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21st Century Pride & Prejudice

Thoughts on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

By Lauren Writes AustenPublished about a year ago 4 min read
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The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on Youtube

How should I start this one off?

If you are ever looking for an 160 episode Youtube web series adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, that won Youtube it's first ever Primetime Emmy Award, and takes about 12 hours to watch if you watch it all in one day like I did... then look no further than The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2011-2013).

While I was watching I took a bunch of notes, so here is a summary of my thoughts on the show through my thoughts whilst watching.

Being Meta & Other Jokes

Other than the multiple mentions of England/living in England and being from a different time period (which they mention the Victorian era which is the wrong era but since they also mention empire waistlines, I'll give them a pass)... Straight off the bat, in the first episode Lizzie says that she loves classical novels, also mentions Sense & Sensibility, and all Colin Firth movies (and he plays Mr Dacry in the 1995 P&P miniseries and in Bridget Jones Diary (2001)). I think this really sets off how meta the show is... and here are some other ways:

-"Lizzie Bennet Zombie Diaries"/lots of mentions of zombies: reference to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (the book cause the movie wasn't out yet)

- Just the quote: "I always forget about Mary"

-They turn Kitty into Lydia's pet cat and Lady Catherine de Bourgh's daughter, Anne, into a dog, basically turning useless characters, that generally act more as pets than people, into actual pets

Also there were some fun jokes I randomly noted down:

-Darcy, "is that his first name of his last name" lol

-Darcy in a boyband would be awesome... need to see that now

-Also the name Bingley being changed to (first name) Bing (last name) Lee... I hated it but it is also 100% the type of name I'd come up with

I also just randomly wrote down the name "Fitz", no context or addition to that thought... And then there's a joke I'd really wish they'd said: (when Darcy was being Bing's wing man) "Darcy was the best Bing man"... yeah.

Okay, Some Actual Thoughts Now

I feel like some of the plot points don't work for modern society. Mainly the mother being so obsessed with marrying off her daughters, which they try to explain that it is because her mother is old fashioned or because they have money issues and they can't keep the house or whatever but I just don't think that makes that much sense. And then also their father having to introduce himself first to Bing before the rest of the family can meet him.

They did change some plot points that didn't make sense in the context of today's society. In this show Darcy takes Bing Lee away from Jane because he thinks she is a gold digger instead of her family being improper, etc. And I thought that that was really well done because of what happened between Georgiana (aka Gigi in the show) and Wickham, namely Wickham being a gold digger, it makes sense that he would be extremely worried and aware about that happening to someone else very close to him.

Questions I had Throughout

Why are they all red heads? Not that there's anything wrong with them being red heads. I just thought it was an interesting/odd choice.

-Why would you put fights on the internet? And all of this stuff on the internet? I know it's for plot but still... Lydia definitely seems like the kind of YouTuber who would put stuff like that online but I don't know if Elizabeth is the type of character who would do that. However, I do think the spontaneous tweet of Bing Lee going back to the city and catching that on camera was good.

-Caroline acts more like the book Caroline here than in 2005 P&P?

Some Final Thoughts & Connections

Honestly this is probably my favourite rendition of Mr Collins, or at least most favourable. He is not as annoying I think, he's just a little goofy.

And finally what is with the A Very Potter Musical (AVPM) connections? Mr Collins mentions Winnipeg (which is honestly the worst place in Canada and why would you start a media company there) and as soon as he mentioned Winnipeg all I could think about was the Ginny song from AVPM. I would've just written this off as me making connections where there isn't any until Lydia says "super mega foxy awesome hot" which is from about the same time in the musical. No one in the show is also in the musical, so it was just an odd connection.

In conclusion, I would say that this is my favourite modern adaptation of Pride & Prejudice that I've ever seen but I'm pretty sure it's the only modern adaption that I've seen so... it's my favourite modern adaptation of Pride & Prejudice that I've ever seen!

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About the Creator

Lauren Writes Austen

A dedcated creator to all things Jane Austen!

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  • Jasmine Aguilar6 months ago

    Very interesting! I was unaware there was a modern version of Pride and Prejudice.

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