On a dark and stormy night, Ann Bolt is driving through the rain. After a nasty bolt of lightning, the radio starts playing some awful music and it seems to be daylight — or at least, dusk — I’m not sure if this was a story point or a mistake. The rain continuing, and the radio going crazy, I can see happening; but time reversing is going to get a reaction from me.
She pulls into the garage of the first house she sees, and rings the bell. The owner, Pat Blessington, invites her in, and Ann is confused by the krazee electronics. There is a closed circuit security monitor which she mistakes for modern art, a one-way window, and a telephone which is very unfuturistically built into a casserole console.
Pat is very accommodating, offering her a cigarette of a type she’s never seen before — non-lethal. Pat’s husband David comes downstairs to show off his new gadget — a mapping computer about the size of a suitcase. He is able to show her the way home, but they invite Ann back some time when she can stay longer.
When Anne arrives home, she notices her husband’s car is dry and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. For some reason, Ann’s husband Tony is waiting for her dressed as an old hag and begins screaming at her. Supposedly he is acting out the way she treats him, reducing her to tears.
I supposed the hag mask was an excuse to make something of the reveal that the same actor is playing David and Tony. It was wasted on me as he is such an average looking guy that I still couldn’t make them look alike the second time I watched it. Add completely different temperaments, hair and mustache, and it seems pointless.
After a lot of screaming, they go upstairs to check on their child, also named David — hey, you don’t think . . . Tony makes eyes at the Nanny as he passes.
The next day at the Blessington’s house, it is clear that David realizes that Ann is his mother, has somehow traveled from the past, and — oh yeah — isn’t dead. He is pretty nonchalant about this miracle. He talks about how he got the name Blessington from a relative who took him in as an orphan, but never mentions his prior name. He is also pretty obtuse in vaguely telling a story about a woman who killed her husband and later herself. Ach du lieber, just tell her and save her life, you idiot — she’s your mother!
Back at home, Tony mentions — apparently for the first time in their relationship — a cousin named Jane Blessington. That, combined with an incident older David mentioned about his 4th birthday finally clues Ann into what is happening.
None-the-less, after catching Tony making out with the Nanny, she shoots him and plans on killing herself before the trial. This is the sacrifice she is willing to make after seeing what a good man David grew up to be.
Post-Post:
- Twilight Zone Legacy: None.
- Swapping spit is apparently pretty casual in the future, so it is lucky David recognized his mother early on, or we could have had a reverse Back to the Future moment.
- Skipped segment: Logoda’s Heads, because two was enough. Although, Vigoda’s Head — that, I would have checked out. A rare misfire by Robert Bloch.
