Holy crap, the behind the scenes carnage on this one is approaching Alfred Hitchcock Presents levels. Of the four lead, or at least best-known, actors:  Teri Garr has multiple sclerosis and Michael J. Fox has Parkinson’s.  At least they are alive — Bruno Kirby died at 57 of complications from Leukemia. I hope Bruce McGill is getting regular physicals.

We join the lovely Teri Garr as she is mixing up an unbelievable amount of tuna, taken from a cabinet stuffed with cans of tuna. I assume the joke is that they can’t afford anything but tuna, but it never really pays off as a reasonable viewer will assume there is a cat lady reference coming.  But no, nothing.

Bruce McGill comes home, having been fired from his pizza-delivery job.  God bless anyone who works and doesn’t sit around collecting a check, but if you’re 40 and delivering pizzas, that’s a red flag even if you don’t get fired.

Teri, who is waaaaaay out of his league offers to get a job giving manicures.  Not speaking Korean would seem to be an obstacle, however.

A call from the insurance company about a past due bill inspires McGill to fake his own death for the insurance money.  He calls his brother Kirby who is conveniently a coroner.

They stage a scene where McGill is the victim of a robbery.  To make it convincing, Garr clubs him in the head repeatedly with a fireplace poker.  He eggs her on by admitting he is also a poker — of her best friend.

Kirby pronounces him dead for the cops.  At the funeral, Kirby starts humping Garr on top of the casket.  She accidentally kicks a lever that begins a conveyor belt into the cremation chamber as McGill is inside reading travel brochures for Rio.  Frankly, with a little work, this could have been a fine ending for the episode.

Tragedy, and a good ending, is averted.  McGill then heads down to Rio under an alias to lay low.  To avoid suspicion, Garr stays in the US grieving for her dead husband. With Kirby.

After a few months, McGill wises up and returns to the US.  Garr and Kirby are now married and pretend not to know him.

There is a ludicrous trial  where McGill is found guilty of murdering himself.  Garr and Bruno live happily ever after on his insurance money.

The trial could have worked, but the script just wasn’t tight enough.  However, the casting and performances make this one a winner.

Post-Post:

• This episode was directed by Michael J. Fox.  There is a tasteless joke to be made about him handling the camera, but the last thing I want on this blog is something tasteless.  Or a joke.
• Writer Scott Alexander has some high profile credits:  1408, Ed Wood, Man on the Moon, The People vs. Larry Flynt.
• Worst security ever.  I’m not a locksmith, but shouldn’t there be a slot for the chain on the door?

Oh, I get it.

The question is, how much of a suspension of disbelief are you willing to concede.  I’m pretty lenient — I’ll normally check my brain at the door.  And I mean my door, before I even leave for the theater.  Sometimes, even the previous day.  There is one huge glaring flaw here, but it doesn’t prevent me from enjoying the episode.

We start off in a town that reminds me of the facades of Rock Ridge (when they come in to destroy the real Rock Ridge, they’ll actually be destroying the fake Rock Ridge, but they’ll think it is the real Rock Ridge, but we’ll know . . .).

Hoping to steal a few G’s, including a 2nd one for last name, Earl Digs (Kyle MacLachlan) has just robbed the local bank.  This, after escaping from Yuma Prison where he was to be executed for the murder of 3 student nurses (during a slumber party — just speculation on my part).  The radio says he escaped in “a late model” Cadillac, although the one on screen looks pretty beat-up.

Driving through the desert, Digs notices a cop trailing him.  The cop pulls up beside Digs and immediately takes a shot at him.  Digs edges him off the road and he and the bike go down.  But he bounces back, rights the bike and continues his pursuit.  I’m starting to like this guy.

When Digs hears the siren again, he spins the car around and begin charging the cop.  The cop rolls off his bike and down a rocky hill, but the bike continues riderless and rams Digs car creating a huge fireball like the car was made of C-4 and the bike was made of anti-matter C-4.

Digs decides to make it on foot, using the little-known route to Mexico.  This cop is like a Terminator — he regains consciousness, climbs back up the hill and pursue Digs on foot through the desert.

