One good thing about Suspense is that there is no time excruciatingly wasted by the odious Cryptkeeper or odious crypt-occupier Henry Rollins. ^[1] Alfred Hitchcock was great in that capacity, but there isn’t enough of him to go around. Well, not without making a big mess, anyway.

Mrs. Griffen comes to Mr. Crabtree’s apartment to collect his past due rent. He assures her that he will pay the 18 months due once he gets a job. Since he is 64, it better be soon. She gives him 2 weeks notice.

Sadly, he is supporting his daughter’s residency at a fancy private, er . . .  spa that has 500 thread-count walls. He has done everything he can to conserve money — did a reverse mortgage, sold his life insurance policy, claimed he would move to Camp LeJeune 1953 – 1987, and bought gold from that 10 year old Devane kid downstairs.

A young woman ^[2] listed on IMDb as Mrs. X (née Mrs. Twitter) knocks on his door and offers to pay him for his services, which is opposite the transaction that I’m used to. But, to be fair, she is responding to a job application he sent in, not a card shoved at me on Las Vegas Boulevard. I mean him. I said me, but I meant him.

The job specifically calls for an old dude with an accounting background so that he is used to the tedium.  The hours are the same as his odds of living to see Ike elected:  9 to 5.  It pays $100/week which, sure, sounds princely — but that is for 6 days.  He is really being paid to not do a goddam thing — like George Costanza with the Pinsky File, Sherlock Holmes’ Red-Headed League, or a University Presidentette. ^[3]

After leaving Crabtree, she calls Mr. X whose name she unwisely took at marriage. Mostly, she just compliments herself on her Marlingesque ^[4]  performance.

Crabtree goes to his new job and admires his name on the door. Inside, he finds a small office with a large window, no visitor chairs, a desk nailed to the floor, a calendar, and a cat. And get this — all of these are important to the story!  I’d say Suspense was ahead of its time, but I’m not sure most shows today are that well-crafted. Kudos!

Hey, for an office with no chairs, something looks pretty sit-able there!

Six months later, Mr. X finally visits the office. Crabtree says he is happy to meet him at long last. X reveals that the reports Crabtree submits are routinely burned without reading, like Kristi Noem’s unsold books in her publisher’s warehouse. Crabtree was actually hired to assist Mr. X in, as he puts it, “a very ingenious murder.” Boy, that X family really thinks a lot of themselves!

X marks the spot by saying the target is Mrs. X’s first husband — X’s Ex, who is blackmailing them. He is threatening to accuse Mrs. X of being a bigamist. Mr. X is a public figure and such an accusation back then would ruin them.

Later that day, as X told him, a man arrives asking for a “contribution”.

Spoiler!

What follows is one of those situations where writing it out would take forever, and be even more tedious than usual. Shockingly, this is because it is a good, twisty episode.

Of course it is primitive, and the organ is still overwrought and intrusive.  However, there was a creativity in this series that was missing from, oh say, Science Fiction Theatre.   As frequently happens, I’ll never watch it again, I can’t recommend it, but this was a great episode . . . grading on a curve of Sweeneyesque magnitude, of course.  Well done, Suspense!

Other Stuff:

[1]  Honestly, I thought I read he had died recently.  Also, WordPress Blocks is garbage.  It took me forever to figure out how to make the icon appear to create the [1] super-script.  At least Adobe gave me the option to roll back their update which is a massive, chaotic piece of shit.

[2]  Well, relatively young. Otto Kruger (Crabtree) is in contention for oldest actor I’ve covered yet — born in 1885.

BTW, the landlady is played by 70’s mainstay Ruth McDevitt. I say 70’s mainstay not because of the numerous 1970’s TV series she appeared in, but because her age stayed in the 70’s throughout her entire decades-long career. Like Burt Mustin, she seems to have been born at age 75.

[3]  Certainly there is no reason a woman can’t do this job, but why is every moron university president that makes the news a woman?

[4]  Referring, of course, to my favorite actress Brit Marling.  I stand by that despite her last effort, which was literally years in the making, being a collosal bore.

I see the short story Help Wanted was later adapted as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (five episodes before I started this nonsense).