We start out in the office of the titular doubtful doctor.  Being the first to appear and with his prominence in the title, you might think this episode is about him.  Strangely, he is a very minor character and doesn’t even get a name; but you, for goddamn sure, better call him “Doctor“.

Ralph Jones has come to see a psychiatrist.  Jones flashes back to a strange experience he had recently.  He came home after a lousy day at work.  He immediately began sniping at his wife Lucille.  Their baby had swallowed a button that morning and she did not call to tell him everything was OK.  Of course, he didn’t pick up a phone and call either.

Also her brother needed $200 to close the “uptown option” and Ralph had just given him $300 to close the “downtown option”.  By “option” I think he meant prostitute, but I might be having my own flashback.

Also, their rent is going up, Lucille wants another button-muncher (another baby, not another lover), and on top of everything else, the f***ing Hornsbys are coming over for dinner!  He says, “Things seem to be closing in all of a sudden,” and pours himself a drink.  Lucille asks, “Must you drink before you shower?”  The real question is “Why not drink in the shower?”  What a time saver!  I thought shaving in the shower was good, but this is better.  He admits to Lucille that he misses his bachelor days, which goes over about as well as you would expect.

He says he doesn’t remember exactly when “it” happened.  He left the apartment, and got in the elevator.  Then he woke up in his old bachelor apartment.  He was surprised to see snow in July, but maybe Al Gore was coming to lecture.  He found his old clothes in the closet, and a calendar from 2 years ago.  His surly landlord knocked on the door and demanded the two months overdue rent.  The landlord is portrayed with the anger and humorless rage of a man owed three months back rent.  Seriously, this guy is like Pauly Walnuts.

Ralph decided to go talk about this with his then-fiancee Lucille at her old job at the Eagle Soap Company.  He told Lucille that he knew in one hour, her boss would sign as a new account for Ralph and they would go to lunch.  Strangely, her boss is out of town.  Did he get the date wrong, or is the past changing?  Then Lucille doesn’t like salmon, but she had ordered it on their first date.  Even more strange, she does go to lunch with this nut.

They went their separate ways after lunch.  Ralph took a walk down to the construction site which would be his apartment someday.  Lucille went back to the Eagle Soap Factory where it was her turn to test out various bath oils and creams as men with clipboards watched through a two-way mirror [footage missing].

Ralph sat down at the construction site, not sure where to go.  He bought some baseball cards off a kid who, surprisingly, was not him.  Then drowned himself.  Yada yada, Ralph goes back to the future.  And somehow has the wet baseball cards with him.

This was more like a Twilight Zone episode.  It was more like a Twilight Zone episode than some of the 1980s Twilight Zones I’ve posted about here.  Even before you get to the paranormal twist ^[1], that construction site is about as post-apocalyptic as you see on 1950s TV (there is a little trash and some 4X4s lying not quite parallel).  The score also is pretty eerie at this point.

There were similar twists in several TZ episodes.  For example, just 5 days before this aired, TZ ran King Nine Will Not Return — a dude inexplicably goes back in time, and returns with tangible evidence of his experience.  Pretty close.

Dick York is great in his niche, unfortunately I don’t think this was it.  He was Ludacris as a gangster in Vicious Circle.  However, he rebounded as smiling psychopaths in The Dusty Drawer and The Blessington Method.  There was not much room for his humorous side in this episode.  He came off as crazy and angry — a pencil-necked Brian Keith.  Even this is OK when he is in a comic situation, but there is no Endora or Dr. Bombay here to play off of.  Could have been worse; could have been Dick Sargent.

Not a bad episode, but York was a little grating and the supernatural element just seemed out of place.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Hey, that should have been the B-Side to The Monster Mash.