They are going for a meta motif tale about a sub-par story being handed in just before deadline at the office of the Tales from the Crypt comic book.  The episode seems even more meta than they realized.

In a dark seedy hotel room, Jerry calls floozy Velma to get in the tub with him.  Surprisingly, he is wearing a t-shirt and an open dress-shirt in the filled tub.  More surprising to him, I suspect, is the belt that Mr. Velma loops around his neck to kill him.  He strangles Jerry as he thrashes about in the water.  Thankfully, he not Porky-Pigging it but does have on some fabulous blue plaid boxers.  In the tub.  In the water.

The topless Velma cheers her husband Roger on as Jerry croaks; then dies.  The couple had used Jerry in a con, and were just getting rid of him.  Roger criticizes her for enjoying her work too much.  She admits she had some good memories.  Suddenly Jerry rises up and breaks her husband’s neck.  He says, “I’m glad you feel that way.  I’m all choked up!” as he reaches for her throat.  She screams, and that frozen shot dissolves into the last panel of the TFTC comic book submission from Rolanda.  Good stuff.

But what do I know?  Her editor Vern says he doesn’t understand.  Is Vern dead?  Is Roger dead?  Is one or both of them a ghoul?  “What kind of ending is that?”  Vern declares it “a piece of shit.”  Even with 2 hours to deadline, the story is deemed not good enough. ^[1]  He fires her and has security throw her off the elevator in a nice little uncushioned fall by Rita Rudner.  She comes back that night and blows him.  Away.  For some reason, 6 cops are waiting in the lobby and blow her away.

She wakes up the next morning to a sunny day, birds chirping, and complete lack of being dead.  The vignette with Roger, Jerry & Velma plays again, although notably beginning this time after Velma put on a bra.  Rolanda is stunned as the day replays just as it did before with Vern hating her submission and him having to use the story about the head.

Again, Vern calls her into his office.  This time she stops his hand from buzzing security; although it was later in the day when security killed her the first time.  I guess this, at least, saved her from being thrown to the floor again.

That night she goes back to see Vern.  To be safe, she leaves the gun at home.  Vern pulls his own gun on her, though.  In a scuffle, she ends up killing Vern in this iteration also.  She gets on the elevator and pushes floor 13 rather than 1 as she did before.  Wait a minute, I understand her not wanting to go to 1, fearing she would be shot.  But why go UP to 13?  Then what?  What’s the plan?  Why not just go down to the 2nd floor and take the backstairs?  No good, the cops are miraculously waiting for her on 13 and mow her down.

She wakes up the next morning to a sunny day, birds chirping, and complete lack of being dead.  Both Velma and her boobs are MIA this time.  Rolanda tears up her story and calls in sick.  While she’s on the phone, Vern rings her doorbell.  He came to tell her she’s fired, then pulls a gun on her.  Wait, what?  What is the motivation for that?  Sure, he is under pressure with the deadline, but he was under pressure in the other iterations also.

But he turns the gun on himself and fires.  Again, why?

Like all innocent people on TV, she picks up the weapon just as the cops arrive.  Surprisingly, they do not riddle her with bullets this time.  I assume she got a fair, though incorrectly decided, trial because she is facing a firing squad.  They fill her full of lead and that scene dissolves into the last panel in a new comic strip.

The scene reboots again.  The roles are reversed and she begins speaking Vern’s dialogue from earlier in the show.  There is a new bit about him using her likeness in the comic which does not belong because it introduces a new element.  When she calls Vern into her office to fire him, he says “Oh shit.”  But why?  This is his first iteration.  He doesn’t know what’s coming.

There really is a lot to like in a short episode here, but the story ain’t part of it.  And a tip to aspiring screenwriters, story is kinda important.

First of all, whose story is it?  OK, Rolanda does a bad thing when she kills Vern the first time around.  It’s not like she gets away with it; she is executed.  Is the 2nd go-around a Groundhog Day-esque shot at redemption or her own personal Hell?  In either scenario, why would the roles reverse at the end?  Ya might think, well, karma is going to force her to experience Vern’s death as well as her own — double the torture!  Interesting, but Vern’s “Oh shit” tells us he is now the one aware of the inevitable future.  How did this become his story?

Ya say, he committed suicide, ergo he is going to Hell.  Not so fast, then where is the resolution to Rolanda’s fate?  Did this get her off the hook somehow?  And don’t forget, this episode began in reality, then went into cosmic iterations with magic police and body-switching.  That dimension is where Vern killed himself, not in the real world.

One more puzzler from the reversal scene.  Vern is Rolanda and Rolanda is Vern.  OK, it makes no sense, but here we are.  Then why are the two other prominently featured characters, other TFTC writers, played by different actors, and one is now a woman?  Maybe it is the actress who payed Velma, but that would make no sense because she was a dramatization in the first iteration.  She is blonde, but has glasses, different eyebrows, and a different hairstyle.  If TFTC was trying to be clever by making that Velma, it would take CSI to prove it.  This possibility is also made unlikely by the fact that I have no idea who the new dude is.  He bears no resemblance to Jerry or Roger.

And what is the point?  I’m sure getting killed is no day at the park, but is it really cosmic-level Hell?  Vern takes it in the melon.  Rolanda gets hit by a fusillade of bullets.  Both had to be pretty quick and painless.

The episode is only 20 minutes including credits and the odious Crypt-Keeper.  Maybe they could have ironed these issues out; they had a couple minutes to spare if a scene needed to be expanded or added.  For example, why are the cops magically waiting for Rolanda on the 13th floor?  Ya might say they are the cosmic enforcers; they will appear wherever Rolanda is to mete out her punishment.  True, but they could have made it credible.   For example, what if Rolanda had used my 2nd floor strategy, and the cops were waiting for her?  I would think “good strategy”, they split their team up, expecting such a ruse.  However, I don’t think they had 13 teams in position.

And yet, I liked it.  I stand by my theory that the writers giddily pitched a meta story about deadline pressure because they had to come up with a story quickly after they spent all their time smoking pot and campaigning for Bill Clinton.  But then it came to life when the other creators performed magnificently.

Richard Lewis and Rita Rudner were more known as stand-ups.  In fact, this was Rita’s first TV role.  They both totally nailed it, seeming to understand the show better than most of the producers.  The whole production was beautiful.  The office and workers had a 1950’s vibe, but was populated by dandies and hipster doofuses that I could imagine in the comic book biz.  The suits, suspenders, and fat colorful ties created the perfect atmosphere.  The pacing was brisk and there were a number of wonderfully composed shots.

If the screenplay had made a lick of sense, this could have been a model for what TFTC was supposed to be.  As it is:  Slightly guilty pleasure.  But a pleasure.

Other Stuff:

• [1] The replacement story is about “a guy who wants to be head of the company, so they cut his head off.”  That’s how bad Rolanda’s story must have been.
• From the writer of Outer Limits’ Alien Radio a couple days ago.