Mary-Kate & Ashley

The Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley: The Case of the Christmas Caper

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First of all, thank you to those of you who voted for this episode. I would gladly review all eleven of these episodes, except that I’m pretty sure I would only be writing for myself. However, if I am wrong PLEASE let me know in the comments/fulfill my hopes and dreams. While I am sad that “Lizzie McGuire ft. Aaron Carter” did not make the cut this year, thanks for throwing me a bone with this one. Anyway, for those of you who were moved by the Christmas spirit to vote MK&A, this is for you:51vn9vjad3l

Apparently, The Olsen & Olsen Mystery Agency doesn’t close for holidays because they’re willing and ready to work on Christmas Eve. Fans of Elizabeth Olsen are in for a treat with this one, as she appears (credited as Lizzie Olsen) in a montage about “Christmas mysteries.” (i.e. The origins of “nog” in eggnog, the culprit who took a bite out of the gingerbread man, and the ever looming mystery of what causes Christmas lights to get tangled all the time.) Cue the first song: “Too Much To Do,” which is basically the Olsen’s version of The Waitresses’s “Christmas Wrapping.”

And then they get a call to solve a mystery from a company called Extremely Long Flights Airlines (or E.L.F Airlines). They’ve lost “The Spirit of Christmas,” which is an airplane, so the twins head to 1225 North Pole Drive on their bikes. (P.S. their bikes’ handlebars are sporting some very nice Christmas wreaths).

So basically, The Twins hardcore judge them for losing their only airplane. It’s not like they’re running a big operation here. But the Twins are willing to help solve the mystery. They don’t want anyone to be sad on Christmas. Also, this mystery involves a computer (oooooh).

So the Twins pull out some gigantic laptops and start making notes on why the “really big computer suddenly stopped working.” This includes looking “for creatures in the computer’s hardware.” This last thing does the trick, as Mary-Kate finds a gigantic snake. Then the computer starts working again and they girls see Santa in the plane. (Guess, he decided to modernize his operations back in 1995 and upgraded from the sleigh setup.)

When the “Really Big Computer” stops working again, the twins figure the computer has been hacked. It wouldn’t have been to hard of a job since E.L.F. Airlines has set their password to “ho-ho-ho.”

Soon enough, there is another break in the case. The E.L.F. crew prints out their naughty/nice list and discover that there is only one kid on the nice list this year: Ebenezer Scrooge. Ashely figures it’s a code name, so she plugs it into a “program”on her clunky laptop and discovers that Ebenezer Scrooge is really Roger E. Bencoseeze.

f202162d4f765f7d08caa2e0d9c96349The twins and the E.L.F. crew head to Roger E. Bencoseeze’s house to confront him. He lives in a mansion with a butler and everything. This dude turns out to be a real Scrooge. He pretty much just hates Christmas. This leads the twins to sing another insufferably pitchy song to teach this kid about the spirit of Christmas. But the song messes this kid’s icy cold heart. He fixes the E.L.F. computer and wishes them all a Merry Christmas.

Very Special Christmas Lesson: If you’re going to hack the naughty or nice list, maybe leave a few names on the nice list other than your own, just to throw off suspicious.

Sister, Sister: Slime Party

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Tia and Tamera get to be contestants on a quiz show. Tia’s basically a triva genius so they think they have this in the bag. But what they don’t realize is they’re facing off against Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen. That’s right. This is the most 90’s thing every and will probably make your brain explode.

But since this is Sister, Sister only Mary-Kate & Ashley are famous and Tia & Tamera are just two girls from the suburbs of Detroit. Also, they make Mary-Kate say “You Got it Dude,”poor thing.

But then Tia gets major stage-fright. She cannot even say her name when it’s time to introduce herself on the show. Mary-Kate just kills it. She gets all of the answers right. Tamera has to squeeze fresh orange juice with her butt because she and Tia lost the round. This continues on for a painful amount of time. With every round that Tia chokes, something gross happens to Tamera.

At the break, Tia and Tamera decide to switch so that Tia can get slimed for a while. But the category turns out to be trivia about Coolio, and Tamera knows every single answer.

So then Mary-Kate and Ashley are supposed to both get slimed because they’re the losers. But Tia and Tamera feel bad and try to push them out of the way, so they all end up getting slimed.

Very Special Lesson: In this episode, Mary-Kate was definitely the cute one and Ashley was her sister.

P.S. Tia & Tamera used to babysit MK&A in real life.

