You Drive

Description: Season 5, Episode 14

Air Date: January 3, 1964

Plot Summary: After a man hits a kid with his car, and flees from the scene, he is haunted by the boy's spirit.

Review: I really want to rank this among the underrated episodes, but it's tough when the episode doesn't want to take itself or the material seriously enough. This could have been the perfect story to replicate that fearful emotion in an episode like "The Hitch-Hiker." Instead, the music is odd, to say the least, and the main character, Ollie, acts like a buffoon rather than someone mulling over his guilt and worrying that he's being haunted. Having another potato pancake of a wife certainly wasn't doing the story any favors either!

As soon as the episode opens, Ollie runs over this kid, the paperboy, as Ollie is coming home from work. They say this kid was 12, but he looked college-aged to me! What the hell is with that? Ollie checks the kid's body and says, "I'm outta here!" as he books it. Almost immediately after going home, Ollie experiences the ghostly presence of the boy despite the kid not being dead yet. The reaction from the wife about this--and I hate to say it--paranormal activity is moronic. She keeps saying that people are breaking into their garage, and, at one point, this bitch leaves the car sitting in the middle of the road. My goodness...these fucking potato pancakes, I tell ya! These kind of shenanigans are why this episode drops the ball when it has, what should be, an otherwise creepy premise.

Later on, when the guilt is getting to Ollie, a business rival stops by and the two argue. Unfortunately for this coworker, an angular turnip for a witness claims the coworker is the one who hit the kid. I should note that the boy has died from his injuries at this point too. After all manner of creepy shit happens, Ollie smashes the car up and decides he will walk to work. The car then turns into Christine and nearly kills Ollie. However, Christine takes pity on Ollie and takes him to the police in order for him to confess and exonerate the coworker. The episode then ends quite abruptly with Mr. Serling closing us out with Ollie going into the police station.

I do really like this episode, because it has a cool story that is ripe with the potential to be scary. Sadly, they don't capitalize on the setup for whatever reason. The episode even went to great lengths to show the car driving around without a driver. I felt like they could have added that disturbing voice from "The Fever" and combined that with a more psychological approach similarly to "The Hitch-Hiker." The music especially was killing the atmosphere as it felt too erratic and cartoonish. With a little more polish, this could have turned into one of the classics, but, instead, is a forgotten episode.