They finally have a showdown in an abandoned store.  The cop is able to handcuff his wrist to Digs, but Digs is able to grab a gun and shoot him.  The cop’s last act is to swallow the key.  So now Digs is free to head south of the border down Mexico way, only 6 miles away, but he has a dead man attached to his wrist.  He resumes his trek with the cop slung over his shoulder.

Bloody hell — It’s always just after you washed the car!

Here is the problem:  There is a simple, obvious solution to his problem — just hack the cop’s hand off at the wrist.  Find a sharp rock, bite it, or just break his wrist and start a-twisting.  Digs can’t be squeamish, after all he was in the can for murdering 3 student nurses (in their lingerie — again, just speculation on my part).  He even admits to killing another 5 in Chicago.  So a little cop’s blood isn’t going to phase him.

The rest of the episode is a Weekend at Bernie’s scenario with him dragging or carrying the cop to Mexico.  It finally does occur to him to hack the cop off at the wrist.  But it doesn’t work out as he planned.  And the buzzard makes another appearance.

Despite that one oversight, it is a fun episode.  Although, would have killed them to have a flashback to the — just speculating here — nude pool party where the nurses were killed?

I always appreciate the use of the official “$” logo’d bank robbery bag.

Post-Post:

• I could also take issue with the title.  Like Lower Berth, someone here doesn’t seem to know how puns work.  Carrion Death makes no sense because Carry-On Death or Carrying Death is not a well-known phrase. A better title would have been Carrion Baggage.
• Surely that title was not dreamed up by Steven E. de Souza.  He has writing credits on Commando, Die Hard, Die Hard 2 and 48 Hours.  I think he knows what he’s doing.
• Digs, not Diggs?

Directed by the nephew of Herman J. Mankiewicz, writer of Citizen Kane.  Written by the first cousin of the Director.  Starring Mariel Hemingway, grand-daughter of Ernest Hemingway.

It would be easy to blame the nepotism of Hollywood, but these people have some decent credits among them.  Here, though, they came together to produce a pretty disappointing episode.

It’s a given that any show which involves fantasy or the supernatural will eventually have a love potion episode.  Maybe two.  I have no beef with revisiting the classic tropes, but you still have to put some effort into it.

The direction is sluggish — once again we have a guy at the helm who doesn’t seem to understand what the show is supposed to be.  At 28 minutes, it is one of the longer episodes and for no good reason.  Just trimming 5 minutes out might have helped.

Sadly, Mariel Hemingway is not much of an actress.  The awkwardness she brought to her role in Star 80 seemed like a great performance, but in retrospect, it might not have been acting.  On the plus side, she looks great in several lingerie scenes, and has insanely nice long legs.

Andrew McCarthy is a screen-writer who becomes infatuated with his actress neighbor. There is a fairly pointless sub-plot with a chain-smoking, mostly unseen apartment manager.  He gets the potion into McCarthy’s hands, but the part seems set up for far more.  General Burkhalter’s sister shows up, which is always nice but also mostly pointless. Yada yada love potion yada yada irony.

There are a couple of fun points, but it kind of loses me when McCarthy slugs Mariel Hemingway.  Overall not worth any more words.

Post-Post:

Theodore is the oldest kid at the orphanage, and there is little chance any parents will adopt him.  Being the oldest and the biggest, the standard bowl of orphan-chow they serve just isn’t enough.

We catch him sneaking down the stairs to the kitchen to steal a snack.  In the fridge, there is one chicken leg, an apple, an onion and half a bottle of milk.  This is to feed about 10 kids, so if they are hungry tomorrow, I don’t think it is going to be his fault.

He is busted by the headmaster Mrs. Hagstead who, like Mrs. Goodbody in the Bradbury episode, is not quite appropriately cast.  She is an older woman, but not a hag.  The casting director was on the ball casting a hottie as her assistant Miss Heather, though,  because, as science has proven, all Heathers are hot.  Hagstead tells Heather she must never talk about what happened to Theodore’s parents.