The Definitive Ranking of the Mary-Kate and Ashley You’re Invited Series

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If you were a girl child in the 90’s, you lived for the direct-to-video release of an MK & A party.
Each 30-minute party let you live out your bff fantasies as they played directly to the camera, a.k.a. totally looking right at you because you are bffs and they invited YOU to their party.
But which parties were the best?
Which could you skip out on and which could you not afford to miss?
Fear not friends, The Very Special Blog now contains the definitive ranking of the You’re Invited series:


10. You’re Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley’s Costume Party (1998)
This one is really just plain boring. They basically play dress-up the entire time and are like “oooh this is an outfit from the 50’s.” The songs are super-grating even for an MK&A special. I feel like this one was just filler for them to stay on schedule with releasing these VHS tapes.

9. You’re Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley’s Birthday Party (1997)
This one is cute, but there’s not much to it. (Well, there’s not much to any of these, but that means there’s even less going on in this one.) The twins have invited their friends over to celebrate their birthday, but they’ve forgotten to make any plans for the party. Like how did you even let it get to this point, girls?? So they spend their time fantasizing about what they can throw together, only to end up going to Six Flags instead.

8. You’re Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley’s Hawaiian Beach Party (1996)
This one is primarily just scenes of Hawaii, which makes me really jealous. The songs are much less annoying than some of the other episodes, thankfully. But ultimately, all this episode will do is make you sad you’re not splashing around in the Pacific.

7. You’re Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley’s Mall Party (1997)
This is pretty much just one big commercial for the Mall of America. But nothing was cooler than the Mall in the 90’s and the Mall of America was the king of all that. Plus, they’re like actually doing things in the mall. So much of this series is just like “I’m singing a song about doing this thing! And I’m doing some lame choreography!” (which I loved as an eight year-old, so seriously no hate.) But in this episode the girls like destroy some boys from school in mini-golf and then they perform with their band for the entire mall. Pretty sweet.

6. You’re Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley’s Christmas Party (1997)
It’s really hard to mess up Christmas. There’s some bad remixes of classic songs, but there are also a lot, a lot of cookies to make up for that. And there’s a song dedicated to skiing. This episode has made me long for winter and I probably ranked it higher than I should have because I love Christmas.

5. You’re Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley’s Fashion Party (1999)
I’d like to think the twins pushed for this plot line because they were already budding-designers, over the whole acting thing. One of their friends has an older sister who gives them a tour of her college, Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. Then MK&A get to be in a fashion show. They also start sketching their own designs and learn about how clothing is constructed. I feel like they seem to be genuinely more interested in this than like any other episode, which makes sense because that’s how they make their living these days. Also, it is the 90’s so Mary-Kate’s fashion show outfit is one of those cultural appropriating “Chinese Dresses” that everyone liked to wear. Thankfully, they didn’t give her one of those purses fashioned in the style of a take-out box.

4. You’re Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley’s School Dance Party (2000)
Points for this one actually having a plot. MK&A are stressing because of the school dance. Ashley is worried that her boyfriend will be voted king of SpringDance.com (the title of the event) without her being voted queen, and Mary-Kate is trying to ask out the bad-boy of jr. high. They sing a really, really terrible “rap song.” The choreography is horrible and it seems like everyone learned it at the last minute and can hardly remember the pacing. Also, they must have recruited the supporting cast from Disney because the mermaid kid from The Thirteen Year and the mean-girl from Zenon are both in this. At this point, it’s undeniable that the Olsen Twins are not singers and it’s no longer cute to hear them sing simple songs. You can also tell this must have been an entirely contractual obligation and they do not want to make this video.

3. You’re Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley’s Camp Out Party (1998) 
In this episode, Mary-Kate shows all of her friends that nature can be fun. Everyone is like really bad at fishing and co-existing with bugs, but she gradually wins them over with some butterfly chasing and marshmallows. Then they get scared of shadows outside their tent and decide to go sit by the fire (after we endure another awful song). Then they get freaked out by noises as they sit by the fire and run back into the tent without putting out the fire. I’m freaking out on behalf of the viewers-at-home by this point, until their mom yells at them to go to bed and says their dad is putting out the fire. It turns out they’ve been camping out in the backyard this whole time. I still think they deserve a lecture from Smokey the Bear on this one though.

2. You’re Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley’s Ballet Party (1997)
This one is just so sweet. The ballet numbers are adorable and the songs are 72,000 times better than the rest of the series. Mary-Kate and Ashley take a trip to Lincoln Center to practice ballet and there are some legit ballerinas that you get to see dance too. Also, MK & A are much better at dancing than they are signing. They must kind of like ballet too because they seem a lot more invested in selling this than their lame-choreography in the rest of the series.

1. You’re Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley’s Sleepover Party (1995)
The one that started it all is clearly the best You’re Invited episode. This one is just adorable and makes me miss sleepovers. Maybe when I get married, I’ll have a sleepover bachelorette party instead of going out to bars wearing a bachelorette sash and being harassed by creepers. Anyway, this episode is sweet and has pretty decent music. I mean there’s still some weird stuff. Like one girl wants to put a raw fish on their pizza and they make the black girl wear a Tina Turner wig in this episode: