Matt is in critical condition. He senses death coming, and I mean literal death on two legs. He pulls himself up, ripping numerous tubes from numerous orifices. When Death reaches Matt’s room, all he finds is an empty bed; Matt and girlfriend Lori have sped off. And good for them — shouldn’t Mr. Death only show up when a person is about to die? If Matt was able to get up, lose the tubes, make it to the car, and take a road-trip, Mr. Death was a tad pre-mature.
Lori turns down the dirt road to the titular Winfield with Matt shivering in the back seat. She soon arrives at a town that seems stuck in the 19th century. Finally, three weeks later, Death takes the same turn off the main road. To be fair, there was probably some low hanging fruit at the hospital keeping him busy — that’s like the Dollar Store to Mr. Death.
A couple of yokels are playing horseshoes when Death’s white Mercedes rolls into town. One of them says, “What do you think that is?” Oddly the whole town saw Lori & Matt’s car three weeks earlier and seemed to get the whole car-thing. The crowd is a little taken aback as am I — white is a terrible color for a Mercedes.
One of the hayseeds lets it slip — and by “let’s it slip”, I mean proudly exclaims — that he is 150 years old. Shafting another actor out of a speaking role, he also exposits that Matt is hiding out in town. Death calls his predecessor Chin Du Long for some advice. The townsfolk hope they can strike a deal with the new Mr. Death as they did with “The Chinaman.”
One of the hicks tells Death that Chin allowed them to live because “they wasn’t herting anyone.” OK, he correctly pronounced it hurting, but I assume it was misspelled in his mind. This raises a few questions. Did Chin come to town to kill all of them at the same time? Did a possum fall into the well? Did he grant them immortality, or did they already have it? What was the aforementioned deal? What did Chin get out of it other than a racist nickname?
Matt gallantly gives himself up to save the town, but Death says he might have to take everyone. His predecessor Chin was “too sentimental in an inscrutable kind of way.” You know, like all Chinese people. Death tries to get Chin on the phone, but he is unavailable. Death says, “I don’t care if he’s dining with Mao, I want him on the line.” Because who else would a Chinese dude sit with at the cafeteria having only 10 billion dead souls to choose from. And wouldn’t Mao be in Hell, anyway?
The mayor steps up and offers to sacrifice the town for the boy. They are all over 100 years old, but Matt is just starting out. Matt won’t hear of it. All three factions yell at Death to take them, me being the third. Death inexplicably changes his mind and lets everyone live “for another century or so.” He gets into his Mercedes and zooms into the sky like Doc Brown — although his rear window still shows him at ground level.
There’s a lot to like here, and any complaints were mostly to fill space. The one small weakness is the ending — I would have really liked some motivation for Death’s change of heart. The frontier street has a solid feel to it, and the score is appropriately banjo-y and twangy. Matt and Lori [1] don’t have much gravitas, but the episode is well-carried by Death and the Mayor. I initially thought Gerritt Graham was miscast as Death, but he won me over. Henry Gibson as the Mayor was interesting as always. Despite being great character actors, neither ever seemed to be appreciated by Hollywood. I suspect Gibson was undervalued because of his work on Laugh-In. That’s what did-in Nixon, as I recall.
Post-Post:
- [1] Congratulations to JoAnn Willette on surviving that really awful 1980s hairdo.
- Classic TZ Legacy: Numerous embodiments of death. I guess. I can only think of two. I’ll say this for them, it took more than an upset stomach for them to show up.
Captain Jerry Frost of the Texas Air Rangers, like me, hears footsteps behind him. He and his reporterette companion Helen Stevens duck into La Estrellita [1]. It is a smokey cafe along the border filled with hombres y mujeres. Since this is 1930, this means it is on the south side of the border. He sees his pal Captain George Stuart and tells him, “Hell’s about to pop.”
There is a modern struggle going on in the desert. “The covered wagons have been replaced by the Jeeps and trailers of Uranium prospectors and mining engineers.” Fred Strand is one of the new pioneers. His wife Lois asks how he can stand the horrible incessant sunshine. She must really hate it as she is wearing her sunglasses indoors.
A couple of doctors from Indian Flats show up in a hideous black car. [2] They are not too happy that the mice are gone. They ask to speak to Lois, but she has apparently gone for a walk. Fred says that is unlikely because she hates the sun. They step outside and spot her 
They somehow deduce that they should give her a glucose IV which puts her into a diabetic coma. Amazingly, this works. She wakes up and that is it. She does, however, demand that Fred become a vegan; and not just for Christmas and her birthday.
Dr. Molstad is showing a journalist [1] around his clinic where he studies people who have no emotions. A little girl is licked by a puppy and doesn’t want to wash up. A little boy is treated to a concert by a piccolo-playing clown and isn’t screaming in terror. Molstad says they have Alexithymia, which is an actual condition.
As they observe, Beth eats lunch and watches TV after the operation. There seems to be no change at all. Then Molstad sees her eyeing the TV remote. “She wants to change the channel. She’s bored with it, dissatisfied.” I feel her pain. He is ecstatic as she changes the channel. “She expressed a desire!”
Molstad says the emotion chip is a failure. Considering Beth’s emotional reaction to that assessment, he is either right or wrong and I firmly stand by that conclusion. That night Kevin cooks her dinner and pours her wine. As they start to get more horizontal, she again sees the aliens and they drag her away to their spaceship for a different kind of probe. Or maybe the 
Kevin and Joan come back and Beth sees them smooching. She over-hears them discussing how they were gaslighting her because they had developed a rival emotion chip that could be worth billions. She grabs the operating table from the UFO and rams Kevin and Beth right out the window. It is laughable that the table was fast enough and had the mass to push two adults to their death. On the other hand, it was satisfying and pretty awesomely shot. Beth’s reaction is no reaction.
Summers tells her, “Billy B. was one of the original acid rockers, the greatest American guitarist pre-Hendrix, the big rock sex god after Elvis and before Jim Morrison.” Unlike the other three dumb-asses, his death was not self-inflicted by drugs — he was shot on stage 20 years ago. And unlike two of those three, he seems to be alive.
Summers busts him for giving the exact same inane response he gave a reporter 20 years earlier. His other dopey answers are also rehashes of old interviews. They want some new material, so Summers challenges Billy B. to play more than a simple riff. When he seems unable, they peg him as a phony. He pulls a gun on them. Summers proves to be quite agile as he leaps through a glass window, then jumps from the 2nd story. Sadly he is killed by Red or Sonny or whatever Billy B.’s lackey is named.