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 6 (The Great Montarro)

It seems amazing how easy some things are on Friday the 13th: The Series.  I’ve noticed that in the first six episodes, the crew has gone after five items.  In each case, the item was easy to locate in the ledger.  If it’s not on the page they open the ledger to, it’s usually on an adjacent page.  It’s also usually easy to find someone connected with the item, even if the original owner is deceased.

Take The Great Montarro.  The episode opens with a magician named Fahteem drugging a woman and placing her in a container of some sort.  Next, he’s performing what would seem like an impossible trick.  He gets into a coffin that has blades that will fall into it, ostensibly slicing him up.  He demonstrates with a dummy filled with sawdust.  He also offers $50,000 to anyone who can replicate the trick with successful results.  He gets in, gets the daggers and walks out unharmed.  The drugged lady?  Not so lucky.  No one can figure out how it’s done.  That night, someone kills him by making the knives fall on him.  Since no one is in the other box, he dies.

Several months later, Jack is reading about it in the newspaper.  He laughs, not because of the gruesome nature of his death, but because of Fahteem’s real name.  Micki, Ryan and Jack all say that the name sounds familiar.  They go to the ledger and, of course, easily find the name and the associated item.  (In this case, it’s the houdin box.)

They quite easily track down his former assistant, who really didn’t like the guy.  The assistant is just a little rude, but mentions that the items from the act were sold off.  This means that they have to find out who bought it.  They visit a local magician’s guild, where it just so happens a competition is being held.  Jack, being a bit of a magician, is able to enter, which would allow him to snoop around with the help of Micki and Ryan.

It takes a while and a few people get murdered along the way, but they do manage to find the houdin box.  It’s owned by a magician going by The Great Montarro.  Lyla is his daughter and assistant, setting up the box that her father gets into.  She leads Micki right to the houdin box, in fact.  I know I shouldn’t be surprised after the previous episode, but Micki steps in to it.  It wasn‘t Mr. Montarro that was going to murder people; Lyla was going to have to eventually find an unwitting victim; Micki will do just fine.

Jack and Ryan manage to find Micki and get her out in time.  Unfortunately, The Great Montarro is at the crucial part of his act.  Because no one is in the houdin box, he dies a gruesome death on national television.  They manage to get the box to the vault back in Curious Goods.

The TV series is quickly establishing itself as a show aimed more for adults than children.  I suppose the title would hint towards that.  I think this is the first episode to show a lot of blood.  The show begins and ends with someone being impaled by blades due to the act.  Also, someone falls on a bed of nails, dying instantly.  We also see a hanging.  I think this has the most actual deaths, per capita, so far.

Another thing that bothers me is that it didn’t seem like Montarro knew what was going on.  Fahteem certainly did, but it was Montarro’s daughter that was procuring the victims.  It’s not clear that her father was complicit in any of it.  It’s possible that he was, but Jack and Ryan are left with a dilemma similar to the trolley problem.  In saving Micki, they have to risk Montarro’s life.  I imagine that in the heat of the moment, they weren’t even thinking of this.  If it were my friend or relative in there, my only thought would be getting them out.

There are still a few weak points, but I’d say that the series is getting stronger.  It’s still focusing on getting items back with very little explanation on how they work or how people mysteriously know how they work.  This doesn’t seem like the most intuitive setup to me.  I’m not sure how someone figured out that having someone in one box spares someone in the other.

Fortunately, as long as you understand the basic premise, it’s possible to skip certain episodes without affecting other episodes as much.  I think this is the first episode I could reasonably maybe recommend watching.

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