It’s no fun kicking around a family down on their luck.  So, simply stated, Steve Cranston is an unemployed construction worker.  He is currently residing in a shelter with his wife Elaine and daughter Lisa.  The bad luck continues as he learns the shelter is about to be foreclosed on.

It is, however, fun to kick around the narrator.  Like last week, he trots out his best twee NPR voice to tell us “Steve Cranston, is a man living what Thoreau called ‘a life of quiet desperation’.”  Nope, still not fun.  Steve’s wife is supportive and his daughter clearly loves him even as they cuddle on a cot in a shelter.  Frustrated that he can’t provide for them, he blows up at his wife, and goes out for a walk.

Seriously, is this supposed to be something other than a shadow?

A police car passes him, shining a light in his face.  As the car passes, there is a shadow of the car from a streetlight.  I’m not sure they didn’t enhance it to last a little longer and be blacker.  There is even a musical stinger.  But ultimately it was a rectangular shadow that did nothing a normal shadow would not do.  Was this the titular shadow?  Or was it like the mist in the previous episode which cruelly got our hopes up for something . . . anything to happen.  Then disappeared. ^[1]

Steve finds himself on the sidewalk at the front gate of the mansion of local rich guy Frederick Perry.  His butler and a tech from Sleepwell Security are having an unsecure conversation about the security system.  The repairman needs a part, so the system will be inactive that night.  The butler and the man go their separate ways, leaving the security fence open, so neither of these guys is too bright.  As Steve watches, the fence begins to automatically close.  Wait, I thought it was inactive. ^[2]

Fortuitously having missed a few meals, Steve is able to squeeze inside before it closes.  He is so desperate for cash that he slides open a patio door and enters.  I guess it is the alarm system that is inactive tonight, although it seems to have deactivated the mechanical locks too.

In a possible sign of Steve’s real problem, surrounded by rich guy stuff, Steve first steals a swig of Mr. Perry’s booze.  On the way in, he has also knocked over a plant, left the door slightly open, and left a trail of muddy footprints.  Maybe this guy’s problem is not the economy — he’s just not very smart.

As Steve cases the room, we get a close-up of hands pulling a pistol from a drawer and nervously fumbling with the magazine.  The scene is so ineptly edited, though, that we don’t know which man has the gun.  Both men have reason to be scared.  Steve is reluctantly committing a crime to help his family, and a gun would just get him in deeper.  Perry knows that if he shoots a burglar in his own freakin’ house, he will be put on trial; worse, all his rich, liberal friends will know he owns a gun!

OK, it is Perry that has the gun.  He catches Steve just as he finds a wallet full of cash.  Steve tries to talk him into not calling the cops.  Perry is determined to make the call.  As the noted sociologist Billy Ray Valentine said, “You can’t be soft on people like that.”  Steve backs up until he hits the liquor cabinet  . . . funny how his hands always seem to find the hooch.  He slings the heavy decanter at Perry’s noggin just as Perry shoots him.  Both men go down like Frazier.

Steve wakes up in Perry’s bed.  Even stranger, the butler recognizes him as Frederick Perry. ^[3]  He tries to call his wife at the shelter but is told she went to the hospital with her husband who has been shot.

He goes to the hospital.  Looking like the man who shot Steve Cranston, that goes about as badly as you would expect.  As long as he is stuck in the body of multi-millionaire, he decides to do something good.

Soon, for no apparent reason, the two men later swap bodies again.  Frederick Perry abides by Steve’s good deed (i.e. the deed to the shelter).  Steve even gets a job out of the deal.  Whether Perry understands what happened is never addressed.  They all live happily ever after.  God bless us every one.

Except anyone who tuned in looking for an episode of The Twilight Zone.

To be fair, it was fine.  I’m just tired of the get-the-girl, save-the-family-farm, move-out-of-the-shelter endings.  I still get shivers thinking of the ending of On Thursday We Leave for Home which I saw 2 years ago.  I will forget this episode before breakfast.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Upon multiple viewings, it appears they CGI’d some eyes into the shadow.  If so, it is still so detached from the “event” as to be pointless.
• [2] Perry’s Rolls Royce is parked just inside the gate.  Why is it down by the gate?  Wouldn’t it be under the porte-cochère at the house, or in the garage, or in front of the local nudie bar?  I guess that is to inform us Perry is rich just in case the security perimeter and butler don’t clue us in.
• [3] No big deal, but the boom mike is visible a couple of times here.
• Title Analysis:  What street?  What shadow?  That thing?