“Amish Mafia” epsiode review: The Resurrection

Yes, I know that a new season of Amish Mafia, the show that purports to shine a light on a secret society in South Central Pennsylvania’s “plain” community, premiers this Tuesday.  However, that didn’t stop the Discovery Channel from putting together a quick “here’s what you missed last season” recap and promoting it as a new Amish Mafia episode.

So if they’ve gone to all this trouble to piece together something new about Lebanon Levi and the Pennsylvania Dutch version of la cosa nostra – then I certainly have to review it for you.

“The Resurrection” starts out with a recap of clips and info from last season, and introduces us once again to Lebanon Levi King Stolzfus, the person in charge of most activity in Lancaster County, Pa.

The show starts out with a quotation.

“He guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones.” Proverbs 2:8

Somehow, when Solomon wrote the majority of the work that became the Book of Proverbs, I don’t think he had access to the Discovery Channel.  He might have smote down those who would equate his words with the actions of Lebanon Levi.  But I digress…

Ah, here we have the basis of the show.  Lebanon Levi and his crew administer Amish Aid, the internal insurance fund that helps Amish families after accidents or fires or whatnot.  But they also enforce an Amish version of sharia law – threatening violence against a man who sleeps with an Amish woman out of wedlock; burning fields of “green corn” (marijuana) and quoting Genesis 19:24… slicing the tires of overcharging Amish taxi drivers and probably quoting Reverend Jim Ignatowski.

And we now follow up with the three factions that are trying to take the Amish Mafia down.  No, we’re not talking the FBI or the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Department.  No, we’re talking Esther Freeman Schmucker, the scheming bonnet babe whose brother John is one of Levi’s footsoldiers – oh wait a second, we get a clip of an upcoming scene from Season 2.

Apparently Esther’s dumb-bell brother John got arrested, and Esther has to find bail money.  So she’s searching through the closets, tearing out the crown moulding, looking for all the places where she hid her money.  Surprisingly, she hasn’t used the old standard of a Mason Jar buried in the backyard.

“The Levites will be mine.”  Numbers 8:14

Here’s Merlin Miller (no relation) and his own Amish Mafia, who travel 600 miles away from Holmes County, Ohio to try to take over the Lancaster County Amish community.  I don’t know why Merlin – with his reputation as the aluminum siding king of Holmes County, Ohio – is so interested in South Central Pennsylvania.  Do they not have aluminum siding dealerships there?

And we get some clips of Merlin’s hatchet man Wayne.  Or as I like to call him, L’il Wayne.  I mean, that hatchet he carries is larger than he is.    But there’s plenty of scenes of L’il Wayne chopping the windshields of cards, chopping the hoods of cars, chopping mailboxes, chopping trees… I tell you, he swings that axe so many times in this show, he could DH for the Cleveland Indians and probably go 2-for-5 at the plate.

Oh look, it’s Merlin’s crooked-smile sister Rosa.  What is it with these Amish Mafioso and the women in their lives?  Behind every Amish leader, is there a woman pulling the puppet strings?  Well, apparently something happened to Rosa after the filming of Season 1 – she either got disciplined by the Amish Church in Holmes County, Ohio, or she got shunned herself.  That’ll uncrook your smile, for sure.

“A mighty hunter before the Lord.” – Genesis 10:9

And here he is, ladies and gentlemen, “Amish Mafia”‘s moody Mennonite, Jolin Zimmerman.  We get scenes from last season where Jolin shows his mixed martial arts skills; that he’s an expert with a high-powered rifle – hey, did he just mow down an entire field of watermelons with his gun?  I missed that episode.  And then we see Esther using her “bonnet” charm to play with Jolin’s mind and weaken Jolin’s bond with Lebanon Levi’s group.  And we get a scene from Season 2 – apparently Jolin gets an offer to return to Levi’s operations.  But not before Jolin hooks up his Chevrolet truck to the back of some faux Amish fruit stand and rips it to the ground.

“How the mighty have fallen in battle.” – Samuel 31:8

Time for some clips featuring John Freeman Schmucker, Esther’s brother and the footsoldier for Lebanon Levi.  And as I’ve said before, John is dumber than a bag of wet mice.  So we get footage of the illicit Amish buggy race that John organized while Levi was out of town.  We also get some footage of one of the Amish Mafia show cameramen coming within inches of getting clobbered in the buggy race.  And then we hear that John lost the buggy race.  You know… if that camera wasn’t in the middle of the road trying to film that race… maybe John would have won the race, Merlin would have gotten paid off (he and John were working together), and the show would have gone in a different direction.  But it’s all because some cameraman named Chris decided to park his butt in the middle of the road and film a buggy race as two charging horses raced toward him.  It’s all your fault, Chris.  Don’t be surprised if you go home tonight and find that your windshield got chopped by L’il Wayne.

And we get the scenes where John gets thrown into a silo and receives the biggest, most painful amount of torture any Amish man can receive – Lebanon Levi’s high-pitched whining at him about John’s disloyalty.  I swear, every time Levi gets mad and starts his high-pitched shrieking, there’s barking and whining from all the illegal puppy mills that surround Lancaster County.

I’ll zip past the scenes from the last episode, “Amish Exorcism,” but suffice it to say that we get some scenes of John and Esther’s psychotic brother Freeman.  And the plan Esther concocts is to have Freeman “exorcised” from the devil, and to bring him back to Lancaster County as additional ammunition and support.

Ooh, we get some “never before seen” footage, somebody smeared what looks like either blood or red paint on Levi’s Cadillac.  Levi thinks maybe it was smeared by Alan Beiler, the schwarz Amish who makes up the third faction of those who want to bring the Amish Mafia leader down.  Or maybe it was the “Schmuckers,” which we know as John and Esther, but that’s the first time that the show has actually referenced their surname.  Or maybe, just maybe, someone who isn’t a fan of the show dumped some blood on Levi’s car.  Now who would have done such a dastardly thing? </carefully sliding bottle of ketchup behind the door>

“I swear that I won’t stop until I get my revenge on you.” – Judges 15:6-8

That doesn’t sound right. Let me look things up.  Yep.  According to the King James Bible, the Judges 15:6-8 should be:

Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they answered, Samson, the son in law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire.

And Samson said unto them, Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease.

And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam.

Yeah. That’s more accurate.  Don’t paraphrase the Bible and take comments out of context.  Man, oh man…

And we take another character out of context, this time it’s Alan Beiler, the schwarz Amish who was adopted into an Amish Mennonite family and raised in the faith.  Apparently Alan Beiler has some issues of his own – mostly drugs and running from the cops – which put him in jail for most of Season 1.  Then he got out, and began plotting his revenge on Levi, who he felt dropped the dime on his schwarz heinie.

And in the end, we get a series of quick clips that promote Season 2 of Amish Mafia.  Are there frictions between L’il Wayne and Merlin?  Is Freeman turning into a monster?  Has Levi turned his back on his right-hand man Alvin?  Did Li’l Wayne demolish an entire row of milk bottles?  Did somebody take out an entire forest of maple syrup-producing trees?

Gotta tell you.  The show’s trashy, it’s exploitative, and it’s about as real as the Quaker Oats man.  And if this preview episode of the second season of Amish Mafia is any indication…

I can’t wait for the new season of this trashy program to start.