That Ray Bradbury was one happy son-of-a-bitch.  Or at least he comes across that way in his stories.  Part of it was having the luck to grow up in a simpler time when the country was growing, and growing in the right direction.  His timing also couldn’t have been better for a 50 year window where it was possible to make a good living writing short genre fiction.  A story called The Happiness Machine sounds right in his wheelhouse.

Also lucky, is the star of the episode who has made a fine living for decades despite being possibly the only actor worse than Bill Paxton ever to get steady work.  Elliott Gould awakens one sunny morning to birds chirping, dogs frolicking, bees buzzing, birds soaring.  He is so goddamn happy he decides he needs to pay it back (or forward as we say now).

He pulls various pieces of junk out of his garage to invent a Happiness Machine.  He then walks around the neighborhood taking pictures of little boys climbing trees and little girls playing hopscotch.  His luck continues by him not being arrested.

He spends hours in the garage soldering, welding, wiring, painting and finishing the Happiness Machine.  Under deadline from his wife who has called the city to haul it away, he tests it out by putting her in it.

She dances by the Danube, sees the Sphinx, sees London, sees France, sees a little girl’s underpants. She is having the ride of her life until suddenly she is in tears.  She emerges distraught from the Happiness Machine.

Turns out it, the Happiness Machine is great on the way up, all sweetness and light, hope, birds chirping . . . like experiencing Bradbury’s life.

But when you step out of the machine into shitty reality, it is soul-crushing.  It leads only to sadness and depression . . . like experiencing Bradbury’s TV show.

Gould’s wife begs him to destroy it.  He tries it out himself and briefly experiences the euphoria before a fire starts that destroys it.  It pains me to say it, but there is an effective ending.  He is saddened by the destruction of his Happiness Machine, but his wife tells him to look in the windows of his house.  He sees his kids playing the piano, the violin, showing off a painting, modeling a new blouse.  His home and family are the Happiness Machine.

You put a moniker like that on an episode, and you better have some special in store.

Young piano prodigy Doug Spaulding is being chased through the woods by bullies.  This is intercut with telephone calls he made to his chief tormentor over the years since.  On his 21st birthday, he calls Ralph and says, “Hello Ralph.  Is this Ralph Underhill?”  Ralph says, “Yes,” and Doug hangs up the phone.  He does it again on his 40th birthday, or maybe we are supposed to believe this is an annual occurrence.

On his 60th birthday, Doug, now a famous composer has something bigger in mind. Doug does not make the usual call that day, but the next morning goes to a locked cabinet in his garage where he keep momentos of the times that Ralph bullied him.

He goes downstairs and sees the mess from the party and says, “When was the armistice signed?” His nameless, uncredited wife replies in a complete non-sequitur, “The world will little note, nor long remember” from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  Is this how smart people talk in the morning?  I’m more used to, “You owe me an extra $50 for that last thing.”

She hands him a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and he pours about 1 molecule into a Bloody Mary before taking a sip.

When he says, “I must arise and go now,” she replies from the same Yeats poem, “but not to a bee-loud Glade.”  Christ, these people make Frasier & Niles look like the Clampetts. He tells no-name that he is going to Chicago, but he actually packs a small bag with the toys — and a non-toy gun — and goes to pay a visit to Ralph.  At this point, after 40 years of calls, Ralph must be mystified why this year, it was one day late.

On the way, he recalls other humiliations from his youth, having a big marble thrown in the creek, being afraid to throw rocks at a house, being roughed up, being tied to a tree.  Ralph tells him, “You will never belong anywhere!  Just look me up when you’re old and gray and I’ll remind you!”  So he has held on to that for 40 years despite having a nice home home, a thriving career and a wife with no name.

He stops by his childhood home for a few more bad memories.  The boys thought he was weird for practicing the piano so much and winning competitions.  The slicked back hair and shirt buttoned to the top probably didn’t help either.  Not quite sad enough, he marches into the woods to the tree where Ralph had tied him up once.

That night he goes to Ralph’s house and sets up the toys — the non-lethal ones — on his porch.  He rings the bell and Ralph answers the door.  Doug seems shocked as he looks Ralph up and down.  Of course he has gotten older, just like Doug.  Is there some point  to him not wearing shoes?  He was just at home watching TV.  Maybe it is just seeing him that takes Doug back.  He reaches into his pocket for the gun, but hesitates when Ralph sees the toys.

Ralph kneels to see the toys, and Doug points his finger at him, “Bang, you’re dead.” As Doug walks away, Ralph just calls after him, “Doug, is that you?”

Doug goes back to the tree where he was tied up and inexplicably sleeps there for the night.  The next morning he goes back to his old house and summons “young Doug” to stop practicing and go out and play.  In his mind, he sees black & white young Doug head off to the woods across the street.

Thus potentially sabotaging his professional success, and proving Ralph right in an alternate timeline.

Post-Post:

• Title Analysis:  What murder?  In the words of Sidney Wang, “Killed good weekend.”
• Two women have speaking roles but are not credited on screen or on IMDb.
• Young Doug (David Turri) has no other IMDb credits.  I’m assuming that is Young Doug, IMDb doesn’t even name his character.  There is an author by that name at Amazon, who has a New Zealand connection, but the age doesn’t seem to work out.