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.

IMDb page

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.

IMDb page