Hey, it’s uber- “That Guy” . . . or rather, uber- “That Dead Guy” John Fiedler!  Alas, where are the John Fiedlers, the Richard Stahls, the Charles Lanes of today?  Maybe driving for Uber.  Would network TV even allow these unattractive, old, bald(ing) white guys on the screen today?  I’m thinking of their heydays ^[1] when they converged on The Odd Couple.  And HTF does The Odd Couple (1970) not appear first when you search IMDb for “odd couple”?  Ain’t nothing but the best show ever.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, this is another one of those AHP episodes that is so good, I really have nothing to complain about.  Ray Bradbury Theatre, I miss you.

Due to my continued refusal to walk all the way across the room to load the DVD player, I am again watching on dailymotion.  I suspect the provenance of this video is about like that Picasso I bought, that not only was sold to me out of a car trunk, but was signed by Van Gogh.

In an effort to throw off copyright sleuths, the perps have uploaded the video backwards and zoomed-in.  However, the more Holmesian among you will note that they have helpfully tagged the video with the correctly spelled series name and episode title.

Well, might as well get this over with.

John Fiedler pulls into a gas station, launching a series of archaic events.

1. An attendant fills the gas tank for him. ^[2]
2. He tells Fiedler he can get a drink at the drugstore across the street. ^[3]
3. Fiedler is arrested for jaywalking.

To be fair, even though the cop is a dick, Fiedler is actually arrested for then attempting to bribe a government official who is not in Congress.  Officer Carly ^[7] takes Fiedler to the jailhouse, oddly transporting him in the front seat.  The Sheriff seems a little more sane, but has bigger problems since a local girl was just found murdered.

Luckily a hitchhiker was found nearby and just brought to the jail.  Fiedler is ignored as he continually pleads to see the judge.  He even offers the same bribe to the Sheriff.  Again, Fiedler is lost in the shuffle as another Officer enters and says the men in town are forming a lynch-mob.

Hearing that the mob is heading this way, the  alleged killer demands to be set free, even though he is in the safest possible place — a locked iron cage.  Fiedler also whines to be released, but he is again the least of their worries.  Besides, he just did the impossible; he committed another crime while alone in a jail cell.  Bloody recidivist!

Incredibly, the dim-witted Sheriff agrees to transport the accused killer to another location.  Fiedler begs to also be taken.  “Shut up!”, the Sheriff explains.  But the distraction allows the killer to knock him out.  The killer then unlocks Fiedler’s cell and says, “Take off your clothes, buddy!”  Not what you want to hear in prison.

After putting on Fiedler’s suit, the killer locks him in his (the killer’s) cell as if the lynch-mob would know what cell the killer was in. Wouldn’t it maybe be the ONLY guy in the jail?  The mob shows up and drags Fiedler out of the cell.  They beat him unconscious, but the Officer shows up and runs them off.  I guess it would have been too much to arrest a couple.  Sixty years later, the Officer became Mayor of Portland. ^[4]

The next morning, when the bloodied Fiedler awakens, the Officer says the city will drop the charges and buy him a new suit.  Fair compensation for being overcharged, detained and beaten senseless.

As Fiedler is driving from town, he checks his briefcase.  Yep, his big knife is still in there.  Then he sees something never once witnessed in the USA, a pretty young blonde hitchhiker who is not on drugs or just escaped from a sex manic.  ^[6]

Another just about perfect episode.  Well told and well cast.  Fiedler is the perfect pusillanimous, high-pitched, panicky dweeb to sucker us in. ^[5]   It also plays on Hitchcock’s familiar theme of being falsely arrested.  The beautiful irony is that he was almost lynched for the crime he actually committed.

Other Stuff:

• The title is a blatant rip-off of Incident in a Small Town which aired 30 years later.  Wait, what?  The title feels much older than that, but 30 seconds of research revealed no earlier source.  Maybe I’m thinking of Tragedy in a Temporary Town (1956) which I saw recently.
• As always, a better write-up about the episode can be found at bare*bones ezine.
• [1]  I would have bet money it was hayday, like “making hay”.  What does hey have to do with it?
• [2]  This might not seem so strange if you are in Oregon or New Jersey where it is still illegal to pump your own gas.  Free country, pfft!
• [3]  Long ago, most drug stores had soda fountains.  Mercifully, I deleted a dopey reference about Evel Knivel jumping the fountain at Caesar’s Palace, but here is the famous video.  Not deleted or in any way relevant, here is the Agony of Defeat clip.  And Bad Romance accompanied by tap-dancing because it is a hoot.
• [4]  Would also have accepted:  Seattle.
• [5]  35 years later, he had not changed a bit in the late, great Buffalo Bill
• [6]  Upon review, she was not hitchhiking, but just walking along the road.  But you never see that either.
• [7]  Myron Healey (Officer Carly) went on to star in The Incredible Melting Man.