By Becky Seifert
The Avonlea Spectacle ~ Issue 19 ~ Late Summer 1998
I recently was able to see the wonderful television series, Emily of New Moon, which is now my favorite tv series. I first want to say that I really love the show! For months I had been looking forward to seeing the new Emily series based on my favorite series of books by L.M.M. I had heard many opinions on the Kindred Spirits mailing list about Emily; some good, some bad, but I wanted to see for myself what the show was like.
Then one day a tape arrived in the mail! I was very excited! My mother and I "dropped everything" and watched all three episodes we had received. At first I was upset because the first episode had not been sent to me. I started watching the show beginning with the 2nd. episode ad am happy it turned out that way, because the first episode is one of my least favorites. This is something I find true with a lot of shows I watch - trying to introduce the people, the places, etc. can be hard - as is getting used to these actors as your favorite characters.
In some ways I was a little displeased with the series...there were too many ghosts, at least one per episode...and darker scenery than in Avonlea (Avonlea was so much brighter - the scenery, the clothes...), although I'm hoping that during the 2nd. season there will be more spring and summer episodes. Most of the first season takes place during the winter.
In many, many ways I was very pleased with the show! (There are many more things that I like about the show than I dislike!)
I especially like the casting in the show. Martha MacIsaac is Emily to me now, as Megan Follows is Anne. Martha is a wonderful actress. I love the fact that they found an Islander to play Emily. She looks right for the part and I get the right feeling of Emily as she plays the part.
My other favorite is Stephen McHattie as Cousin Jimmy. I was a little worried that I might not like him since I had heard that he was eerie and spooky and that he talks strange. He does talk kind of slowly, but it sort of fits his personality. As Emily says in one episode, "He's an odd old soul." He's also very sweet and gentle. ("Whatever part of him was missing wasn't his heart" - Emily of New Moon) He has the perfect amount of Jimmy-ness. I love his friendship with Emily and how he stands up for her.
Susan Clark is very good as Aunt Elizabeth and does an excellent job of making you dislike her character. She's very strict although in later episodes she does stand up for Emily.
Aunt Laura was a very nice surprise! Since I had seen her in Avonlea, it was hard for me to imagine her as Laura, but as with Jimmy I liked her right away! She's very believable, very timid and bows to Elizabeth, but she also is a good friend to Emily from the very beginning.
Ilse is adorable. She seems to know the Murray look also when she is fighting with Rhoda or telling Miss Brownell off. She's pretty - rather fairyish looking. I think it's neat that Jessica Pellerin really is Martha MacIsaac's best friend.
Perry is not exactly as I had imagined him, but I also liked him after watching one or two episodes. He has more of an accent than I imagined, but he's a lot of fun. He comes across as being tough, but clever, because he does a wonderful job of working his way into the Murray family.
Teddy is another favorite! I hope we'll see him in a lot more episodes next season. He looks a little like a young Leonardo di Caprio. He's quiet and kind of shy. He's sweet and from the beginning you can tell that he thinks Emily is the "sweetest girl in the world".
The guest cast is okay. I like Eric U'ren as Dean Priest best. He seems a little younger than he is described in the books, but he's an interesting character.
I've seen almost every episode at least twice, and usually watched three or so episodes all at once. I hope the show will soon come to the US and other countries also.
Eye of Heaven was a very interesting episode, but a lot of things were changed from the book which was disappointing. Some of the changes do make sense - it was interesting to see a young Emily and nice to see a little more of Douglas Starr. Emily's mother was also shown in flashacks and as a ghost which was also sort of interesting. But some of the changes were a little strange or unnecessary. Emily's father dies from a heart attack after falling off the roof of the house trying to save her cat, Pandora. When the Murrays come for the funeral, Jimmy does not come with them. I would prefer to see things happen exactly as they were in the books but if you have not read the books it helped to introduce you to Emily's parents. Ellen Greene was not at all as I imagined. She was only hired for a short time to try to help Douglas Starr get well and while there she is caught stealing. Also, Emily becomes friends with a young Indian boy at her school in this episode. He's very cute and it's a bittersweet story but it's hard to understand why this is even there.
