The Baudelaires now head to Heimlich Hospital (clearly named after the Heimlich Manoeuvre — very apt), now officially on the run, and are sort of adopted by the Volunteers Fighting Diseases, who go around the hospital trying to cheer up the patients, but making no attempt to help them receive more attentive care, which they clearly desperately need. We get another little snippet of plot-related information — specifically, that one of the Baudelaire parents may actually be alive — but this remains a very small trickle of revelation, in keeping with previous instalments.

I was surprised by the dark and frightening themes in this part of the story: the infantilisation and dehumanisation of medical patients seems to be a theme, with the Volunteers Fighting Diseases being well-meaning but not actually effective in working towards their aims. There’s a sort of ‘toxic positivity’ at play with the VFDs, similar to what’s become a point for discussion on social media — they say ‘no news is good news’, refusing to keep up to date with current events lest they dull their shine, and stay blindly cheery even in the face of real suffering. This seems to me to be linked with the ‘craniectomy’ they attempt to administer to a drugged-up Violet, showing the sinister side of medicine and caging certain horrors in academic terminology, similar to lobotomies in the past. I also thought it was interesting that they escape with Count Olaf — they are not exactly in league with him, but not so different in the eyes of public perception, in keeping with their situation at the end of the previous instalment. The more they get caught up in these dark and mysterious affairs and have to lie and trick others in the name of self-preservation, the more difficult it becomes for them to defend themselves, and to avoid morally questionable actions of their own along the way.