The "saga" begins: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that we are all longing to escape."
Cue our Sue, Amanda Price, angsting about how terrible her life is. She undergoes such harrowing difficulties as dealing with difficult customers as a bank teller and having her boyfriend propose to her when he's drunk. Angst angst angst, and the only joy she has in her life is reading her beloved Pride and Prejudice.
Then, one asuspicious day, she finds Elizabeth Bennet in her bathroom. It seem that Amanda Price is "the key": the only one in the entire universe who can make her bathroom wall into a door that opens into another world. Elizabeth Bennet, who doesn't display any shock at going into the modern world or misgivings about leaving all her family and friends, immediately proposes trading places with our dear Amanda. Oh, and as for Elizabeth's witty lines? She doesn't have them. At all.
Soooo, just as Mr. Bingley arrives in town, so does Amanda Price. Her well-rehearsed and rock-solid story is that she is Elizabeth's friend from Hammersmith who no one has ever heard of before. Not only does this mean the Bennets let her stay in their house for free and treat her as one of the family...but in every scene thereafter, whenever Amanda does something explicable (for instance, shouting out "Bumface!" at Lady Catherine's table), she explains it away to oblivious canon characters as "it's an expression from Hammersmith".
But I digress.
The next day, Amanda wakes up to Lydia copping a feel in her sleep, so Amanda believes she's on reality TV. To get out of the "show", she asks if she has to flash Lydia to get sent home. No one answers her, but she does it anyway. Is Lydia shocked? Horrified? No, she gives a little half-giggle as if, after all, these things happen.
Amanda, as you may imagine, is an instant hit with Mr. Bennet. She seems to him to be a girl of common sense, which is patently impossible because Amanda keeps spouting off anachronisms and 21st century jargon at every turn. She doesn't know how to dance, she uses peculiar expressions, she curses frequently, later on calling Mrs. Bennet a "ball-breaker" and Mr. Collins a "minger". In fact, I wonder...I seriously wonder...why she is not shipped off to Bedlam directly. Wouldn't that be fun!
Amanda meets Mr. Bingley, who is lovestruck practically at first sight, despite the fact that Amanda is still in her modern clothing. Yep, leather jacket, low-cut blouse and jeans...a paragon of 19th century beauty. Bingley steadily ignores Jane at the Netherfield Ball, which leads Mrs. Bennet to take Amanda into a private corner and make covert, subtle threats against her. But wait. Mrs. Bennet, covert? Subtle? Intelligent? Yep, the CADS are sounding like bugles.
Poor Jane is left in the dust, and Amanda feels a pang of guilt, so instead of dancing with Bingley, she dances with Darcy. Darcy is suitably put out. Mary Sue makes a puny attempt to fit in by wearing a dress, but for some reason no one comments on the fact that Amanda has unbound hair and has on heavy make-up, like a lady of ill repute.
Amanda, when insulted by Darcy, goes out for a smoke. Bingley catches up to her and says, admiringly, "You even breathe fire!" as she lights up a cigarette. He starts to profess his affection, Amanda kisses him deeply, but then makes a half-hearted attempt at telling him that he should be with Jane instead. After the ball, Amanda virtually forces Bingley to fall for Jane, telling Bingley that Amanda can't love him because she's a lesbian. Bingley is shocked and appalled…oh, wait, that would be canon…Bingley is mildly surprised, but docilely agrees to fall for Jane. (Jane almost dies of her cold when she rides to Netherfield, in contrast to canon.)
In the background, Wickham shows up and tries to charm her, Amanda rebuffs him with the kind of righteous indignation that can only come from having read Pride and Prejudice ahead of time and knowing who's the villain. Collins shows up and is promptly bowled over by Amanda's…um…Amanda's…to be honest, I'm not sure what he thinks he's doing. In canon, he's obsessed with propriety and with his own superficial virtue. Amanda has neither. But I suppose it doesn't matter, because Mr. Collins is a pervert in this version of P&P. Regardless, Mr. Collins flirts with her, she agrees to marry him in order to stop Jane from having to marry Collins (Lizzy, upon whom he should be fixing his attentions, is still "out of town at Hammersmith".) However, Collins drops her after Wickham spreads a rumor that Amanda's father is a fishmonger. It looks like a hopeful sign that Amanda may be facing the consequences of her actions. But don't worry; she won't take responsibility. She'll just knee Collins in the balls instead! Sadly, the author's Suefluence causes Mr. Collins to propose to Jane shortly thereafter…and Jane accepts him.
Turns out Darcy has persuaded Bingley away from pursuing Jane, which Amanda finds out and calls him a "tit" and some other things, too, if I remember correctly. Darcy gives her a well-deserved tongue-lashing for a few glorious seconds, and Sue flounces off to cry about how everything's gone wrong.
