Lizzie Bennet Diaries Vlog


Have you found the YouTube series Lizzie Bennet Diaries? It tells story of a modern day Lizzie Bennet, 24 year old mass communications grad student making a vlog as a school project. Her two sisters Jane and Lydia appear as well as Charlotte Lu, Bing Lee, Caroline Lee, William Darcy, Ricky Collins, Fitz Williams and Gigi Darcy. Other key people are impersonated to further the stories, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet as well as Catherine de Bourg. There are lots of peripheral videos too (Lydia has her own series as well as Gigi's Pemberley videos and Charlotte has her own as well).

Things I Liked:
* The chemistry between Lizzie and Darcy is perfect.
* Many modern day Austen adaptations (read Eligible and Emma) really lose the charm of the original, but this one does not.
* Gigi (Darcy's sister) and Fitz Williams are both great modernizations of the original. They provide comic relief but are also part of the story themselves.
*The format allows for so much growth between the sisters. Lydia in particular plays a much larger role than in the original.

Things I Didn't Like:
* Because of the style, we see a lot of Lizzie (and I love her) but not a lot of the other characters. We don't meet Bing until episode 28 and Darcy for 60 episodes! 
* The format also means Lizzie comes across as so much more mean than she does in the original story.

Favorite Episodes, in episodic order: (I really tried to limit it to 10, but clearly, I failed ;)

Episode 1: My Name is Lizzie Bennett This episode introduces us to the modern Lizzie, what her basic bio and motivations for the blog

Episode 2: My Sisters: Problematic to Practically Perfect This episode explains the Bennet family dynamics along with Episode 3: My Parents: Opposingly Supportive

Episode 15: Lizzie Bennet is in Denial This episode is Charlotte's video on how the events with Darcy happened at the bar (My favorite Charlotte video.)

Episode 42: Friends Forever The episode where Charlotte decides to work at Collins and Collins.

Episode 48: Snickerdoodles In this episode, Jane gets upset talking about Bing. (Best Jane episode)

Episode 60: Are You Kidding Me! In this episode, we see the modern Hunsford proposal scene.

Episode 61: Yeah, I Know This episode is the fallout from the previous episode.

Episode 78: The Lizzie Trap In this episode, Gigi gets creative in her attempts to help Darcy get Lizzie.

Episode 82: Checks and Balances This episode records Gigi explaining what happened with Wickham.

Episode 83: Corporate Interview In this episode, we see a new dynamic between Darcy and Lizzie.

Episode 87: An Understanding This episode is so hard to watch, but gives such a sweet new beginning to the relationship between Lydia and Lizzie. Episode 88 is great too.

Episodes 98: Gratitude This episode is the conversation that happens after Darcy Shows up in episode 97!



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