By: Chuck Miller
Amish Mafia, Uncategorized

Amish Mafia episode review: “Day of Reckoning”

Before I start this week’s Amish Mafia review, I want to wish former Amish Mafia star Esther Freeman Schmucker a speedy recovery; I understand she had a tumor removed from her bladder.Β  Unfortunately, I suspect she still has that other tumor named MirKat still attached to her body.

What, too soon?

As always, the Amish Church disavows any knowledge of the Amish Mafia.Β  However, if you want to purchase some Amish Mafia shirts, iPhone cases and coffee mugs, you’d better buy them now while they’re on a blowout sale!Β  Only a couple of episodes left before all the camera crews get yanked out of South Central Pennsylvania en route to the Bering Sea to film new episodes of Deadliest Catch.

Oh, and the Amish Mafia twitter feed posted this little missive…

Psst… spoiler alert: Governor Tom Corbett got voted out of office. Just sayin’ is all…

Tonight – Levi’s car gets blown up, and he only had four payments left.Β  Duivel Doug tries to take out Levi by burning the town down.Β  And something else goes boom.Β  And is Susanna wearing makeup?Β  And something else goes boom.

We start out with Governor Tom Corbett taking a stand on cancelling the showΒ Amish Mafia.Β  We know.Β  This is why the fourth season is even being filmed.Β  It’s November 2014, and it doesn’t matter who the voters in Philadelphia are choosing.Β  Or the voters in Pittsburgh.Β  Or the voters in Scranton.Β  Both of the voters in Scranton.

We get a flashback on Levi leaving his car – possibly being lured out to go talk to an Amish boy who is dating an English girl.Β  And just as Levi leaves his Cadillac – we get the money shot of the Cadillac blowing up.Β  Levi says he doesn’t know who did it.Β  I know who did it.Β  The Amish Mafia film crew blew it up.Β  Why else would anybody have the camera aimed right on the car just as it went boom?

The Amish Mafia producers ask Zach.Β  He says nothing.

The Amish Mafia producers ask Doug.Β  He is confrontational.

The Amish Mafia producers ask Merlin.Β  He denies any knowledge, but we get some clandestine audio of Merlin and Mary.Β  Mary asks what’s going on.Β  Merlin says he wants to mkae sure nobody is recording.Β  Mary asks if Merlin blew up the car.Β  Merlin whispers – in ENGLISH – that he wants people to think that he’s working with Levi.Β  Wait a second and a half.Β  What happened to that thing in the beginning of the series when Jolin tells us that the Amish will speak Pennsylvania Dutch if they don’t want the English to know what’s going on?

And a blood moon is coming.Β  Oh, so that explains things.Β  The blood moon makes Amish women become hypersensitive and manipulative and downright terrifying.Β  You know what we English folk call that?Β  PMS.Β  And is there an Amish woman who might not want to be messed with?Β  You know… someone who might be involved in the Charity Church, someone with a hip tattoo?Β  Someone with a pierced belly button?Β  Someone who might be a bit scorned after being dumped by Lebanon Levi?

Yep, it’s Susanna the Charity Church girl.Β  And she’s on a mission.Β  What might that mission be?Β  She shows up at Lebanon Levi’s house and screams and pounds on his doors and windows.Β  And the camera crew is filming every delicious moment with it.Β  Susanna is lovestruck and scorned.Β  Levi tells her that he has feelings for her, if it means getting her out of his house.Β  But Susanna’s smarter than that.Β  Or at least I hope she’s smarter than that, considering that the last romantic liaison an Amish woman had filmed on this series was Esther and MirKat.

Meanwhile, back at the Mennonite compound in Bird-in-Hand, Doug is screaming bloody murder about having to spend over a million and a half dollars on a farm that doesn’t have the Book of Menno buried on its land.Β  And he calms down just long enough to deal with the upcoming election.Β  And now Doug wants to take back all the Amish farm equipment.Β  The Amish own the farms, the Mennonites own the machines – especially the ones that are powered with electricity.Β  And Doug wants all the Amish farms wiped out.Β  The guy’s acting like Luther from The Warriors.Β  And Alan Beiler’s getting upset that things aren’t working toward his favor.

Doug and Caleb and Alan fill up some gas cans and drive off.Β  And footage was captured of an Amish farm on fire.Β  Hay bales on fire.Β  Fields on fire.

The Amish Mafia producers ask Caleb if he knows anything about the fires.Β  Caleb says nothing.

The Amish Mafia producers ask Alan Beiler if he knows anything about the fires.Β  Alan Beiler says he knows nothing.

Which brings up one pertinent question – who is running the Amish Mafia production this week, Constable Paul Castline?

And while I’m doing this recap, I finally – after four seasons – figured out how Levi earned his nickname.Β  I now understand why Levi King Stoltzfus is known on the show as “Lebanon Levi.”Β  You know what they make in Lebanon, Pennsylvania?

That’s right.Β  Smoked sausages.

So essentially by describing “Lebanon Levi” in this way, we now understand that he provides sausage to the fair ladies.Β  To Susanna.Β  To Esther.Β  To cross-eyed Barb.Β  To some blurred-out Atlantic City hotel wench.Β  Sausages for everybody.Β  And now I’m having a flashback to the Howard Stern show and the Kielbasa Queen.Β  No, I’m not going to put a YouTube link to this.Β  You want to know about the Kielbasa Queen, go Google it.

Of course, the other thought is that, like those sausages, Levi is full of baloney.

