So, now that’s been five months, I guess this is the point where I confess to you that I haven’t been doing a good job of following Emma Approved. I meant to! I honestly think what Pemberley Digital is doing is pretty interesting, and after my epic Lizzie Bennet Diaries catch-up, I promised myself that this was the time I’d stick with it.
And then…I didn’t. I’m currently twelve episodes in—a little less than a third of what’s currently out.
To some degree, this is not the fault of Pemberley Digital or anybody else, except myself: I am terrible at watching videos on the Internet, period. If you are not an awkward college-choir rendition of a choral piece I’m trying to learn, or a meme that everybody else went crazy over six months ago and I’ve been pretending to understand ever since, I probably am not watching you on the YouTube machine. I am trying to get better about this. Internet video: sometimes it’s fun!
But there ARE some choices on Pemberley Digital’s part that I think have helped me keep my distance. First of all, I have to say that the changed-names thing really threw me off. Back when we discussed EA for the first time, a commenter explained that they’d changed a few characters’ names so as not to overlap with characters in LBD: since the two series take place in the same universe, they didn’t want to have a George Knightley and a George Wickham. I get that, kind of; clarity is key, and I can see that picking other historical-sounding names also might not have been the best choice, either. But ALEX? ALEX KNIGHTLEY? It’s a small detail, but it makes me crazy. (Not, however, crazy enough that I didn’t exclaim over Mr. Knightley when I saw him in a car commercial the other day. Good on you, getting TV jobs!)
This brings me to some less-small details: primarily, what’s the deal with Miss Taylor? I see Annie’s value in terms of establishing Emma’s character, but her storyline in the series doesn’t come from the book; it doesn’t even serve a corollary function here. In the novel, the Taylor/Weston wedding is practically a footnote, and a minor bummer for Emma. In the series, Emma creates a circle of havoc trying (sucessfully) to make it happen when Miss Taylor has cold feet. In any case, isn’t Harriet’s story enough to let us know how Emma operates? I hear there are further plot deviations later, and I guess I can’t shake my fist about them until I’ve seen them. (Motivation!)
It’s not that I’m not enjoying what I’ve seen. I think Joanna Sotomura makes a great Emma, and I remain intrigued by the tie-in Internet presence (and surprised it hasn’t simply eaten Pinterest whole). I like Harriet and B-Mart (hee). I just…have concerns, I guess.
What about you all? Are you watching Emma Approved? What’s your take?
austenacious 
I really like web series, and the Lizzie Bennet Diaries is one of my favourite things ever to happen, so naturally I’ve been watching Emma Approved ever since it began. There are things about it that I really like (mostly the acting/characterisation of Emma, Harriet and B-Mart), but I’m far less invested than I was/am when watching the LBD or the (non-Pemberley) Autobiography of Jane Eyre. I think a lot of the departures from Austen’s plot in EA come from a desire to break down the novel into month-long story arcs, which necessarily require some parts of the novel to be expanded into a much bigger deal than they are in the original text. They’re even labelled as ‘Month 1: Harriet’ etc, which to me makes the story as a whole seem a bit disjointed and less realistic.
The other thing that bothers me, and a lot of the other viewers, is the confusion about which videos, if any, are public in-universe. None of them are, according to the creators, but there are Q&A videos in which Emma talks to her viewers about things they wouldn’t know about unless they’d seen the other videos. It’s weird and distracting, at least for me. Still, I’m going to keep watching because I’m curious to see how the rest of the story will play out, and also maybe a little because of B-Mart.
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I have been following along as the videos are released, and enjoying the series. But I was a bit unsure of where the story was leading, and how it was following the book story line.
But then Frank Churchill arrived in person this week….and watching him manipulate Emma, and knowing where the story line generally heads now, I became excited to keep following along as this story unfolds.
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I am never sure if I will like a modern version and I thought it was a bit slow at the start, but of course now I am hooked. I try to take the name changes and plot deviations in stride and just enjoy it how it is. I do not follow the twitter accounts, too much for me to deal with ha ha, but I think it is a nice touch for the younger audience who may not have had any interest in a good Jane Austen book. Maybe this will encourage them to read the real deal 🙂
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What? There’s a new series? I loved the LB Diaries.
Thanks for this link. I’ve got soooooooo much to catch up on.
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I actually prefer Emma Approved to the Lizzie Bennet Diaries; I’d just gotten tired of a lot of the actors by the end of LBD, and also some of the constraints they put on their storytelling started to annoy me. I get the reasoning behind having very few of the actors on screen and instead telling all the stories through costume theater, but I eventually got tired of hearing everything secondhand. One of the things I love about EA is that everything actually happens on-screen, and we meet the characters when they become important to the story so I personally connect to and care about them a lot sooner.
There definitely have been a whole lot of odd changes from the novel, but for the most part I can see why they do them—shedding further light on Emma’s character, mostly—and they usually work well so I’m willing to let them slide. And I think the actors are absolutely perfect (except Harriet, I’m still not really into that actress’s portrayal).
I think you should keep going—it really is getting marvelous now that Frank Churchill is in the picture.
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Emily Michelle, I like your point about secondhand information vs. seeing everything play out onscreen–I liked the costume theater (especially when it gave Laura Spencer something un-Jane-like to do), but addressing the story directly does give EA a little more freedom. Sort of.
And am I correct in hearing that they’ve conflated LBD’s Caroline Lee with Mrs. Elton? HMMMM.
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Yes, they have! And it’s weird. The cynical part of me thinks the creators are maybe trying to get back some of the viewers they’ve lost since the LBD. Still, Caroline was only introduced very briefly two episodes ago and hasn’t appeared again since, so I’m trying to reserve judgement until I’ve seen more of her.
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