Picture 1: "Look at this giant manacle I am placing your hand in. Surely you will never escape me now."

Picture 2: "Look at these manacles, they're disgustingly loose. Aren't you going to at least gag me? I've always wanted a nice red ball gag to go with my nice red lips."

Picture 3: "I can't believe I actually had to audition for this part. Eeek."

You know, they have invented a technique for catching monkeys in Africa that seems germane here. They hollow out a gourd and drill a hole in its side, just a little larger than the diameter of a monkey's wrist (bet they had to do a lot of measuring to come up with that information). Then they tie the gourd to a nearby tree and drop a piece of fruit that's not much smaller than the hole into the gourd.

ALSO FROM PAT POWERS

Along comes a monkey, who checks out the gourd and finds out there's fruit inside. So he or she reaches in and grabs it. But with the fruit in his paw, he can't get his wrist out of the hole. But he wants the fruit, so he hangs on, even though that means he's effectively tied to the tree. And that's where he stays until the human that laid the trap comes along to collect him, because he just can't figure out that it's more important to be able to escape capture than it is to get the fruit.

So, I was wondering if there was some kind of giant invisible piece of fruit in Teri Hatcher's hand to make her keep her arms in the manacles that are supposedly keeping her in that chair in this episode of Lois & Clark ("A Voice From The Past.")

Because those manacles are WAAAAY too big for her dainty wrists, in fact, you can see daylight between her arm and the inner surface of the manacles, despite the fact that they are several inches thick.

So it's not just that Teri could pull her wrists out of the manacles. It's that she could make a fist and STILL pull her wrists out. It's that she could grab a lemon, or an orange, or and apple, and STILL get her wrists out! Would a grapefruit stop her? Maybe. Or maybe it would deform as she pulled it through. We think it would take at least a pineapple. Or a cantaloupe. Or a pina colada.

In recognition of this fruitful achievement, we have elected to give the director of this episode of Lois & Clark a Loosy Award for Mangled Manacles far beyond the call of duty. (And it should be noted that the Manacles category is very competitive, with MOST film and television manacles fastened far too loosely to work.)

And, uh, on the way to pick up the award, let's stop by the kitchen. We're hungry, for some reason.

Return to the Loosie Awards main page