Emily Sidhe

It is not.

Mrs. Bennet sucks too.

The most recent example that a few people have added:

She is not hauling ass. (And poverty is an exaggeration, they'll have £250/year.)

She is screaming "The house is on fire!" while she herself pours more gasoline on it and does not call the fire department even though the cell phone is in her hand.

She says she wants her girls to get married. What effort has she contributed to this goal? Let's review.

❌ She has done nothing to raise her girls to have good manners, accomplishments, or education that would attract good men.

❌ She has done nothing to save money for her girls, again to either attract husbands or protect them if they never marry. (And they were rich, saving would have been very easy, but she and her husband were too selfish and lazy to do it.)

✅ She buys her girls dresses and ⚠️takes them to parties. That is literally it. The only thing she does to help them, and she does it so poorly that she actually makes things worse for them with her poor manners and management of her younger girls.

This isn't even getting into how abysmally she does as a mother in terms of loving, understanding, supporting, and guiding her children in aspects of their lives outside getting married...

She hurts her girls just as much as her husband, just in somewhat different ways.

TL;DR:

Just over a year ago, I started this project of watching the fan-voted top-100 episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 while frantically knitting an afghan for my close friend's wedding. Fifteen months and ninety-nine episodes later, I'm watching the top-rated episode of all while knitting a new blanket for that same friend's baby shower. It must be the will of Manos! And now it's time for the final episode of this top 100 list. Do we all know what to do? That's right: You, put a handkerchief on your head! You, swat at imaginary elves! You, rock on the porch all night! Let's get this party started!

1. Episode 424 Manos: The Hands of Fate

Content Warning: The movie involves a cult that is attempting to take over people's minds to enforce servitude, particularly women for sexual slavery. One of the potential victims is a *very* young child who, if the cult is successful, will either be killed as being of no use or taken and raised by the cult to become a sexual slave as an adult. There is also some onscreen pawing at unconscious (or frozen in terror) people, and the death of a dog.

Summary: We start with a short, the second part of Hired!, the beginning of which we saw all the way back at number 79. during Bride of the Monster (a criminally underrated episode.) In Part 1, new hire Jimmy feels like he's spinning his wheels as a salesman for Chevrolet cars, while his frustrated manager complains to his own father that none of his new employees seem to know what they're doing. Here in Part 2, Dad passes on his folksy wisdom that no one knows how to do a job unless they've been trained, and reminds his son that when he was green, his own boss worked closely with him to show him how to do the job right. (Petition for weird porch-rocker dad to explain to all those five-years-of-experience-for-an-entry-level-position companies that everyone serves an apprenticeship for every job). The boss returns to the Chevrolet lot determined to help his sales people grow with hands-on guidance and management.

In the film proper - I don't know how to explain how weird this movie is. We have had incoherent films and surreal films and weird films and incompetent films, but this - somehow seems to become a more bizarre viewing experience the more times you watch it.

A family - a mature dad, his significantly younger wife, and their little daughter - drive through endless alfalfa fields to a completely inappropriate jazz soundtrack while looking for a place called Valley Lodge. Dad misses an opportunity to ask for directions from teens necking at a crossroads, but when he goes back, they've been chased away by the local cops. We will periodically cut back to what the teens and the cops are doing throughout the movie, although it never becomes relevant. (I think they're trying to tease the audience with the hope that the cops might figure out that something's wrong and come to the family's rescue, but the editing is so poor that everything just feels very random.) Dad finally stops for directions at a mysterious ranch house that wasn't there the first time they drove by, and the very odd caretaker Torgo (with an even more inappropriate theme) reluctantly allows the family to stay the night while making creepy comments about a "Master" and ogling the young wife. In the night, the family poodle runs outside and is killed by desert animals, Torgo creeps on the wife, the car refuses to start so they can't leave, and daughter Debbie discovers a secret room where the Master and several wives unconscious in ritual poses around an eternal flame. (That last one gets only about 20% of the reaction it should.) Now when I type it out like this, it seems obvious that the death of the dog is to establish that the desert is dangerous and explain why the family doesn't run into it the second they find the cult room, but I cannot stress enough how much the editing of this film is so odd that it makes it hard to put together cause and effect.

