Episode EM101
"Windmills of the Gods", by Sidney Sheldon
MSTed by Brendan Herlihy
Take me to this MSTing NOW!
Our reading selection, the first "Book" of Sheldon's bestseller, opens in the glamour capital of the world: Perho, Finland! An ominous super-secret underground government meets in a secluded cabin in the woods to vote on their plan for world domination, or something. I'm dubious that this is their real reason for meeting. Personally I think they just do this to embarrass the super-secret operatives from low-GDP countries who can't afford good code names. When they call the roll, and reach "Tyr", you do not want to be the one to raise their hand, let me tell ya.
Segueing, a new President is sworn in, and uses his inauguration speech to announce his new foreign policy, the "people-to-people" concept, loosely based on those Coke commercials they used to show at Christmastime where everyone, all around the world, wanted to teach everyone else to sing in perfect harmony. The lynchpin to harmonious world choral groups is Romania (don't ask), so seeing as how it's so vital, the President wants someone with no diplomatic experience as ambassador (don't ask).
So he selects Mary Ashley, a Midwestern uberwomensch professor at Kansas U, who's a devoted wife, loving mother, and foreign policy genius, with a supermodel body who "doesn't know how beautiful she is". But Mary's husband, the bland Dr. Edward Ashley, reminds her that being an ambassador would mean she wouldn't be able to spend that much time with him and the kids. Faced with such overwhelming logic, Mary turns the post down. What? What?! WHAT?!? Oh, don't get me started. But our reading selection does have a happy ending, what with a mysterious truck coming from nowhere to mow Edward down on the highway. Go, mysterious truck!
HOST SEGMENTS
Opening:
Mike gives Tom and Crow Marcia Seligson's classic book on the wedding industry, "The Eternal Bliss Machine". The bots want a piece of the action.Segment One:
Tom and Crow explain the bird-friendly ceremonies at Our Satellite of Perpetual Love. No rice, but there is a wedding kestrel. Meanwhile, Pearl lands her van on an uninhabited planet to dominate, whilst Bobo thinks it's a planet to nominate. He gets hit.Segment Two:
Mike, Tom, and Crow's super-secret underground votes on a motion. Tom wants to vote "pants", and it sort of regresses from there.Segment Three:
Tom and Crow have a mental spat. Pearl discovers they've landed on one of those "living planet deals", and it's now generating antibodies to kill them all. Bobo fall down, go boom.Segment Four:
The SOL does Crow's latest playlet, "Disco of the Gods". Sidney Sheldon drops by to join in the tomfoolery.Segment Five:
Tom and Crow's super-secret underground government moves to kill Gypsy's husband in a car crash so that she can become ambassador to Romania. Mike points out two minor flaws in this plan. Meanwhile, Pearl, Brain Guy and Bobo barely escape the living planet, 'cept that Bobo pushes Brain Guy out of the van, then pulls his head off like a mask to reveal… EVIL MIKE! He laughs as Pearl is at his mercy, and we fade out…Stinger:
He was a man who wore mental spats.
REFLECTIONS:
The one that started it all. Hoo yeah. Bring back Evil Mike, and let him make trouble. How sweet is that?
I may have some detractors on this point, but I maintain the best way to enjoy a bestselling novel is to take it apart like your father's old AMC. Look at the parts up close. It's a finely tuned instrument, and each mechanism has its own, specific purpose. In "Windmills", that purpose is: appeal to your target audience (housewives) while turning off as few potential customers as possible.
Don't believe me?
The President's political positions are as sweet, bright and bland as a red delicious apple. He's against waste in government. Whoo, bet he had to fight tooth and nail to get THAT added to the party platform.
The heroine is a Midwestern housewife having it all and paying no price for it.
She's stunningly beautiful (men love her) but she's unaware of it (women respect her).
She's smart and raises the kids and has passionate sex with her husband, but she can't cook, so she's not so perfect you hate her.
She has the kind of "Promise Keepers", graciously submitting relationship with her husband I'd guess heartland America considers admirable.
She turns down her dream to be with her husband (a trick later used in "Bridges of Madison County").
There's graphic sex (hook the reader) but anyone who engages in it dies (moral message allows reader to self-justify reading the graphic sex).
Of course, I opted to edit out all that graphic sex in my MSTing. I had no choice, really, seeing as how I had to appeal my target audience, while turning off as few potential customers as possible.
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Home, James.