I couldn't stand watching all of the episodes, but at some point the following happens: Bingley turns into a drunkard and runs off with Lydia. He returns to Longbourne, where he assures Mr. Bennet that he didn't actually have sex with Lydia. He does this using such vulgar language (Bingley. Vulgar and coarse in speech. And running off with fifteen-year-old girls. Just like in the books!) that Mr. Bennet challenges Bingley to a duel…in the drawing room. Ignoring any proper dueling rules, Mr. Bennet attacks, forcing Bingley to wound Mr. Bennet out of self-defense. (If you want a real laugh, look at how this "sword fight" is choreographed! Bwah!) Mr. Bennet is bleeding heavily and sure to die, when...dun dun dun! It's Sue to the rescue, with her modern ways of knowing about stitches!
I swear, I'm not making this up. Shame on whoever did. By the way, Lydia is never heard from again, so it's not exactly clear how, or if, that scandal was resolved.
After saving Mr. Bennet's life (she's a hero, now, see? See?!) , Amanda meets Lady Catherine when she goes to see Jane at Mr. Collins's parsonage. (Fortunately for Jane, Mr. Collins is undergoing a period of abstinence for some obscure religious reason.) It is there that we learn that, despite having loathed Amanda and held her in contempt before, Darcy is actually violently in love with Amanda! As with Bingley's amorous attentions, Amanda makes a few weak protests towards Darcy, all the while gazing at him with limpid, tear-filled eyes. Darcy returns this with a gaze that I'm sure is supposed to be smoldering but looks instead like he is having a rather bad hangover. He doesn't really give a good reason why, with so little contact, with no exchange of witty repartee, with no respect for her personally, he loves her. In fact, in a later episode he admits that he does not find either her simpering or her obscenities attractive! This is supposed to be the woman he chooses to be the Mistress of Pemberley, sister to Georgiana, mother of the heirs to the Darcy line? In any event, Amanda reacts to this news in a typically fangirl way: by forcing Darcy to dive into Pemberley's pond and emerge with his shirt dripping wet.
I'm still not making this up.
Canon, which is now in a coma and on life support, gives one last gasp in the form of Amanda returning to her own world. Darcy follows, Amanda is reunited with her boyfriend, who says sweet things to her, and Darcy meets Elizabeth for the first time. Except it's not really Elizabeth; it's the soft-spoken, tepid, dull Out of Character Elizabeth, who has cropped her hair short, wears pants, and is working in the modern world as a nanny.
Yes, a nanny.
Okay, so it hasn't gone totally wrong. Darcy and Elizabeth will meet, fall in love, Amanda will go back to her boyfriend…
Nope. Amanda drags Elizabeth back through the door because Mr. Bennet is still unwell. Elizabeth seems very reluctant to go, even though her father was almost mortally wounded! Amanda's boyfriend tells her that if she goes back through that door, he's leaving her. So, she does. And…he leaves. And we never hear from him again.
Darcy and Elizabeth don't hit it off, and Elizabeth wants to go back to "Hammersmith" and spend the rest of her life there. So she does. Guess life as a nanny in London is a LOT better than being happily married, rich, and living in your own time!
(Elizabeth is not the only one put on a bus, metaphorically speaking. Elizabeth's best friend Charlotte Lucas, bereft of Mr. Collins whom she otherwise would have married, decides to go to Africa and be a missionary. And she is never heard from again.)
Lady Catherine DeBourgh goes to Amanda and makes her promise that Amanda will leave Darcy alone forever. Well, Amanda promises. It's a lie, of course. But in exchange for that favor, Lady Catherine gets the marriage between Jane and Mr. Collins annulled. Right on cue (was he waiting in the shrubbery?) Mr. Bingley shows up and proposes to Jane. Jane responds that it would be a disgrace if they were to marry now, so Mr. Bingley tells her they will go to America, "be married by liberal Episcopalians, have twenty-five children, and name all of them Amanda…even the boys!" And they are never heard from again.
Lady Catherine and Miss Bingley drive off together in a snit, Miss Bingley making a pass a Wickham along the way. And they are never heard from again.
Meanwhile, Amanda somehow travels all the way to Pemberley (In Mr. Bennet's carriage?! By herself?!), meets up with Mr. Darcy, and they each profess their undying love. Darcy has tears in his eyes as he tells Amanda what an awful person he has been and how sorry he is. Then, the music swells and they engage in a very unromantic smooching session. Darcy now looks like he is drunk and has a hangover at the same time. Note to whoever that actor was: you, Sir, do not know how to brood. Please stop trying. It's embarrassing to watch you.
And thus it ends.
Kitty what? Mary who? They have maybe three lines apiece in the entire thing. Colonel Fitzwilliam, Mr. and Mrs. Hurst, Sir William Lucas, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, Anne DeBourgh and anyone else I haven't mentioned here vanished into Fanfic Oblivion for the duration of this farce.
Scary, isn't it? But there it is.