This is extremely rare for me, but I’m going to preface this post with a note of caution. I don’t know if I’m going to cover Anne Shirley – I like it, but there are too many variables to be sure yet. But I’m not going to allow political discussion for it of the nature that was posted in the comments last week. You can hold whatever views you want, I legit don’t care. But I don’t think that discourse really belongs in a discussion of Anne of Green f*cking Gables, so I’m nipping it. Sorry of that offends anyone’s sensibilities but it’s a choice I’m quite comfortable with.

Now as to the show itself, I can say that I do indeed really like it. It’s exactly what I expected. And that’s the nut of it, actually – what really strikes me about it. To a remarkable degree I feel a sense of familiarity with this series despite (somehow) having almost no experience with it. That in itself is a good and not so good thing when it comes to my potential interest level, but fascinating too in a purely objective sense. It’s a reminder of just how influential Montgomery’s novels have been on all-ages fiction. Anne didn’t invent the tropes I’m guessing (most of them anyway) but it popularized a lot of them. And, as I noted last week, 36 languages and 50 million copies (in fact almost certainly much more). Clearly it’s deeply imbedded in the literary conscious.

I’m not really in a position to comment on this show as an adaptation – all I can really do is assess it in a vacuum. It is what it is. The visuals are not going to wow you, the acting is overall very good. The general style is quite restrained, in sharp contrast with the titular character – a quality, I suspect, is reflected in the original work. It’s a series about a cute little girl with an outsized personalty and very basic and elemental human needs and emotions. In a sense one of the zygotic cute girls doing cute things, which gives it a certain air of legitimacy.

What’s most telling to me is how true the key scenes of the episode ring. Like busybody Rachel saying all sorts of bitchy things about Anne – like saying her hair was like a carrot patch – and Anne going off on her. The context here is that red-haired people have historically suffered a fair bit of discrimination (myths about redheads go back to  pagan times, and those take a long time to lose their hold on ignorant minds). Anne was both right and wrong here, as Marilla does her best to point out. Marilla is trying to be a parent, and has no experience with that. She sends Anne to her room until she’s ready to apologize, but she’s not especially nasty about it (in part because she knows Rachel was wrong too, and flat-out tells her).

Matthew is an old softie to be sure, and he’s totally in Anne’s pocket already. He also knows Anne is an incredibly stubborn child (something Anne “shirley” knows about herself). Matthew finesses the situation perfectly. He asks Anne to apologize as a favor to him – in the process noting Rachel’s flaws. To “smooth things over” – a code Anne understands at once. Something adults have to do – to keep things functional even if you have to say things you don’t mean. And the other truthy part of this is Rachel’s response – to wit, she’s cool about it. The lesson? Far be it for me to assume, but it seems to me that it’s that most people are basically decent even if they act like assholes some of the time. And it’s better to accept them for who they are than to feud with them.

That all totes works – Anne’s hilariously theatrical apology and Marilla’s reaction to it, the aftermath. Anne’s pure joy at being here – “isn’t it grand to be going home?” is as truthy as it gets. Marilla and Matthew are already pretty firmly established – we feel like we know these people because we know people like them. And lastly we meet Diana Barry, who Anne pre-emptively declares is going to be her best friend even before they meet. Anne is a lot to take at first flush but Diana and she seem like a good match. Next week things will be spiced up by school time and the Anne’s new conflict with a certain boy – an element of the story that even I’ve heard about. That should provide ample opportunity for more truthiness to assert itself.