Eventually the Master wakes up and starts talking about a sacrifice to the god Manos, he wakes the wives and they begin fighting about whether to kill Debbie along with her father or convert her into the cult along with her mom, Torgo says that he wants the new lady for his wife and threatens rebellion when he is refused, the first wife repeats "your power fails you" a couple of times, and then everyone kind of wanders around aimlessly for a bit? Eventually, the Master uses his powers to kill Torgo and the first wife, and the family flees into the desert. When the wife tires, they try to trick the pursuing cult by doubling back to the house. The Master appears, is shot by the husband several times but is immune to the bullets, and we cut to a new group of vacationers arriving at the house where the dad is now the creepy caretaker and mom and Debbie are both among the wives.

MST3K lore or notable moments: The whole episode is iconic. This is their most famous one. But if I have to pull a few things, it's that Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank both sneakily apologize to the SoL crew for the badness of the movie, and this is the introduction of Torgo, one of the shows most iconic recurring guest characters, who appears at the end of the episode to deliver a suspiciously warm pizza to Deep 13. Honorable mention to Joel's Manos costume with the feet robe.

Spin the wheel again. That’s who’s trying to protect you.

(If you have zero idea about a name you got, spin until you see someone you recognize.)

By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That’s made America the land it has become.

O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,

And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came

To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we’ve dreamed

And all the songs we’ve sung

And all the hopes we’ve held

And all the flags we’ve hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

Did some swatching this time around during MST3Knitathon, my attempt to finish many knitting projects while watching the fan-voted top-100 episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in reverse order from bottom to top. We're almost done with the list! And a baby shower has been announced for the end of August, which means that I really need to get knitting, so we should get on with the write up. But first! Important administrative detail: did you all sign Sherry's birthday card?

2. Episode 820 Space Mutiny

Content Warning: In one of the sketches, Crow comes out as a Bellerian and then questions his newly assumed identity in a way that can be read as an analogy for trans experiences. It's mostly fine until the end when Crow decides he is not a Bellerian after all and derides himself as a gullible moron whose identity changes on a whim, which if you extend the metaphor, is a nasty thing to say about questioning people. Your mileage may vary.

Summary: The Southern Star is a generational colony ship, taking humans from an overpopulated world to a new planet multiple lifetimes' worth of space travel away that their descendants will be able to colonize, with multiple middle generations in between who will be born, live, and die on the ship. In an interesting and fairly unusual for this genre bit of world-building, the Southern Star's journey takes it through inhabited space, with multiple trading and travel vessels coming and going from the larger ship during its journey. In the 13th(!) generation to be born aboard ship, the head of the law "enforcers" decides that he's unwilling to be ship-bound for his entire life, and stages a mutiny to take over the Star in order to deviate it from its course and take it to a nearby planet in pirate-controlled territory that he intends to colonize personally. Complicating his plans are the arrival aboard ship of a mysterious group of psychic priestesses called the Bellerians, who give vague warnings about the mutiny but don't actually do much, and fighter pilot Buck Plankchest, who narrowly escapes the sabotaged explosion in the docking bay that cuts the ship off from outside help and becomes the only non-mutineering-enforcer aboard with combat experience. The captain's botanist daughter Lea is initially hostile to Blast Hardcheese, whom she blames for the death of his passenger in the crash he survived, but as they begin to bond romantically and travel the ship together, they stumble across evidence of the mutineers conspiracy. Can Fridge Largemeat lead the largely pacifist colonists to victory against their entire law enforcement force while Captain Santa and First Officer Sting look on?

MST3K lore or notable moments: While coming up with new macho character names for the body-builder lead is a reused joke from earlier seasons of the show, it's most associated with this episode, where they call [actual character name Dave Ryder] 40 different things according to the list on the MST3K wiki, and it is one of their most memorable and meme-ified riffs. This is also the final episode of the Roman times arc, where Pearl promises not to send Mike and the bots any more bad movies if they help them escape. (A promise she does not keep, as we learn in Time Chasers.) Oh, and also, it's revealed that there were in fact three additional escape pods on the Satellite of Love this whole time until Crow, Tom, and GPC destroy them in a mock space-battle like the pirate fight in the movie. (It's fun that GPC got to fully participate in the boy bots' mischief - she's usually either doing her own thing, a reluctant participant, or the voice of reason)

"oh, that's easy! it's because they're fundamentally Bad people who want to hurt others and choose their beliefs to justify that! :) hope this helps"

or

"they just don't have access to the same information we do. look at this person who was raised in a cult! don't you feel sorry for her?"

