Description: Season 5, Episode 24
Air Date: March 13, 1964
Plot Summary: After insulting the TV repairman, a cheating husband watches visions of himself killing his wife.
Review: WHAT'S IN THE BOX?! WHAT'S IN THE BOX?! Please tell me you get that reference? Okay, moving right along...as you may guess from the plot summary, the main guy here is not receiving any husband of the year awards. I'm not entirely sure what this episode was trying to convey--a douche getting his comeuppance? Don't mess with the TV guy? I don't know. I'd place this episode as a middle-of-the-road kind of story: not much going on but not necessarily bad either.
An old dude, named Joe, is somehow getting nookie on the side that he's keeping secret from his wife, Phyllis; he's a taxi driver and makes up stories about faraway fares. Seriously, how is this old guy getting ass? Needless to say, this married couple absolutely hates each other with a burning passion. After Joe talks shit to the TV repairman, the repairman bails with a taunt about the TV being "fixed." I don't know who this guy is supposed to be, but he keeps eyeing the camera like a wink to the audience. It's situations like this, where TZ doesn't fill in the void, that I feel like Mr. Serling should have been a kind of entity moving about the series. Oh well, that's just another reason to love the "A World of His Own" episode so much.
On the TV, Joe sees himself cheating on the wife, his conversations with Phyllis, and eventually himself killing her. Being one of the dumbest characters known to man, Joe willingly creates this future he claims he wants to avoid. After revealing his cheating ways, but claiming he loves Phyllis, the two fight until Joe punches her out a window; that shot is amusing though. The episode ends with the police arresting Joe but not before the TV repairman gives one final taunt. Who is this guy?! Ehh, this episode isn't really noteworthy. The TV repairman could have been the x-factor to spice the episode up, but they never utilize this character meaningfully. At the end of the day, the lesson to be learned is don't get married.
An interesting idea, seeing your past and future on the idiot box. Just kidding, I love TV. William Demearest has that distinctive voice, and Joan Blondell sure looks older and fatter than in her 1930s Busby Berkeley films, and has a much scratchier bitter voice.
ReplyDeleteThe weird TV repairman who "gets William back for insulting him" was the guy who voiced Winnie the Pooh in the 1960s Winnie the Pooh cartoons. William tells Winnie that he's crooked, so Winnie then tells him there's no charge and waits until he leaves before William finds out what he really did to the TV.
I really wondered how after William sees himself on TV getting violent with his wife and punching her out the window killing her, he was horribly traumatized by it. You would think that William would try harder than humanly possible to not let what he saw really happen. But it happened, just like he saw it. I can't understand how it would be that impossible to prevent it. I know that Joan was seriously pushing his limits, but still. Gees.
Even though the last 2 things William saw on TV, the court sentence and then them tying him to the electric chair were not shown for real happening, since the last for real part before the episode ended were the cops taking him out of the apartment after Joan fell out the window. But the viewers were left to assume that those scenes would really happen too since all the moments leading up to it really happened just like on the TV.