Fee fi fo fum / I smell the blood of an Englishman / Be he live or be he dead / I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.
This always pissed me off.
If you’re going to make up nonsense words, why wouldn’t you make one up that actually rhymes with Englishman? Or, as part of the evil conservative War on Women, you could smell the blood of an Englishmum. I don’t guess I can blame Ray Bradbury for this since that little ditty is 500 years old.
A man pulls up to Edith Bunker‘s house. It isn’t clear who he is, but he comes in and gives the much-younger Lucy Lawless — holy crap, Lucy Lawless! — a kiss on the lips. [UPDATE — he is revealed to be her husband, Tom].
He seems very excited that he has brought Lucy and grandma Edith a Mr. Muncher garbage disposal, Mr. Fusion having not yet been invented. Whoever he is, he’s a better man than me — he is able to install a garbage disposal; and bag Lucy Lawless. He gets an inordinate amount of joy feeding bones into his prized unit — the disposal, not Lucy. Edith however, even all the way upstairs locked in her room, is terrified by the machine.
Hmmm, how can we here at RBT best feature Lucy’s beautiful blue eyes? Let’s use a blue filter so they blend into the background!
The next morning after after bread-winner Lucy leaves for work to support them and Tom leaves to goof off — this guy is quickly becoming my hero. Edith goes downstairs to inspect this new monster Tom has installed. Hearing it gurgle, she finds a feather in the drain, and her pet bird is missing from its cage. She suspects Tom will next feed her bones into the Mr. Muncher next and steal her money.
Edith thinks she hears Tom chopping up her cat and dog and feeding them into the disposal. After he leaves the house, she finds the disposal gurgling again and finds cat fur in the drain.
That night, Edith sneaks down to the kitchen and talks to the disposal. Then she goes out to the garage where she has hidden her animals. So the old woman is framing her son-in-law which doesn’t explain why she was so aghast when she thought he had pulverized her pets.
The next day, she gives Lucy & Tom $500 to go on a vacation. Tom returns early, having forgotten his fishing lures. Edith corners him with a hatchet and . . . and . . . I don’t know what the hell happened. At first I thought she was going to chop him up the old fashioned way and feed him into the disposal like the bones that brought him such pleasure. Then there were hellish flashing lights and pictures of the disposal’s grinding teeth, so I thought he was going to somehow be dragged into it whole.
But in the next scene, Tom and Lucy are loading up the car to move away. Lucy seems OK, but Tom is pretty twitchy. Edith is now a big fan of the machine and even invites the mailman in to see it. In a good show, she would have fed him into the Muncher. Or something. Anything.
Post-Post:
- Finally a New Zealand episode that makes use of the country’s fabulous natural resources, namely Lucy Lawless.
- Only 2 more episodes to go.
Only redeeming quality of this episode was seeing such a fresh-faced Xena.
I purchased this series because I love anthology shows (especially sci-fi). I already have much of the various series that have been out on dvd. Sooo….I was running out of new shows to add to my viewing list and bought this show from Amazon.
I am not usually a fellow that pans tv shows because you have to give writers and producers some gratitude for trying to entertain us……..
Forgive me but this crap is the worst drivel I have ever seen!….
cut-off endings, looney characters, hard to understand dialog, confusing plots, cutoff endings that don’t make sense (did I say that already?). I have watched the first five episodes and all I get is a WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!! Was Bradbury trying to make a show that sucked so badly that people would think…..wow! this crap is so stupid it must have a deep intellectual interpretation so I think I like it now cause I wanna be super smart like Ray Bradbury!
No…it is really just stupid folks. Well heck though….maybe the eps I have watched are all the suckie episodes and the rest will be ok! If that is the case then I will come back here and apologise to the internet readers…..but if it stays like this I am hoping I can sell the dvds to Half-price bookstore for a quarter.
ps: to be fair…there are some good actress’s and acters in this show, albeit wasted
You are spot on. This episode is garbage. Bad script, poor editing and a horrible ending makes this a _forgetable_ episode.
But damnit… LUCY LAWLESS was in. This was the ONLY reason I suffered thru this crap till the end. Those blue eyes….
A minor amendment to my above post….
Apparently the discs in my collection had the final dvd on top, thus I am watching the last disc first. It is not important and it changes nothing about my review.
One note is I did just watch the tombstone episode and it sucked par for the course. The good news is I also viewed the “By the numbers” episode and
it finally made a little sense. Perhaps there is something to be said for the this anthology because any average episode makes you feel it is an emmy winner when compared to the usual ones.
I don’t think you quite followed the plot (not a major crime considering how these BRTs are slapped together).
Creepy Tom faked killing the pets, chopping into the cabbage(?) to fake killing them. After she found the hatchet and cabbage, and put two and two together, she went looking for the pets and found where he stashed them. Then she sent Xena and Tom off to set a trap. What happened after that is so convoluted, it’s anyone’s guess.
Never have so many given so much.- for so little. Trite, pointless, and just plain stupid. People often ask, “Where does Bradbury come up with these ridiculous ideas?” Well, look no further.