and like, yes, fine, some people were in fact raised in cults, but what i wish people would understand is that the bulk of it is just normal human flaws, like:

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel smart and cool and like they've figured everything out (you also do this)

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel like their emotions are justified and grounded in reality, and that the people they want to hurt deserve to be hurt (you also do this)

they form conclusions before they've processed all the relevant information, and cling to that first impression even when new info comes to light (you also do this)

they pick up beliefs from the people around them because they want to be liked and fit in, not because the beliefs are good or true (you also do this)

they come up with reasons that the stuff that benefits them (and the people they like and identify with) is actually overwhelmingly best for everyone and obviously the right thing to do (you also do this)

they pay more attention to stuff that supports what they already believe and avoid looking in places that might show them otherwise (you also do this)

they listen to people who talk like 'one of them' and ignore others (you also do this)

they come up with reasons to dismiss people with conflicting viewpoints as obviously in bad faith or ignorant or a shill or evil (you also do this)

they fail to take their own beliefs seriously sometimes, and take their beliefs way too seriously other times, in a selective way that lets them do the things they already wanted to do (you also do this)

the very ways they construct the ideas of 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' and 'belief' and 'understanding' are biased so that what they don't want to believe comes under lots of scrutiny and what they do want to believe receives less (you also do this)

you, dear reader, are presumably right about everything and were correct to die on every hill you've ever died on, but the difference between you and someone who's wrong about important stuff doesn't look like "well they're inherently evil and i'm not", it probably looks like a combination of:

natural environment (they would have been exposed to different information than you regardless of their choices)

being in the right place at the right time (your particular profile of flaws and virtues happened to be what was needed to lead you to the right conclusions, they had the opposite experience)

random luck (you doubled down on what felt right to believe but wasn't, but it turned out to be inconsequential, or even right for different reasons, while they doubled down on what turned out to be a horrible mistake distorting their entire worldview)

you do less of the things in the previous list, and over time the difference between you and them adds up

and, look, i also do these things. the nicest and most thoughtful people i've ever met do these things. if you meet someone who never does any of these things, i dunno, give them a fucking medal or something.

parameters: post-canon, let us assume every major player is alive and well. some benevolent god has allowed them to send one (1) person back to the past (let's say cloud recesses era) armed with all knowledge of how things played out in canon. this person's mission is to fix canon mistakes and hopefully secure a better future for everyone involved.

crucially, whoever is sent into the past to try to avoid canon disasters must be chosen by democratic vote (51% of the vote)

Jin Guangyao has the strongest ability to understand and manipulate events, but I’m not sure he would attempt to change things in a way that would benefit anyone but himself.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wanji were already trying their best, and while knowledge of the future could help them avoid some mistakes, I’m not sure how much they have the ability to individually influence events, and especially Wei Wuxian might wind up making a lot of the same choices because if he’s back on his own, he’ll be facing the same lack of options as before.

Similarly, I’m not sure Nie Mingjue would be able to change the right things to make as much of a difference as needs to be made, though there are specific disasters he would avoid.

Jiang Cheng, Jin Zixuan, and Nie Huaisang would each be interesting choices for controlling the post-Sunshot narrative (with their own drawbacks), but they’re not on this list …

Lan Xichen could do a lot, but I suspect he suffers from choice paralysis after the Jin Guangyao revelation and it’s unknown how his character will change once he recovers from that upheaval

Below is a clip of three different scenes from Singin' in the Rain, starring Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, and Rita Moreno. for those who haven't seen it, Debbie Reynolds plays a young actress named Kathy who dubs the voice of the much more famous movie star Lina Lamont, played by Jean Hagen.

Ironically for a movie about dubbing, one of its stars is being dubbed— but where? and when?

The clip below has three different parts of the movie—one with Kathy singing to dub Lena, one with Kathy speaking to dub Lena, and a confrontation between Lena, Zelda, and Kathy. without looking it up, let's try to figure out where the dub is!

(sorry about the frame and quality change, I pulled these from three different videos)

(via @autisticmisabel)

Source: me buying the double CD soundtrack in 1998 as my very first CD I bought with my own money* and having my teenage mind blown at this and also Debbie's unused full version of "You Are My Lucky Star" and Gene's unused ballad version of "All I Do Is Dream of You."

