Customer Reviews

Tales From Avonlea - V. 4 (Felicity's First Date) [VHS]

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This has two episodes from the 2nd season of ROAD TO AVONLEA which include HOW KISSING WAS DISCOVERED and AUNT HETTY'S ORDEAL. They are two of the best episodes I've ever seen and I recommend this to ANYONE who loves ANNE OF GREEN GABLES or ROAD TO AVONLEA!

If you have read "The Story Girl" and "The Golden Road" by Lucy Maud Montgomery, then you know that the fate of Felicity King was that despite her snobbish pretensions and lofty pretensions, she would end up marrying the poor boy who worked on her family farm. In these two episodes from early in the second season of "Avonela," Felicity is introduced to the fork in the road that awaits her, but while the title of the tape is "Felicity's First Date," she is not the character who unites these two episodes:

"How Kissing Was Discovered" begins with Janet King's Great-Aunt Eliza coming for a visit and turning the King household upside down. Meanwhile, Alec discovers that playing cricket is not as easy it was when he was a younger man and Felicity (Gema Zamprogna) has her eye on a young cricket player on the visiting team. After all, she is now all grown up (she is almost a teenager) and has decided it is time to receive her "first kiss." However, Sarah and Felix have made a new friend in Gus Pike (Michael Mahonen), a young sailor recently arrived in Avonlea and looking for work. Alec lets Gus stay in his barn and while Felicity will not give the boy the time of day, it is clear that he finds her rather interesting.

In "Aunt Hetty's Ordeal" the pivotal relationship between Gus Pike and Hetty King (Jackie Burroughs) begins. Given how Hetty treats Sara, Olivia and everybody else in the extended King family, you have to worry about poor, uneducated Gus. The problem is that everybody in Avonlea knows to take Hetty King with a grain or salt. But Gus thinks everything Aunt Hetty says is carved on stone tablets and when Hetty makes a heated offhand remark to the young man it has significant repercussions.

The title of this episode has a couple of meanings. At first we think "Aunt Hetty's Ordeal" is that Muriel Stacey, who has been appointed school superintendent instead of Hetty, is coming for a visit. Hetty thinks it is an inspection, but, of course, it is no such thing. But that does not stop the old hens in town from ruffling Hetty's feathers. Reminded that kids flocked to be in Miss Stacey's school, Hetty goes out to the cannery to recruit and reels in Gus Pike. He can neither read nor write, smokes and plays the fiddle, but he wants to learn and this touches Hetty. Gus had been a minor character in previous episodes, and "Aunt Hetty's Ordeal" is where he starts becoming more important to the show in general (and Felicity King in particular). This is also the point where Hetty King, who tended to be a bit insufferable for my money, started to thaw, because the big difference between Gus and Sara, is that Gus is not family and Hetty ends up opening her heart to him.

These episodes continue the transition from Lucy Maud Montgomery's novels to more original storylines (although clearly Gus Pike replaces Peter Craig in "The Story Girl" and "The Golden Road"). Note: Do not try to figure out how Hetty King and Muriel Stacey are contemporaries and where this all fits in with the Sullivan Productions of the "Anne of Green Gables" books. Hetty has supposedly been teaching forever at Avonlea School and Anne was teaching there a year or two after Miss Stacey. "Avonlea" had a proud history of bringing back both characters and actors from the "Anne" movies and this is just another nice example of the practice.

This VHS contains two episodes from Season Two of Road to Avonlea, one of my favorite family series of all time. The show is set in the fictional town of Avonlea on Canada's Prince Edward Island at the turn of the 20th century (1900s). It is a beautifully made and well-acted period drama that has turned into a true television classic over the years.

In this first episode "How Kissing was Discovered", Felicity King experiences adolescent pangs. She longs to be treated like a woman, though she is only slightly over thirteen. Sara Stanley and Felix King meet a young sailor named Gus Pike (Michael Mahonen in his appearance in RTA) and they both take a liking to him. Meanwhile Felicity develops a crush on a young cricketer who is playing against Avonlea's team led by Felicity's dad, Alec. When Felicity goes against Alec's rules forbidding her to attend a grown-up party, all hell breaks loose.

The second episode "Aunt Hetty's Ordeal", Hetty King's (Jackie Burroughs) school rival Muriel Stacey (Marilyn Lightstone, the very same Ms. Stacey from Anne of Green Gables) has climbed the rungs and become a Superintendent. When Hetty receives a letter informing her that Ms. Stacey is coming to Avonlea, Hetty gets into a dither, and tries to prove herself competent by getting Gus Pike to enroll in school. This is actually a lovely episode because although Hetty's initial motives were to prove herself to Ms. Stacey, Hetty comes to genuinely care about Gus' education and the ending is truly sweet and poignant when Gus performs in a concert to pay tribute to Hetty.