Anne with a Twist

 So today I'm going to talk about a show I finished a while ago. The name of the show is Anne with an E and it is loosely based on L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series which I read as a young girl (several times in fact). One of the things I loved about Anne was her tenacity and individuality. I did think it was silly that she took so long to realize she had feelings for Gilbert (I mean seriously, it was obvious to me from the time he rescued her in the pond). Anyway, they changed up quite a bit of stuff in the Anne with an E adaption, but I liked most of the changes. Like, for instance, they made Aunt Josephine (the crochety rich aunt of Anne's bff Diana who initially had a bad impression of Anne only to be won over in the end) not just a spinster, but actually a Lesbian who was unmarried by choice and kept a traveling companion (code for lover) but whose lady had recently passed on (so she was kind of widowed). I liked that change. It seemed completely in character for the woman. It was so true to her character in my head that I couldn't be absolutely positive there was nothing in the original about a traveling companion that just wasn't emphasized in the same way.

They added this whole bit with the Canadian indigenous peoples that I thought fit snugly into the story as well. They went in a whole different direction with a lot of it after the first episode, but the important part of the story was that the characters were all so very much like the ones they were based on that I believed it. I was truly sad to see it end and I really hope that they continue the story into Anne and Gilbert's marriage because I feel like the could continue to do the same justice to their married life as they did to their courtship. The only real quibble I had with the show was that it kind of rushed their relationship more, although I did think it was ridiculous that it took Anne so long to come to grips with her feelings, in the books it wasn't until the end of her college career on PEI that she finally confessed to Gilbert after learning he was deathly ill and thinking he might die. That was a good three to four years after the show ends with them already having confessed to one another and gotten together. In the show Anne never goes back to Avonlea to teach like she did in the books before college. 

They introduced some different characters and left out some of my favorite characters from the book (like Lavender, the beautiful lady with the snow white hair) or the guy who was the crotchety neighbor who ended up having a funny secret. Still, I loved the adaption the way it was, even with all it left out or changed. I feel like they are two distinct stories (kind of like Full Metal Alchemist vs. Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood). I would even hesitate to say which one I like more. The original is, of course, filled with lovely memories of how I fell in love with storytelling and the idea of being a writer so it's a bit nostalgic. The newer version is more like the newer version of me, more inclusive, more open-minded but still basically the same at its very core.