Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 20 (The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening)

Friday the 13th: The Series wasn’t known for a lot of things.  Production values were about average for TV.  The acting was on par, as well.  In fact, the only things I can think of were the high levels of cheesiness and adult themes.  A lot of people died, and usually in a pretty cheesy way.  (One episode had people beaten up by a boxer‘s shadow.)

The previous episode was called The Quilt of Hathor.  This is part two of that episode.  So, do you call it The Quilt of Hathor II?  No.  It’s The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening.  I have absolutely no idea what that means.  I think it just sounded cool to whoever named the episodes.

So, The Quilt of Hathor: The Sleepening ended with Micki and Jack realizing that they had brought back a fake cursed quilt.  The quilt has the ability to kill people and Plain Old Effie is using it to kill her love interest’s would-be brides.  To boot, Ryan stayed behind to be with Laura, the daughter of Reverend Josiah Grange.  Since Ryan knows about the quilt, he’s a potential target.

For some reason, it takes two weeks for Jack and Micki to go back to Fake Amish City, but Ryan seems to be doing well.  He’s building houses and stuff.  Laura’s former betrothed, Matthew, doesn’t seem as intent on killing Ryan.  So, all is good.

Except that several of the women Grange was going to marry have died.  (It’s tradition for the leader of the town to be married, so there’s some pressure.)   Inquisitor Holmes is sent to investigate.  Grange honestly doesn’t know what’s going on at first, but doesn’t want people poking around.

Them Ryan tells Grange about the quilt and that Effie is most likely trying to marry him because if the leader dies while married, the power shifts to the wife.  So, Grange takes the most reasonable course of action.  He marries Effie that night in a secret ceremony.

True to Ryan’s prediction, Effie tries to kill Grange with the quilt, only to die by the quilt, herself.  Grange hides the body and tells Ryan that she snuck off in the night.  Not only does that make no sense, but Ryan is left without the cursed quilt.

Things become clear when the inquisitor dies and Ryan is set up for the murder.  Somehow, Grange has figured out how to use the quilt.  (How anyone figures out how to use the cursed items is beyond me, but that’s another story.)  Thus, Ryan, Jack and Micki know where the quilt is and are able to retrieve it.  The episode ends with Ryan back at Curious Goods and all is right in the world.

Ok, so what is the deal with calling this episode The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening, anyway?  What is The Awakening?  Also, little is mentioned of the quilt’s history.  So, why call it the Quilt of Hathor?  I think in both cases, someone wanted something that sounded cool.  Satan’s Quilt was kind of plain, even for an episode about plain people.  Plus, if you use Satan or Devil too much, it becomes repetitive.  So, let’s go with Hathor.

As for The Awakening, it can mean the moment when someone becomes suddenly aware of something, which is ironic.  I’m not aware of any moment standing out in that regard.  Does it refer to Grange becoming aware of Effie’s intents?  Is it Ryan becoming aware that the quilt is still out there?  It’s not like Micki or Jack dropped him a letter.  I think someone had a list of words that could be appended to a title for a sequel and picked Awakening.

If you’ve seen any episode so far, you’ll know that the series isn’t spectacular.  You could easily skip all the episodes so far and not really miss anything.  I honestly wonder how the show lasted three seasons.  For that matter, I wonder if I’m going to last all three seasons.  There are six more episodes in this season, which doesn‘t seem too bad.  I may be reviewing season two as a season rather than by episode, if at all.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 19 (The Quilt of Hathor)

Effie is a very plain woman.  This is impressive, given that she lives in a village with plenty of plain women.  She’s seeking the attention of the village’s leader, Reverend Josiah Grange.  Unfortunately for Effie, Grange keeps marrying other women.  You might wonder, at this point, if this is a polygamist cult.  It’s not.  They’re more of pseudo-Amish cult.

Actually, Ellie has a quilt that allows her to kill people.  Whenever she goes to bed with the quilt covering her, all she has to do is concentrate on the person she wants to kill.  Effie then dreams of killing that person and the other person dies in real life.  Thus, Effie can kill whoever is betrothed to Grange.

Wouldn’t you know it, but it catches the attention of the good people at Curious Goods.  Micki and Ryan go out to Fake Amish Village to retrieve the quilt. The reason I say Fake Amish is that the group is called the Penitites.  I don’t think that this group exists.  I haven’t been able to find anything on Google.  (It’s possible that the Amish would object to the portrayal, but I doubt it.  It’s more probable that the writers didn’t want to be constrained by accuracy.)