Below is a clip of three different scenes from Singin' in the Rain, starring Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, and Rita Moreno. for those who haven't seen it, Debbie Reynolds plays a young actress named Kathy who dubs the voice of the much more famous movie star Lina Lamont, played by Jean Hagen.

Ironically for a movie about dubbing, one of its stars is being dubbed— but where? and when?

The clip below has three different parts of the movie—one with Kathy singing to dub Lena, one with Kathy speaking to dub Lena, and a confrontation between Lena, Zelda, and Kathy. without looking it up, let's try to figure out where the dub is!

(sorry about the frame and quality change, I pulled these from three different videos)

(via @autisticmisabel)

Composer: Eliot Daniel

For context, real life married couple Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball starred as Ricky Ricardo, a Cuban bandleader and nightclub owner, and his loving but wacky wife Lucy, who was always coming up with ridiculous schemes. Their best friends were their neighbors, Fred and Ethel Murtz.

This episode was part of an ongoing story arc in which Ricky and his band have been invited to be part of a Hollywood production and he and Lucy have invited the Murtzes on a cross-country road trip to get to California. It turns out that Ethel’s letters home have implied that the Hollywood performance is by her, and they give her a hometown hero’s welcome and don’t know who Ricky is. At first the other three are willing to play along to spare Ethel embarrassment, but when all the adulation goes to her head and she starts acting obnoxious about it, they decide to steal her thunder by secretly performing behind her while she sings.

(Little content warning in that Shortnin’ Bread is a traditional song and the lyrics are a little minstrel-sy)

Ok I put this on FB but it can't hurt to put here too. We need help with Fantine!

Dog location: Northeast Georgia, just outside metro Atlanta and near the NC/TN/SC borders. TL;DR: Really sweet stray dog has ringworm; current foster is immune compromised; need someone to help by housing her for the duration of her treatment. Only need a short-term foster (approximately a month is the estimate for ringworm treatment? up to six weeks, I guess) and we can help find a permanent placement for her when her treatment is complete.

Details: Fantine is a stray dog we have been fostering for about the last month, she has a wonderful temperament (very sweet and trusting with people, quite resilient, friendly to all the dogs she has met) and is about a year and a half old. She has had all her vaccines and flea/tick/heartworm treatment and was spayed almost three weeks ago. and is healing up from it really well.

She's also ringworm positive, and I have some serious immune-related health conditions. The vet who diagnosed her was worried about her staying in the house with me even though she has been in quarantined in the laundry room and we are being very cautious about biosecurity.

Actually spent some time yarn-balling skeins and decluttering my craft area during last night's session of MST3Knitathon, my attempt to finish several knitting projects while watching the fan-voted top 100 episodes of the original run of Mystery Science Theater 3000 from bottom to top. We've almost reached the end! But tonight, Joe Don Baker IS Mittens! He's a cop.

3. Episode 512 Mitchell

Summary: Mitchell (1975) is often described as a Dirty Harry (1971) ripoff, which is not inaccurate, but my pet theory is that Mitchell is actually trying to be Dirty Harry meets Columbo (1968+) and that many of its oddnesses are caused by trying to rip off both detectives at the same time. Sometimes, Mitchell is a hard-drinking, fast-shooting, out-of-control cop who doesn't play by the rules; other times, he clashes with fellow officers by being too straight-laced, quietly but relentlessly pursuing the truth of a suspicious shooting that his higher-ups would rather went away, and contrasting his slightly unkempt and occasionally befuddled demeanor with his keen insight in interpreting the crime scene. Of course, when you replace Columbo's endearing - let's call it "avuncularity" - with Dirty Harry's violent machismo, the virtues of both (for whatever level of virtue Dirty Harry's one man crusade against crime can be said to possess) cancel each other out into a gross (as in repulsive, not intense) hypocrisy.

