Wow, it is an almost-star cast! Future Larry Tate from Bewitched, 22 year old Suzanne Pleshette in her 8th TV gig, and one of Hollywood’s few greats: Actor, Director, Producer Norman Lloyd; George Mitchell and Marjorie Bennett might not be as famous, but their resumes are yuge. Amazing what an actor can accomplish when they don’t watch MSNBC and Tweet all day.
Harold Stern is working remotely before that was a thing. He is at home at a messy desk. Unlike slobs today, he is not wearing his pajamas in a Zoom call; he is wearing a long-sleeve shirt and a necktie. Although, being a tax accountant, maybe those are his pajamas.
He hears on the radio that the police are looking for him. They give his last known address twice, although I’d like to think the police already checked there. I must call out the poor inserts One Step Beyond uses of the police. OSB has been consistently brilliant at incorporating stock footage of everything from wars to horseraces. This time, however, the shots are blurry, have distracting shadows, and they seem a little dated even for a 1959 show.
In seconds, Detective Tate is knocking on his door. Stern, living under an alias, tells him he has the wrong man and tries to close the door. The officer pushes his way in, so we know this does not take place in Uvalde. Turns out the police were searching for Stern so he could donate his rare blood type to a crash victim.
This is what Stern was trying to avoid. He has donated blood 31 times in the past 15 years, but not in the last 3, which is the kind of straight-forward answer you would expect from a tax accountant. Tate finds an excuse to drag him downtown — signing a false name to tax returns. Although his choice of signing “Donald Trump” to avoid tax scrutiny was quixotic at best.
He explains to Detective Tate that whenever he gives blood, he can see the future of the recipient. Sometimes they win the lottery, sometimes nothing happens, but other times they die. He even has newspaper clippings to prove the fate of his donees. Well, I don’t think Judge McMann [1] would accept that as evidence of precognition since the events have already taken place. Stern is taken to the hospital where the girl’s father shames him into making the donation.
A month later, the recipient, Martha Wizinski, comes to visit him. That night Stern has a nightmare about Martha dying. In a blatant HIPAA violation, he gets Martha’s address from the hospital and goes to her apartment. He finds her unconscious from a gas leak and saves her life a second time.
She gets mad at him looking out for her. He offers her a job and a place to stay. In the next few days, he chews her out for swimming after eating, running with scissors, and scissoring after eating. She gets tired of his warnings and packs to leave.
As she tries to leave, Stern struggles with her and somehow kills her. Her boyfriend is standing right outside the front door. He can hear this happening and does nothing . Say, maybe this is Uvalde.
Stern dies in an institute for the criminally insane.
It pains me to say it, but we might have found something Norman Lloyd was not great at. He gives his usual fine performance here except when he has to go over the top in anger or panic. Shockingly, he seems a little hammy.
Suzanne Pleshette is just as trashy as you would hope her to be . . . maybe that is too judgmental:
- She has no relationship with her father. She says he disappeared from her life again after she pulled through.
- She has the deep Elizabeth Holmes voice which only works if you are cute or selling bogus complex technologies to horny old men who pretend to understand them.
- She can’t hold a job.
- In fact, during the episode, she goes to an interview at a strip club.
- Sadly, the job is “camera girl.” Low self-esteem or class? You be the judge.
- Also, a smoker.
Sadly, the show again kills a random innocent person. Even that death is botched. We see them struggle, but how that turns into a murder is baffling. The episode also suffers from a lack of suspense, scares, or creepiness. The Standard Deviation on OSB is pretty slim but sadly, this is one of the lesser efforts.
Other Stuff:
- [1] I finally got an answer to my question of whether McMann (of McMann & Tate) ever appeared in an episode of Bewitched. He only appeared twice and was played by 2 different actors, Roland Winters and Leon Ames. At first I confused Leon Ames with Leon Askin. I think my way would have been better.
- Title Analysis: What delusion? I think Stern proved his abilities were real.
- Norman Lloyd’s character dies at age 53 — exactly half the age Lloyd lived to.
- Suzanne Pleshette was last seen in AHP’s Hitch Hike.
The AHP version is an immediate improvement. Although the story involves multiple scenes of a bathtub and sunlamp, there was nary an inch of skin to be seen last week. Here, not at all gratuitously, we begin with a dame in a bubble bath. [1]
Judy and Steve search the house. Judy is sure she searched her husband’s clothes before giving them to Goodwill. 
Some time later, the man who helped her at the cemetery stops by. He admits he is not a reporter, but an insurance investigator named Westcott. He became interested that Judy’s current husband sold her a $25,000 life insurance policy on her late husband just a month before he croaked. As long as the body was just lying there, he decided to order an autopsy; and, hey, that jacket would be a nice fit. Arsenic is found.
Well wait, they just paid the claim. Didn’t these chowderheads already know when the policy was purchased, who purchased it, and who they just cut a check to? And did it not arouse suspicion that Mrs. Mead bought a policy on her husband and made another man the beneficiary? [3]
Westcott tells her that in 1933 her husband’s mother tripped over a broom and fell down the stairs, leaving him a policy worth $25,000. Then the steering failed in his brother’s car and he collected another $20,000. Then he set his sister up on a date with Ted Kennedy. [2] She demands, “What has this got to do with how my first husband died? Certainly my husband didn’t get anything out of that!” Well, except for the life insurance proceeds that we were told in the first scene were paid directly to him. [3]
He cruises past the world’s oldest and best dressed hitchhiker. Then he has a second thought and slows down. The old gentleman trots up to the car and asks if Paul is going to London. As they drive off together, Paul is seen to be one of those lunatics that actually likes meeting people, enjoys talking to them, and is genuinely interested in what they have to say. Wait, I have a feeling I’m rooting for the wrong guy here.
Paul tells the HH to fasten his seatbelt, and he puts his on too. I guess going a mere 70 without them had been OK. They are thrown back in their seats as Paul accelerates. He gets the speed up to 125 MPH, then sees a motorcycle cop in the mirror. The HH urges him to just outrun the cop.
Watching all three of them work is a 
Dr. John Hustead has been experimenting with a magnetic field “that will not only make objects weightless, but actually reverse the effects of the earth’s gravitational pull” so that dropped toast will finally land jelly-side up, but on the ceiling. Elizabeth Wickes enters and tells him she just filled in at a lecture that he absent-mindedly forgot. Later, from 4:00 – 4:10 she will cover his weekly office hours.
After way too much talking, Hustead figures out the device needs fresh air . . . or cool air . . . or