John Sellig is shaving and thinking how much he looks like the guy from American Werewolf in London.  He is using a noticeably odd wall-mirror, small and not part of a medicine cabinet.  That design is necessary as one side suddenly gives way and the mirror begins swinging.  It reveals a camera behind the mirror.

John calls for his wife, but an English guy enters the bathroom instead and repairs the mirror.  I have no beef with the English, but this guy is just awful.  Being the 1980s TZ, you know there is a good chance they will squander a good premise.  I peeked ahead, and sure enough this is prime example.

They take an idea so good that The Truman Show won Oscars for it 9 years later, strip away all the nuance, slap on one of their patented, god-awful scores, and completely blow it.  Archie is just the first sign.  His chirpy demeanor, unthreatening accent, and tubby body are the perfect metaphor for this show.  Take anything unique, and grind it down until it is a featureless ball with no edges.  I know they only had 20 minutes to work with, but somehow Rod Serling did it 25 years earlier, backwards and in heels (although I might be mixing up 2 Hollywood stories).

David Naughton is a fine actor, but completely miscast here (actually he is well-cast for what TZ wanted to do — they were just wrong).  He always seems like a nice, dull, relatable guy on-screen.  That’s what made him effective in American Werewolf.  He was an average guy thrust into something horrific (lycanthropy, not Jenny Agutter).  When you take a dull guy and water down the conflict, you just get a dull, wet guy.

The story, such as it is, doesn’t even play by its own rules.  WTF would Archie show up to cover up the mirror?  How was he there so quickly?  Why is he English?  How does he think taking John into a closet to talk is not suspicious to viewers?  Then why does he keep spilling the beans after they leave the closet and go to the front door?  The ending tries to be clever.  In a way, it is, but I’m not even sure they meant it that way.

How to wrap up this mess?  Have John tap dance in his living room while the dreadful closing narration decisively undermines the episode.  There might be no better example in this series of an great idea just pissed away.

Other Stuff:

• Title Analysis:  Hunh?  Special Service?  There is no way, in combination or individually, that I can relate these words to the episode.