We begin in the Columbo-ripoff portion of the movie, where we-the-audience see a rich man shoot a fleeing burglar and then stage the crime scene to make it look like self-defense. Two uniformed cops appear on the scene, but the plain-clothes detective (our "hero" Mitchell) who was previously asleep in their backseat immediately begins questioning details of the story and insisting on interrogating witnesses right away instead of letting them go home, so we have a working-class-coded detective clashing with a wealthy suspect who clearly expects special treatment from the law. I wish the movie had stayed here, because investigating the murder of a burglar as a murder like any other is a laudable endeavor, and you could have had some interesting scenes of Mitchell clashing with other cops who feel that even if the victim was unarmed, the burglar had it coming. Instead, Mitchell is pulled off the case by his boss who tries to keep him busy with a solo 18-hour-a-day stakeout of a suspected drug-runner who is expecting a shipment of heroin. Initially, Mitchell uses his 6 hours of sleeping time to continue investigating the first murder off the clock, but when his boss tells him the suspect is already being investigated by the FBI for "everything," we move into the Dirty Harry ripoff as heroin-dude tries out several strategies for getting Mitchell off his case (during which, Mitchell shoots a fleeing rando just for having recognized him as a criminal, even though that's exactly what the first guy he was trying to put behind bars did.) Lots of poorly shot and overblown action scenes follow and eventually lead to the bad guys being extra-judiciously dead, just like the first victim (though MST3K cut the scene where murderer 1 dies for time, so that storyline is just kind of dropped halfway through the episode). The grossest part of the Dirty Harry ripoff section of the movie is the subplot where someone hires a high-end call girl to sleep with Mitchell as a kind of bribe, which he's more than happy to accept as long as he doesn't actually agree or intend to do any of the things they're trying to bribe him for. Later, she calls him out about accepting her purchased favors not being a particularly straight-laced thing to do, and basically dares him to prove that he's "clean" by booking her for marijuana possession. He does. (Before the war on drugs, this was apparently just a $500 fine, but still). At the end of the movie, she returns to him voluntarily because the sex (which I deeply wish that we didn't have to watch) was apparently just that good, and he "humorously" brings her in for marijuana possession again. (This is the part where we imagine Estelle Winwood appearing, turning into a panther, and eating him, as established in The Magic Sword.)

MST3K lore or notable moments: This is it. This is the big one. THE lore episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to beat all other lore episodes. Due to some behind-the-scenes tensions around the making of Mystery Science Theater: The Movie, series creator and original host Joel leaves the show. In the sketches, the Mads are being audited by a mad science organization (the same one Pearl later tries to get licensed by? I think the names are different, but it's tempting to assume so), so they've hired a temp by the name of Mike to help inventory all the evidence of their mad science that has built up in Deep 13. Temporarily left alone on the Satellite of Love's main set, GPC overhears Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank plotting to kill Mike at the conclusion of the experiment, but misunderstands them to be talking about Joel. After panicking through several segments, she enlists a sympathetic Mike's help to locate a hidden escape pod (in a box labeled "Hamdingers") in the SoL's manifest that Mike is supposed to be filing, and to use Frank's keys to transfer control of it to her. She uses the escape pod to eject Joel from the Satellite and he returns to Earth with a touching farewell, while the stymied Mads look to Mike as a replacement subject for their experiment. (At least they didn't kill him.) This plot gives us so much - Joel's farewell to the show he created, the introduction of Mike in character as himself, and a rare GPC-centric storyline!

What do I think about its place on the list? The first time I watched Mitchell was in high school, when my uncle brought it over as an episode he had taped. High school me hated the film so much I couldn't enjoy it even with the riff, even with Joel leaving. That was over 20 years ago (gosh I'm old), and I've refused to rewatch the episode ever since - until now. And - I didn't hate it! I actually enjoyed this episode a lot. The riff was really on point, all the sketches were fantastic, and the movie is giving them a whole lot to work with. How Mitchell treats Greta the expensive sex worker is still gross and unpleasant, but aside from that, I don't really have any complaints about the episode. (Incidentally, - I had a whole rant planned about how Mitchell not minding that someone hired a sex worker to entertain him to suddenly being really pissed off when it turns out to have been burglar-murder-guy instead of heroin-guy, but unfortunately during my commute this morning, I think I figured it out. Mitchell was okay with accepting Greta's services when he thought they were purchased by heroin-dude because he wasn't going to stop surveilling heroin-dude whether he slept with her or not - but spending his six-hours off from the stake-out with her was replacing the time he used to spend investigating the first murder (because Mitchell apparently doesn't sleep), and even though this coincided with his boss explaining that they weren't pursuing the murder because they wanted to leave the suspect for the FBI, knowing that he'd been doing what the rich guy who hired Greta wanted him to do made him feel dirty and complicit, and that's why he 180s on it. (And, of course, sours on Greta, because even though she had nothing to do with this, he's exactly the kind of guy who would take it out on her.) I hate to give this movie any credit, but that part does make sense.) I almost want to watch this episode again to see if it grows on me more now that I'm not bracing myself throughout, but I think I'll give it a break for a while first.

