Brought to you by Auto-Lite spark plugs!  You know why you never see commercials for spark plugs any more? ^[1]

Mrs. Gardner is slumped in her seat on the train and actually thinks, “Goodbye New York.”  She sees a man she believes is following her.  But why?  She thinks back to yesterday.

Returning from the grocery store, she is met outside her apartment door by the Building Superintendent, Mr. Mason.  Apparently the Gardners are behind on the rent.  He gruffly says, “You gotta pay me something or get out!”  People are so much more reasonable today.  Earlier tonight I saw a short film where a landlord worked out a deal with his young blonde tenant.  Although, to be honest, I totally lost interest after about 6 minutes and fell asleep.

Mrs. Gardner promises him they will have some cash soon.  Then she smells gas.  Mr. Mason seems strangely uninterested in this gas leak which could blow up his building,  his job, and his collection of Hummel Figurines.  She enters and finds her husband Ray on the floor.  Their apartment is even shabbier than the Kramden’s down in 3B.  At least the Kramden’s bed is in a bedroom; although, God knows I don’t want to think too much about what goes on in there.  Mrs. Gardner opens the windows and turns off the stove.  Ray wakes up.

After the commercial, Mrs. Gardner finds his suicide note, and adds spark plugs to her shopping list.  Ray lights a cigarette.  Dude, the room was full of gas like 1 minute ago!

He says his old boss Walton has him locked out everywhere.  Walton is telling everyone that Ray broke his contract, so he is toxic. Mrs. Gardner consoles her husband that he had good reason to break it.  If you want to know more about this Succession-like tale of corporate intrigue, too bad.  This is all the detail we get.

Ray says Walton wants him to come crawling back.  Working under the radar, he can’t raise the $500 he owes Walton.  Mrs. Gardner finally brings in the groceries.  Her husband asks how she paid for them, then notices her wedding ring is gone.

Ray grabs his coat, he says to go see someone about borrowing money.  His wife, suspecting he is going back to Walton, begs him not to.  He shoves her aside and bolts outside.  Mrs. Gardner follows him until she sees a sinister looking man on the sidewalk eying her. ^[2]

Six hours later, Ray returns with $500.  He doesn’t answer her questions about where he was and what is the capital North Dakota.  He just silently washes the blood and self-loathing off his hands.  Murder?  How ’bout some teamwork?  Mrs. Gardner could have picked up $500 that afternoon, and the sticky stuff on her hands wouldn’t be a man’s blood!  The next morning’s newspaper headline says:

Cripes, how big was the font on VJ Day (just 4 years earlier)?  Mrs. Gardner reads that police suspect a disgruntled employee, but dang if I can see anything on that page but the headline.  They get nervous when the police description of a white guy in a dark suit and felt hat narrows the suspects to about 5,000,000 guys in New York City.  Fearing Ray was seen, Mrs. Gardner takes some of the money to buy her husband a new dark suit.  And a new felt hat.

She nervously buys the suit and pays for it with a bloody bill.  As she is leaving, she sees the same creepy guy standing outside the shop.  He follows her back to the apartment.  She takes the suit upstairs and Ray puts it on.  But on the way out of town, he is wearing a trench coat, killing the point of the new suit.

They decide, for no good reason, to separate.  Both feel like all eyes are on them.  Because Ray doesn’t have 2 dimes for the train, it leaves without him.  I guess that’s back when turnstile jumping was illegal.  They meet up later at Grand Central Station.

Finally we are back where we began.  Ray joins his wife on the train.  The mystery man is seated a row in front of them.  They wonder if they will ever be safe, ever have to stop looking over their shoulders.  Well, ya know, he is a murderer.

When the conductor comes around for tickets, the mystery man flashes a badge.  OK, so what?  Is he ever going to confront the Gardners?  Don’t keep me in susp . . . oh,  yeah.

Testing the waters here with a new series.  Of course, it is primitive — it was made 70 years ago!  It is easy to laugh at the production, but it was a new medium and they had no budget.  There were some good signs, though.  The titular suspense is padded out by 2 more visits from Mr. Mason, a strange run-in with a cop, a bit with a piece of paper, and a subtle callback to the bloody bill.  So, they really did make the effort to inject suspense.  There were a couple of fun non-sequiturs that I appreciated.  A little girl was roller-skating outside their apartment, and a guy at the train station pocketed a newspaper.  These might seem like small things, but it shows me that someone cared.  I rate it: Deserves a second episode.

Other Stuff:

• Mrs. Gardner does not seem to have a first name.  She’s ahead of her husband, though, who is not even listed on IMDb.
• Mrs. Gardner buys a train ticket from an uncredited Mr.  Hand.  Warning:  Clip includes Sean Penn.
• [1]  Because not 1 man in 1,000 could change a spark plug today.
• [2]  But why is this guy eyeballing her?  At this point, Ray has not killed Walton yet.  Is it her gams?