Caleb and Alan are now turning into Amish repo men.Β  Hey, maybe this is a way to keep the show alive… a new spinoff show featuring Caleb and Alan repossessing tractors and buggies and horses.Β  And sure enough, Caleb and Alan repossess a heat generator and a plow from an apple orchard.Β Β  The farmer is worried; his apple crop could freeze up in the cold frost, and without the heaters, he can’t sell fresh apples to tourists.Β  Levi has a plan.Β  Of course there’s a plan.

Oh look, there’s Constable Paul Castline, 21 minutes into the episode.Β  And he’s still fixated on what Lebanon Levi was doing with an English woman.Β  And he may have a glance at the female’s face… so that he can get her name and put that info in a database.Β  That’s right, it’s Constable Paul Castline, police perv.

Merlin calls in the Amish telephone chatline, and wants Mary Troyer to use her chatline to find out how the Amish feel about the governor.Β  And we get a tiny comment about someone getting their second cousin pregnant.Β  And for some resaon, Mary doesn’t seem as revulsed as she did last week about those kind of Amish transgressions.Β Β  You know, it’s hard to have sympathy for Mary when she comments last week about getting assaulted by an Amish man, and then she jokes about someone knocking up their second cousin.

Levi and his friends bring some burning barrels to keep the apples warm and fresh on the trees and not frozen and shriveled.Β  So now he’s making the Amish go back to the Amish ways of doing things… isn’t that the same thing that the Mennonites are trying to do?Β  Keep those apples warm, Levi.Β  And let me know if you find any groves of green corn, you can use those torches as double duty.Β  What, you thought I forgot all about the green corn?

And on election day, Lebanon Levi hired someone to drive around with an advertising truck.Β  Oh look, Levi’s doing his best Uncle Sam “I Want You” pose.Β  And the truck is driving up and down Lancaster County.Β  And Levi’s pressing the flesh, hoping to generate votes.Β  Meanwhile, in Ronks, Pennsylvania, Merlin and Mary are also trying to get the vote out.Β  And Levi’s even offering a hut party for the Amish who vote.

Hey is that Preacher Andrew?Β  And he’s in Pennsylvania committing voter fraud, claiming that because Amish don’t have photo ID’s, they can vote wherever they want?

Hey, anybody who had 9:35 pm Eastern for Alan Beiler kvetching about being trapped in jail and clearing his father’s name?Β  And he’s lying to his girlfriend and his kids about working with Duivel Doug.

Meanwhile, Duivel Doug is still furious with the Amish, and now we get security camera footage of Doug and his Mennonite followers trashing an Amish goods store.Β  And it’s a mixture of security cameras and phone cameras that capture all the carnage.Β  Cleanup on aisle 5…

And at the hut party, Lebanon Levi offers a lot of beer to his constituents (because someone destroyed his stock of dandelion wine a couple of weeks ago) to watch the election results.Β  And on what looks like a cathode-ray tube television, Levi somehow hooks up the television to a generator AND is able to get an over-the-air VHF signal WITHOUT a digital tuner?Β  What’s next, does he have an Atwater-Kent radio that can pick up a Sirius-XM satellite signal?

And sure enough – Tom Wolf has been elected as Pennsylvania governor.Β  Corbett got voted out.Β  Who didn’t see that coming?Β  Well, maybe EVERYBODY SINCE THE DAY AFTER THE ELECTION??

And Levi and the Amish celebrate…Β  and Amish Mafia doesn’t have to be cancelled.Β  Oh, wait… er… um… this is the second-to-lats episode of the series… right?

The election results aren’t in a good situation for Duivel Doug.Β  And he’s going batwing crazy.Β  He tosses out Caleb and Zach and the producers.Β  And forgets to turn off his wireless microphone.Β  And Doug and Alan Beiler have a “come-to-Jesus” meeting.Β  A couple of weeks ago, apparently Doug called Alan Beiler a name.Β  He dropped the “N” bomb on Alan Beiler.Β  And Alan Beiler barely tolerated being called the schwarz Amish, but if you’re going to use a six-letter word that starts with “N”Β  And it’s not the word “N-o-nite.”

Today’s Amish factoid – when you die, people will take the “Heaven and Hell test” on your remains.Β  Take your shovel where the person is buried and stick it in the ground. If it hits a rock, the person is going to hell. If it sinks into the dirt, then they’re going to heaven.Β  And if you’re able to dig soil under a big “X”, then you’ve found the Book of Menno Simons.

It’s morning again in America… sorry, quoting from an old Ronald Reagan election commercial.Β  Alan Beiler returns home, looking for his kids and girlfriend… and he finds them.Β  Meanwhile, Doug and Zach are reading the Bible and packing their weapons and filling their armories.Β  Doug practices his target practice, and he takes out a table of bottles like he’s playing Duck Hunt.Β  And suddenly –

BOOM!

NOT THE MENNONITE COMPOUND!!!Β  Sweet tapdancing Jesus, now Doug’s home went up in flames?Β  Oh, this can’t end good…

And with 60 minutes left in the series, we get new possible plotlines for the final episode.Β  Doug’s packing a gun.Β  Zach’s packing flaming arrows.Β  Sam Mullet’s name is mentioned again.Β  Mary’s packing one of those chewing gum meals from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in her neck.Β  Alan Beiler blows up a car with a keychain signal.Β  And after nearly forty episodes of Amish Mafia, what will be the one thing that eventually brings down Lebanon Levi King Stoltzfus?

I know what’ll bring him down…

The show’s cancellation.

But before this show shuffles off to reruns…

I’ll see everybody next week.Β  One more episode.