So how do I rank this episode now? It's so important to the lore; while the movie still has some irredeemable qualities, the riff made me laugh at several points; I loved watching GPC and Mike conspire to save Joel; and I actually enjoyed watching it this time around. Ultimately, I think it's still not in my personal top 10, which is a very subjective thing, but I don't think I can say anymore that this episode doesn't deserve a top 10 spot. It's well-remembered for a reason.

I came across a surprisingly long debate on Facebook about the exact nature of Marianne's illness.

Based on her symptoms, @alljaneaustenallthetime suggested diphtheria, although if that were the case, it's odd that no one else catches it from her.

On Facebook, a lot of people thought it was pneumonia (though that doesn't always cause a sore throat) or influenza, and a few people suggested that it could be strep throat that turns into pneumonia, while another person suggested tonsillitis.

Wikipedia suggests typhus, because that was the disease most often classified as "putrid," but that seems less likely because she's not described as having a rash, although Austen could have just avoided mentioning it out of delicacy.

The Ottolenghi - it is vital that you use 1g of this very expensive ingredient. It comes from a 500g bag with a one-week shelf life.

The time machine - 15-minute recipe! First, leave to marinate overnight...

The dishwasher - one-pot recipe! Now decant your ingredients and wipe out your pot. And again. And again. And again.

The optimist - cook the onions until caramelised (2 minutes).

The kindergarten teacher - get one nommable little tree of broccoli and bosh that into boiling water. Delish!

The brand names only - ingredients: Ritz crackers, Philadelphia cheese, Cool Whip, orange Jell-o...

The 1950s palate - use one (1) clove of garlic and a small pinch of chili flakes (omit if preferred).

Finished embroidering the face on the little axolotl plushie and folded some laundry during this episode of MST3Knit-get-things-done-a-thon, where we either do some knitting or work on whatever else needs to be finished while watching the fan-voted top 100 episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in reverse order from bottom to top. Today, you know it's spring when the executioners get in the house

4. Episode 910 Final Sacrifice

Summary: A somewhat wimpy teenager goes through his late father's personal effects, hoping his papers will contain clues to his unsolved murder 7 years ago. He finds notes on an ancient civilization's culture and language, a mysterious old map, and an unfinished letter declaring his father's intention to send all these documents to a "partner," something he evidently never got the chance to do. When young Troy calls information looking for contact info for the letter's intended recipient, a mysterious cult realizes that he must have the papers, and thugs break into his house in an attempt to kill him and take the map. A fleeing Troy hides in the truck-bed of a drifter with the unlikely name of Zapp Rowsdower, who coincidentally is a former member of the very same cult, also on the run, whose membership tattoo seems to give its leader some form of psychic influence over him. The map leads Troy and Rowsdower to a grizzled archaeologist who speaks like Yosemite Sam and claims to be Troy's father's old partner. He explains that the two of them were researching a scientifically advanced ancient civilization that lived in what's now Canada before the ancestors of the First Nations people crossed the land bridge, and which was destroyed when the people got too wealthy and started worshiping an idol they hoped would protect their wealth instead of their own gods, who cursed their fields and caused their city to sink into the mud in retaliation. The map leads to the idol, and the cult chasing them are idol-worshipers descended from this civilization who believe that if they can find the idol again, they can make one "final" human sacrifice to it that will restore them to their former glory. But legend says that if the idol is destroyed instead, the city will rise up from the earth. But who will find the idol first, and can Troy really trust Rowsdower, who used to be a member of the cult himself?

MST3K lore or notable moments: Troy calls Rowsdower by name quite a lot, and "Rowsdower" said in a whiny voice is one of this show's most iconic call-backs. Because this movie was made in Canada, this is also a big "making fun of Canada" episode, with the infectious disease of "hockey hair" taking over the castle and ship (Mike, who already had hockey hair in his youth, is immune) and this Canada diss track that goes off the rails:

