My Week in Vlog Review: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

A modern day retelling of Pride and Prejudice, the series is told in vlog-style by Lizzie Bennet as she narrates the trials and tribulations of her family life with the help of her best friend and aspiring filmmaker, Charlotte Lu, "practically perfect" older sister, Jane, and easily excitable younger sister, Lydia. As in Pride and Prejudice, Lizzie's mother is all too eager to marry her and her sisters off to rich men, so when wealthy medical student Bing Lee moves into the neighborhood and manages to woo Jane, it changes the entire dynamic of the family. It isn't long before Bing's even more wealthy friend and heir to an entertainment corporation, the mysterious Darcy, makes his way into the Bennet sisters’ lives, too.

So no, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (LBD) isn’t a book. I know I usually review books, but (confession), I actually didn’t read at all this week because I was too busy watching this! The LBD a series of 2–8-minute YouTube clips that, all together, comprise a video diary Lizzie is making for grad school. When the series came out back in 2012, the videos were getting uploaded every few days, but luckily, now you can just find the whole playlist on YouTube. I watched about half of the videos a year or so ago, then got busy and forgot about them. I picked up watching again this week and cruised through the second half of the series in about three days. And ohmygoshIloveitsomuch! It’s funny, it gets crazy real (like inciting real tears), and by the end, MAN you just want Lizzie and Darcy to kiss!

Spoilers ahead!

This is the story of Pride and Prejudice, so you make think there’s nothing to spoil, but what’s cool about the LBD is that it hits all the major plot plots of P&P but also gives them unique twists. I will be spoiling a few of those, so just be aware. To set the stage, the three Bennet sisters in this story are Jane, Lizzie, and Lydia. Mary is their cousin, and Kitty is—well, a cat (she doesn’t show up much). Bingley becomes Bing Lee, and Darcy is still Darcy. Darcy’s sister, Georgiana, goes by Gigi.

There are so many thing I could say about this series, but I’ll focus on just a few.

Lydia Bennet

Not what you expecting as a highlight, right? Imagine Lydia of the original P&P as a modern-day 20-year-old who’s obsessed with boys and partying and being cooler than Lizzie. Just as a warning to those who may get turned off the series by it, Lydia makes a couple pretty explicit jokes within the first few videos, but that doesn’t become a trend. However, her party-girl, “I don’t care what anyone thinks” persona does. When Lizzie, the primary vlogger, is away from home visiting other locations, Lydia films her own videos to keep us filled in on her life. If you’re not so into Lydia’s character, you might be tempted to skip those videos, but I’d say watch them. They provide the context to understand how and why Lydia slips down the slope that leads into the arms of George Wickham. The LBD really gets into that. About ¾ of the way through the series, Lizzie and Lydia have a fight where Lizzie implies that Lydia needs to grow up and be more responsible, which leads to them not talking to each other and Lydia heading to Vegas for an epic New Year’s Eve of partying. As things go south for her, she looks outside her usual sisterly sources of comfort and finds George instead. It’s almost creepy to see how subtly he manipulates her into believing that he’s the only one who cares about her. He genuinely seems to love her at first, but because I know P&P, I’m waiting for the monster to emerge, and it does, with a vengeance. Since this story is in the modern day and not the 1800s, Lydia and George don’t elope to scandalous effect; instead, George makes a sex tape of them and sets up a website to release it on the internet—without Lydia’s knowledge. When Lizzie tells Lydia about the site, Lydia’s disbelief . . . and then horror—I almost started crying. Lizzie and Jane come home from different cities to be with Lydia as they try to get the site taken down (which obviously Darcy manages, although I won’t tell you how), and Lizzie and Lydia repair their broken relationship. In the book, Lydia never really changes or deals with big consequences for her actions, but in this version of P&P, Lydia suffers but also gets redeemed.

Growing up, Moving on

I don’t feel like this is something that P&P the book focused on because it wasn’t really an issue of that time period. But in our day when young people delay marriage, kids, careers, and even moving out of the house, this was a very timely take on the story. In the LBD, Lizzie is 24, single, living at home, and saddled with grad school debt that keeps growing. Her best friend, Charlotte, is in a similar position. Her older sister, Jane, works a fashion industry job that’s not really going anywhere. Through the year-long series, all three of them grow up and move to the next phase of their life.

Starting off, though, they are all stuck in the mud. When Mr. Collins pitches a job (not a marriage) offer to Lizzie, she rejects him, as she does in the book. Charlotte, however, coaches Mr. Collins into offering her the job, which he does, and she takes it because she needs the money. While Lizzie is upset at her for “selling out” for a corporate job she’ll hate, eventually Lizzie comes around as she sees how Charlotte handles Mr. Collins’ eccentricities and kicks butt at the job. Charlotte’s not the only person who moves for a job though—Jane moves too, initially to follow Bing after he disappeared without a word, but she comes to really love her new job in L.A. and feel like she’s living life for herself and not just for a guy. Unfortunately, she gets fired because she goes home to help Lydia. At the end of the series, right as Bing comes back into her life, Jane gets a job offer in New York City and—well, I’ll let you watch it and see how that one happens for yourself.

And then Lizzie. Near the end of the series, Jane calls her out for rejecting Mr. Collins’ offer all those months ago—not because she should have wanted to work for him, but because part of the reason she said no was that she was scared to leave home and try something new. Lizzie takes Jane’s advice and moves to San Francisco to shadow a company for a grad school assignment—and the company just happens to be Pemberley Digital—yep, it’s Darcy’s company. Being away from home is a great growing experience and you can tell she’d love to work at Pemberley, and then later when she and Darcy finally get together—well. I’ll let you watch and see that too. ;)

Those are the two aspects of this series that I loved the most. But as a handful of other awesome things, in no particular order . . .

· Darcy. A great mix of attractive and reclusive and awkwardly charming. There’s a little eyebrow lift/ sideways glance thing that he does that’s just perfect. He doesn’t get on screen until well into the second half of the show, but when he does, the wait was WORTH IT.

· Mr. Collins—in this version, he’s the Bennets’ childhood friend “Ricky,” AKA the most awkward guy in the room. He insists on being called “Mr. Collins,” talks in weird, circular, formal ways—and he has a fiancée in Manitoba, Canada, who no one’s ever seen

· Gigi Darcy. What a nut! She was just so cute and funny and awkward (guess it runs in the family). There are more Jane Austen vlog adaptations and the next one features her, and I’m super excited to see more of her.

· Fitz Williams. In the book, Colonel Fitzwilliams is a side character who’s mainly just there to advance some plot points, but Fitz here is epic and totally stands on his own! He’s Darcy’s super cool, super chill friend who’s crazy fun and non-judgmental and lightens the mood just by being there. Plus, he has rockin’ hair. And he moisturizes.