I liked the next few episodes much better. (Once Cousin Jimmy, Ilse, Perry and Teddy were introduced.)
Emily "meets" Charles Dickens in a dream in the second episode. She is unhappy at New Moon and runs away. She also meets Cousin Jimmy at the beginning of this episode. After she runs away, he goes out looking for her and finds her at the train station and brings her home. The next episode is a lot about Cousin Jimmy's accident and Aunt Elizabeth. Jimmy has flashbacks of his fight with Elizabeth when they were children and he fell into the well. Also in these episodes Emily meets Perry when he supposedly "saves" her from a bull. After this took place he starts working at New Moon as Jimmy's helper. Emily also meets Ilse when she starts school.
The Disappointed House was fun, but also different from the books. Emily discovers the house and begins seeing visions of the couple that were planning to live in the house. Then she realizes that Aunt Laura was also involved in this romance. Laura had fallen in love with the man building the house, but he didn't love her. The writer places the blame on Laura concerning the break up of the couple. I think the story would have been better if they had stuck to the story in the book. Emily also meets Teddy in this episode and gets her first kiss. :)
The 5th. episode Paradise Lost was okay. I liked Lofty John much better in the books. This story was about Emily finding the apple at Lofty John's. She and Ilse sneak into his barn and he catches them there. He makes Emily eat the apple and then tells her it's poisoned. He does this to be mean, not as a joke like in the books. Also in the series he's almost blind and turns out to be an illegitimate Murray.
He gets mad at Emily and threatens to chop down Lofty John's Woods. Elizabeth is nicer to Emily in this episode when she stands up for her when talking to Lofty John. Emily talks to Father Ducharme trying to get his help. He visits Lofty John, but it doesn't help. Later Lofty John sets his barn on fire on purpose, but Jimmy saves him.
My favorite of the non LMM related episodes is The Enchanted Doll. In this episode Emily finds her mother's doll. Aunt Laura restores it for Emily. One day while painting at the lighthouse Laura meets Ian Bowles who owns a hotel in a nearby town. He is interested in the doll (and Aunt Laura!) and wants Laura, Jimmy and Emily to make several dolls to sell at his hotel. Aunt Laura says no, but Jimmy and Emily tell Ian that she will make and sell the dolls to him. They do this without Aunt Elizabeth knowing. Ilse and Emily get into a fight which is cute and funny but the language they used was too strong. I loved the old dolls in this episode. When Laura finishes the dolls they send them to Mr. Bowles only to realize that they also sent Emily's doll too by mistake. This is when Elizabeth finds out what they have been doing and she gets upset. Laura, Jimmy and Emily all go to Ian's hotel to get the doll back. Laura has a real crush on Ian. Peter Donaldson plays Ian which I think is interesting since he and Sheila McCarthy are married in real life. Also the lost diamond is found in this episode.
Fallen Angels was my least favorite episode. I did enjoy it a little more the second time I watched it. Emily and Ilse become friends with a pregnant girl named Maida. She loses her job at the Murray cannery and tries to get help from the baby's father, Oliver Murray It's been mentioned that he was based on Andrew Murray although he doesn't seem very similar to me. (Editor's note Andrew Murray was good, sensible and boring. I don't think that describes Oliver Murray!) He refuses to help. Emily and Ilse take her to the Disappointed House and help her. Aunt Laura, Emily, and Ilse end up helping deliver her baby. Maida decides to give up the baby and leaves it at the Catholic Church. Emily wants to keep the baby herself but eventually she and Father Ducharme are able to get Oliver to take the baby. Most of this seemed very un-LMM-ish to me. With Emily's Murray pride it's hard to imagine her becoming friends with Maida. She's not the kind of girl she would associate with. The things I did like about this episode were Aunt Elizabeth getting choked at the dinner table when Perry begins to tell Emily about babies. This scene was so funny. Also the scene where Ilse gets into a fight with Rhoda. I love where Teddy and Perry break up the fight and Perry says to Ilse "Remind me never to mess with you!"
