Richard Hertz, er I mean Paine begins the episode with a semi-voiceover. That is, he is narrating, but appears as a translucent ghost over scenes of the big city rat-race that he is bemoaning.
Having just been passed over for yet another sales job, he goes home to wife Beth. She insists that he go to see his former boss who owes him $450 in back-wages. He decides a better course of action is to hit a bartender up for a loan. Sadly, this rock-solid source of capital lost it on the ponies. So he goes to see his ex-boss.
When he gets there, he sees that Mr. Burroughs has company and doesn’t wish to embarrass him by asking for his wages. He’s not above peeking in his window, however, where he sees Burroughs pull out a wad of cash and hand it to his unseen guest.
After the guest leaves, and the lights are turned out, Paine lifts up a window and crawls inside to get his $450. As he is counting out the exact amount, because he has told us he will only take that amount, Burroughs enters with a gun. There is a struggle as Burroughs is calling the police and he is shot.
Paine heads back to Beth. Because this couple has the communication skills of Oceanic 815 passengers, there is more death. As always in AHP-world, justice is eventually served.
This was the final episode of season one and it is suitably nasty as far as the censors would allow at the time. Justice is served, but after 2 even more senseless than usual deaths. Good stuff.
Post-Post:
- AHP Deathwatch: We’ve got a couple of live ones! Skip Homeier and Joanne Woodward are still with us. Possibly a couple of others, or their obscurity just means their deaths were overlooked by IMDb.
- AHP Proximity Alert: Harry Taylor was in 6 episodes this season, including one just 2 weeks earlier. Give somebody else a chance!
- The apartment hunter was just in Decoy 2 weeks ago.
- Joanne Woodward = Mrs. Paul Newman for 50 years.
- Skip Homeier is famous for 2 iconic roles – both of them in Star Trek: Melakon the Nazi and Dr. Sevrin the space hippie with the designer ears.