Anyway, Ryan falls in love with Grange’s daughter, Laura.  Too bad for Ryan that she’s engaged to Matthew.  Even worse is that Matthew is the overly jealous type.  Every time Ryan gets near Laura, Matthew attacks Ryan.  Custom would seem to be on Matthew’s side, as women and men aren’t supposed to congregate if they‘re single, so Ryan is advised to stay away from Laura.  Of course, he doesn’t, which leads to a fight around a big fire.  But, still…

The episode ends with Ryan engaged to Laura and Micki returning to the shop with what she thinks is the quilt only to have Jack discover that it’s a fake.  The real quilt is still in Effie’s possession.  They have to get back to warn Ryan!

This episode is so cheesy that they had to split it up over two hours.  That’s how bad it is.  There’s stuff you might expect, like an overabundance of plane dress and words like Ye, Thee and Thou.  There are also a lot of fake beards.  It was as if Ye Olde Fake Beard Emporium had a sale on them.  (“Thou won’t believe our prices!”)

This episode and the next would have made for a nice b-movie.  Maybe it was a made-for-TV movie that got rejected.  Either way, they’d better get that quilt next week.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 3 (Cupid's Quiver)

Lots of great things happened in the 1980s.  Back to the Future was released.  Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered.  Rubik’s Cube started the decade.  It was a pretty awesome decade.

There were a few not-so-great things that happened, too.  We had Friday the 13th: The Series to end the decade with.  It premiered in 1987 and started with some less-than-stellar episodes, such as Cupid’s Quiver.

This is the third episode of a series about Micki and Ryan, two cousins who inherit an antiques store and its cursed items.  With the help of their dead uncle’s former business partner, Jack, they’ve been retrieving those cursed items, like an ugly statue of Cupid.  How is this item cursed?  It allows the owner to make the target of his affection desire nothing else than to be with them.  Then, the owner kills the target.

The episode opens at a bar.  We have a guy being rejected by a woman, who happens to be on a date with another guy.  After she repeatedly tells him to get lost, he positions the statue and allows it to fire a small energy bolt at her.  After the pain subsides, she suddenly desires him.  It’s a shame, because her date seemed like a nice guy.

Well, the guy with the statue takes the woman to a hotel room upstairs, where they start making out.  That is, until he starts to kill her.  Just then, a group of fraternity brothers break into the room and take the statue.  It’s not clear what happens to the man or the woman.

Back at the frat house, the statue is noticed by Eddie Monroe, fellow member of the fraternity.  And by member, Eddie really means that he’s the janitor.  Anyway, that’s not going to stop him from stalking Laurie.  He gets the idea to steal the statue and use it on a random woman.  I don’t know how he knows what to do with the statue.  Then again, it is a cursed item.

He uses the statue on the random woman and takes her out in his beat-up car so they can make out.  He then leaves to relieve himself, only to return with a beehive.  At least, I assume it’s a beehive.  It might be a hornets’ net.  Either way, they sting her to death.  It’s kind of impressive that Eddie managed to walk all the way back to the car without getting stung.

It’s time for Eddie to use it on Laurie.  When Micki and Ryan try to intervene, Micki is shot with a bolt from Cupid, making her desire Eddie.  They eventually get the statue and put it in the vault beneath the store.  That doesn’t stop Ryan, the eternal horndog, from wanting to use it.  Seriously?  Like he doesn’t know how the statue works.

The only reason I watched the first four episodes is that the first DVD of the season-one set had the first four episodes.  I’m going to have to take a closer look at the second DVD before checking it out.  This one was a very confusing and poorly written episode.  It’s almost like they wrote a rough draft and just used that.  Consider the bar with the hotel above it.  What’s it called?  It’s called the Hotel Bar.  They couldn’t even come up with something lame to call it.

As I said, it’s not clear how anyone knows how to use the statue.  It’s not like it was activated accidentally.  Every time we see it used, it’s intentional.  This brings up the issue of consent, which is never mentioned.  Even if the woman suddenly wants the man, she’s under the influence of a cursed item.  It’s not really consensual.  Eddie is basically raping the women before killing them.

Also not clear is how Jack was able to get himself hired at the fraternity party as a bartender.  I don’t think it was explicitly stated whether or not he was serving alcohol, but he does appear to know how to make sodium pentothal from common household items.  That’s a pretty neat trick.

Overall, it’s a vaguely confusing story that’s not particularly good.  I’d say that it has potential, but it would take a lot of work to make this into a decent episode.  It’s one of those story ideas that was probably best left unused.


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