Hagstead instructs Heather to take Theodore back upstairs and lock him in his room. That night, Theodore sneaks out again by the full moon and comes back in the morning covered in dirt from his escape.

Against all odds, a couple comes to the orphanage and thinks Theodore is the perfect choice to live with them in “the lap of luxury.”  Theodore is in awe of the large house and his room which is filled with toys — which is a good thing since they keep him locked in his room.  All he has to keep him company are the many toys, Tobias the butler and a never-ending series of cakes, pies, sundaes, eclairs, ice cream, napoleons and milkshakes.

During a moonlight stroll around the estate, the couple tells Theodore that the have a special surprise coming up for him, but that it is a secret.  Tobias, also an orphan, seems genuinely concerned for Theodore’s welfare.  One night, Tobias is caught trying to smuggle Theodore out of the house.

He is caught by the couple who are revealed to be vampires.  Theodore manages to escape, but is caught running across the estate.  Turns out Theodore has a secret of his own.

That night, or at least at night, Theodore returns to the orphanage dressed like Danny Noonan at the Yacht Club and tells Hagstead and Heather that there are going to be some changes.

Great episode — this is how you handle kids, Outer Limits!

Post-Post:

• No idea when this is set, but Hagstead calls Theodore a “little Sputnik”, so it had to be after 1957.  Sputnik seems to have a few translations in English: Something that travels with the earth, Traveling Companion, Fellow Traveler.  This is funny considering the colloquial meaning of fellow traveler in this country even before Sputnik.
• Tobias is played by Larry Drake, last seen in the great And All Through the House and The Message.
• This is the writer’s sole credit.  The director had only one other directing credit, but was a production designer on a lot of big movies.  Despite these slim resumes, the writing and especially the direction were better than the average TFTC.
• Last episode of the season — don’t forget what you learned over the summer, guys.
• Gaines Orphanage, I get it.

Frank is driving his brother Eddie in their Ferrari — driving it like a Volkswagen according to Eddie. Eddie jams his his foot on top of Frank’s, sending them speeding until Frank agrees to see a doctor about their condition.  They pull up at a bar and get out revealing the are conjoined twins.  So unless they move to Europe, Frank will continue doing the driving.

They artfully hop up on the bar stools in unison as though they have done this many times.  Eddie starts crudely hitting on babes and Frank whips out Man’s Hope by Andre Malraux.  There is a cute girl next to him who happens to be reading Malraux’s Man’s Fate; what are the odds. Well, about a billion to one, so Frank should have been tipped off that something was up.  But then, so should I and I fell for it.

The episode is helped immensely by the presence of Timothy Stack as Frank.  His brother Eddie is well-played by Jonathan Stark.  Marie, the reader at the bar, is the very cute Jessica Harper who demonstrates that bug-eyes can be pretty damn cute.

On the dance floor, Marie tries to twirl between the brothers and is nearly clothes-lined by their connective tissue.  She runs away in horror, but later calls to apologize.

They end up end in bed, chastely lying side-by-side; while Eddie is being ridden by a dominatrix.  Marie can’t stand it, and heads for the bathroom.  The dominatrix joins her and it turns out they are in cahoots.

Frank actually has feeling for Frank and tells him it was all a set-up to get him to sign a release for a risky operation that could separate the twins.  Eddie is not pleased by this and kills Marie with a cleaver.  Eddie happily calls the police to confess knowing they can’t put just one conjoined twin in jail.  Things don’t work out exactly how he expects, though.

There are several small gags that make this a great episode.  I suspect Stack and Stark, both comedy writers, came up with some of these — the bar-stools, the dance floor, the peephole, the bedroom reveal, the fight, just great imaginative stuff.

Combine with a nice twist at the end and I rate this one the Dionne Quintuplets.

Post-Post:

• Malraux’s novels about the Spanish Civil War and the Chinese Revolution seem a strange choice for the books they are reading at the bar.
• At the end, Frank is reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles; OK, that one I get.
• So I guess the titles are the important part of the Malraux books.  It doesn’t quite work, though, because Fate and Hope don’t tie neatly enough into the characters. Still, I appreciate the effort.  Bravo.