The worst ever plot device was in the Antiguan Television Soap Opera Saint Francis Of Assisi Hospital. On an episode broadcast on Tuesday 17th January 1995, the character Dr. Joyce Fenetre was put into a coma when she was hit on the head by a wheelbarrow, which had fallen from an overhead hot-air balloon, piloted by her amnesiac twin’s cloned illegitimate daughter Nicole Shanchioux, who was trying to escape the country as she had been targeted by the leader of the town’s Chamber of Commerce, Percy Fillibacher, who was secretly a worshipper of an ancient Mayan sacrificial cult.
A last-minute plot rewrite made the hot-air balloon became necessary, as the town’s port had been closed due an infestation of rabid cockroaches (instigated by the villainous Fillibacher), and the airport had been closed when it turned out that it had been left to the unborn son of the town’s heroic fire chief-turned-baker, Peter Brankillie, by the last surviving member of a secret tribe of Caribs who owned the land it was built on, and who had lived on the island, but had been nearly wiped out by the villainous upholstery magnate Françoise McCady, so that he could build a Cushion factory on the land they lived on, until Peter exposed his plot, at the cost of his job, as he had been falsely implicated in the scheme by McCady’s fitness instructor, Teri Bastille, who was also the surrogate mother of his child. Without a way to get Nicole off the island, the writers arranged for millionaire and one-time American presidential candidate Ross Perot to make a cameo appearance on the show, so that he could pilot the hot-air balloon onto the beach, on the premise that he was travelling by balloon to his holiday home on the Falklands Islands.
On the show, Perot set the balloon down on the grounds of the Kentucky Hotel Antigua as he had run out of ballast in a freak Seagull-related incident. As his new supply of sand was brought to the balloon in a wheelbarrow carried by the Hotel’s one-eared handyman, Micah Memmette, Nicole ran past him and hijacked the balloon as her only means of escape.
While this was happening, a screw in the hotel’s boiler room, which had been knocked loose several months previously in a fight between Peter and the hotel’s concierge, Patty Cheveux, came loose, causing an underground gas-pipe explosion, which catapulted the wheelbarrow into the hot-air balloon just after Nicole had set off. Once Nicole had got the sand out of the wheelbarrow, she pushed it over the side, not realising that it was destined to fall on her amnesiac biological mother’s twin sister.
The Antiguan Radio Times reviewed the episode, saying, “We know the creators have wanted Joyce in a coma for months now, but this method was ridiculous. Mister Perot’s cameo was a welcome surprise, but Micah’s actions were completely out of character for a former Green Beret, and telling the whole story in a dream-scene flashback is an insult to anyone who has been watching the show for more than 5 weeks.” The reviewer gave the episode 2 stars out of a possible 5.
Ross Perot's hot air balloon makes it grand entrance on Saint Francis Of Assisi Hospital. Because of the producers of the show failing to properly notify the authorities, this resulted in the Antiguan Air Force being scrambled, and a state of war existing between the United States of America and Antigua for 23 minutes. Picture by ericlbc.
©2009 James Mathurin
A last-minute plot rewrite made the hot-air balloon became necessary, as the town’s port had been closed due an infestation of rabid cockroaches (instigated by the villainous Fillibacher), and the airport had been closed when it turned out that it had been left to the unborn son of the town’s heroic fire chief-turned-baker, Peter Brankillie, by the last surviving member of a secret tribe of Caribs who owned the land it was built on, and who had lived on the island, but had been nearly wiped out by the villainous upholstery magnate Françoise McCady, so that he could build a Cushion factory on the land they lived on, until Peter exposed his plot, at the cost of his job, as he had been falsely implicated in the scheme by McCady’s fitness instructor, Teri Bastille, who was also the surrogate mother of his child. Without a way to get Nicole off the island, the writers arranged for millionaire and one-time American presidential candidate Ross Perot to make a cameo appearance on the show, so that he could pilot the hot-air balloon onto the beach, on the premise that he was travelling by balloon to his holiday home on the Falklands Islands.
On the show, Perot set the balloon down on the grounds of the Kentucky Hotel Antigua as he had run out of ballast in a freak Seagull-related incident. As his new supply of sand was brought to the balloon in a wheelbarrow carried by the Hotel’s one-eared handyman, Micah Memmette, Nicole ran past him and hijacked the balloon as her only means of escape.
While this was happening, a screw in the hotel’s boiler room, which had been knocked loose several months previously in a fight between Peter and the hotel’s concierge, Patty Cheveux, came loose, causing an underground gas-pipe explosion, which catapulted the wheelbarrow into the hot-air balloon just after Nicole had set off. Once Nicole had got the sand out of the wheelbarrow, she pushed it over the side, not realising that it was destined to fall on her amnesiac biological mother’s twin sister.
The Antiguan Radio Times reviewed the episode, saying, “We know the creators have wanted Joyce in a coma for months now, but this method was ridiculous. Mister Perot’s cameo was a welcome surprise, but Micah’s actions were completely out of character for a former Green Beret, and telling the whole story in a dream-scene flashback is an insult to anyone who has been watching the show for more than 5 weeks.” The reviewer gave the episode 2 stars out of a possible 5.
Ross Perot's hot air balloon makes it grand entrance on Saint Francis Of Assisi Hospital. Because of the producers of the show failing to properly notify the authorities, this resulted in the Antiguan Air Force being scrambled, and a state of war existing between the United States of America and Antigua for 23 minutes. Picture by ericlbc.©2009 James Mathurin