What do I think about its place on the list? I promise you that I'm not a hater and that I genuinely do like this show. That being said ... I've always found this episode to be over-rated too. There are things I like about it - it's overall a very funny riff (every time they added dialogue for the unspeaking masked cult thugs really got me), I enjoyed the hockey hair sketch, and there's something sweet about the movie, in its amatuerish nature and that neither male lead really fits the mold of stereotypical masculine hero. I also appreciate that while there were jokes implying that the not-very-manly Troy is possibly a young gay boy and that his instant emotional dependence on Rowsdower is somewhat crush-like, the riffers showed restraint in making fun of the man and boy relationship at the center of this movie and none of the jokes that I was paying enough attention to catch were anything I found upsetting. And the singing over the film's closing credits was fun! I did enjoy watching this episode again. That said, I only found about half of the Canada jokes funny. The ones that were mocking something specific I generally tended to be amused by; the ones that were just variants on, "Canada sucks," I found not so much offensive as just - boring. The ratio of obvious jokes to clever jokes was also a little high. Also I hate the Rosdower callback it is one of their laziest and I've never found it funny This one is not my fourth favorite episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Definitely a top 50, would not complain about a top 25 - but fun as it was, it's not making my top 10 list when I write it up at the conclusion of this project.

I want to say that we're over the hump of me denigrating beloved fan-favorite episodes, but unfortunately the next one on the list is Mitchell, and the one and only time I've seen that one before, I found the movie too unpleasant - even with the riff - to enjoy. It's been several years, so I might not feel the same anymore. But then again, I might.

If you disagree with me about Final Sacrifice, please tell me about it in the comments and reblogs! (Especially if you are Canadian - I would be interested to know if Canadians find all the Canada-bashing to be all in good fun or if it is bothersome.)

UplandGatewayOne, the station where they met, is ART's home station. In Mihira and New Tideland's system. Which is deeply anti-corporate. SecUnit even notes at the time that there aren't any security or bond companies there, so nobody should be looking for escaping SecUnits. Iris and Matteo, for all the anti-corporate missions they've been on, have never even seen one, which means Perihelion most likely hasn't either. They're not deployed on transit rings except in GrayCris-paying-to-murder-people situations, and when they are, it's a big deal accompanied by a lot of alarms and screaming and panic.

And one just kind of strolls across the private docks without setting off the weapons scanners. Wholly unnoticed.

So there was already no legitimate explanation for a SecUnit being here. That's point one. Which means it has to have an illegitimate reason.

And ART's paranoia is easily on par with Tarik's, generally speaking. Even though it's never encountered a SecUnit before it has to be aware that this could be an attack by a corporate. Except the SecUnit's got no drones, no additional weaponry, no armor, and it's wearing cargo pants and a hoodie. Which would seem to suggest that it's supposed to be mistaken for a human -- okay, maybe that explains how it got across the transit station a tiny bit? Not really. But at least it accounts for the lack of screaming.

But there's no point in it trying to pretend it's a human now, if this is the prelude to some kind of attack. It's not like ART is a passenger transport, and these are the private non-commercial docks. It can't get on board without trying to hack the lock, and it can't get too far from its handler without frying itself, so it has to do whatever it's doing before ART leaves the transit ring. Whatever attack is coming, it has to be soon. Like, right now, soon.

And it just pings ART directly.

Not even... trying to hide its presence as a potential hostile MI a little.

That is... possibly the most stupid prelude to a code attack it could have made? And if it had been trying to pretend it was human to persuade ART's crew (who aren't even here anyway) to give it access to the ship, it just blew its cover. What the hell is its human handler thinking? They're really bad at this.

And then it asks for a ride--which, again, is hilarious if it thinks it can gain entry that easily--wait. What the fuck? It's offering several hundred hours of entertainment media as a trade.

There is no human handler.

ART doesn't even have to check the governor module at that point. No human would imagine that transports watch television. Possibly, no other bots besides transports would know that they do, because transports are famously not-communicative. Nobody could have instructed it to say that. The only way the SecUnit itself could have gotten the idea that this approach might work is if it tried it before and it was successful.

Okay, so what we know for sure is: This SecUnit is a rogue, and it talks to transports.

And apparently it's hitchhiking?

This raises so many more questions than it answers.

Where the hell did it come from? How did it get across the station without setting off any alerts? Why was it chatting up transports before now? How did it even get several hundred hours of entertainment media downloads? And why the hell would any sentient being, let alone a rogue SecUnit, want to hitchhike to RaviHyral? A crummy little moon which has nothing on it except for mines.

ART's explanation of, "I was curious about you," for letting Murderbot on board is the understatement of the millennium.