In The Wild Rover, Mr. Carpenter is introduced. He and the school superintendent come to Blair Water and the superintendent falls for Miss Brownell. He proposes and Miss Brownell resigns so she can marry him. (What a relief. She was very hateful!) This was one of the most LMMy episodes with all four kids in school together. The second half of the series seemed to be a little more true to the books. This episode had exact quotes from the books. Mr. Carpenter is not exactly as I imagined but he is about the right age and much nicer than Miss Brownell! He is a much better teacher, besides being kind.
The Ghost of Wyther Grange and A Child Shall Lead Them are also very good. The Murray's get a letter from Great Aunt Nancy asking for a picture of Emily and inviting her to come visit Wyther Grange. Emily cuts her hair for the picture (with disasterous results) but Teddy offers to draw a portrait of her which she sends along with the photo.
She goes to Wyther Grange where she meets Great Aunt Nancy & Great Aunt Caroline. I always liked the way Emily met Dean in the books but in this she meets him at Wyther Grange. Then later he rescues her from a rabbit's snare. She spends several days with them. This is almost like a two part episode. In the next episode Dean is taking her home when she asks him to stop the buggy. She runs after Beatrice's (Ilse's mother) ghost. (While at Wyther Grange she had had dreams about Beatrice). Dean can't keep up with Emily and she gets lost. Meanwhile, Ilse wants to know about her mother so she asks Perry and Jimmy. Jimmy tells her, which makes her very upset. Perry and Jimmy go looking for information on her mother (and soon find out that Ilse has come too!) but they get caught in a building when looking for information. They find out that Emily is missing and while searching Ilse finds Emily.
Emily is very sick. She is taken home where she is delirious and has visions of Beatrice falling in the well. They realize that there may be something to what Emily is saying and Jimmy goes into the well to see if Beatrice really did fall, which she did. This completely changes the doctors attitude toward Ilse and his late wife. This was also a very LMM-ish episode.
The next two episodes were pretty good. Emily wrote a letter to Ian Bowles and signed it "Love, Aunt Laura" in one of the previous episodes and sent it without Aunt Laura knowing. Later Laura and Elizabeth find a copy of the letter and read it and are surprised. They laugh together over the letter. This is one of the few times you ever see Elizabeth laugh. Pandora gets hurt after a fight with a raccoon. There was a very weird ghost like witch that is sort of disgusting. She is unnecessary. The fight between the cat and raccoon was a little too gruesome. Dr. Burnley comes and saves Pandora which brings him and Laura closer even though Ian Bowles has come to visit Laura. Aunt Laura gets engaged to Ian but it seems as if she may be interested in Dr. Burnley without realizing it herself. The romantic triangle between Ian, Dr. Burnley and Laura is interesting.
I liked the final episode except for the mime that followed Emily everywhere. Elizabeth finds Emily's letter bills with her letters to her father. She is very mad at Emily. It was great hearing exact quotes from the books again in this episode and seeing the Murray look on Emily's face when talking to Elizebeth. At the end of this episode Jimmy tells her to go up to her room because there is a present there for her and she finds her first Jimmy book.
I do hope the show will soon be shown in many countries so more people can enjoy it. There are many differences from the books, but this also happened in Avonlea and I couldn't have loved that more. Just being able to see these characters on the screen and to be able to relive the events in the books is unbelievably wonderful! There is no way I could recommend it any higher.
Copyright © 1998 ~ 2001 Becky Seifert and The Avonlea Spectacle
This page was created on October 15th., 1998.