follows it up by expertly using reverse psychology to send his former mentors, and then Esmé and Carmelita, to the laundry room which is the source of the fire he started.
• The Baudelaires themselves give a summary of all the misfortune that they have endured and all the treacherous deeds of Count Olaf. Their performance is so full of rage and frustration because of all the times Count Olaf has escaped and none of the adults listened to them.

The End

• At the beginning of the episode, we see that, by the time Lemony is recounting the series, the Daily Punctilio has been shut down for bad journalism. Finally. Anyone for an Amen or Hallelujah?
• Ishmael is no saint, but he's the most competent adult in the entire series. He immediately recognizes the threat Count Olaf represents, gives him a "Reason You Suck" Speech, locks him away, and ultimately kills him.
  Ishmael: The orphans might be mutinous but they are still under my protection. I won't let you take them.
  Olaf: And how are you going stop me?
  Ishmael: With this. (Holds up harpoon gun.)
• Olaf's final act while suffering from a severe gutwound being to save Kit and carrying her to safety.