Rated dead last of 268 episodes in IMBb’s increasingly credible User Ratings. 99.6% of the episodes were deemed better than this one. You could watch AHP every weeknight for a year and not get to this episode.
Even Hitchcock’s intro is off-putting. He is playing a bartender, but the TV is blasting so loud — gunfire, screeching airplanes, etc — that we can’t hear him speak. I initially fast-forwarded through it because I thought it was an audio problem. It isn’t just loud, it is offensively grating . . . like this episode’s Clint Kimbrough as David Logan. I fear as AHP enters the 1960s this year, this episode signifies a change. Will we lose the stoic war veterans, proper businessmen, reserved bankers, sturdy farmers, etc. [1] Enter the weepy, screaming, self-indulgent man-child throwing tantrums in public. I blame James Dean.
Sweaty David Logan is tossing and turning in bed before he wakes up from his dream shrieking. He is living in a cramped apartment with his mother. His bedroom has a window that is so comically close to their neighbor that he can see her nervously getting dressed to go to her first day on the job as the new librarian. Wait, that’s my dream. His window faces a wall that is so close it looks like a framed painting of bricks.
I’m always happy to see directors get creative with their composition, but who thought this was a good idea?
David laments his father leaving them as if they meant nothing to him. His mother just doesn’t want to hear any more about it. She says what happened was between her and his father. He has put on a suit and is going out. His mother asks him to “stay here with me.” That works about as well with David as it did with his father.
A blonde is hitting on David in a bar but he says, “I don’t like blondes.” His blondist tendencies only seem to apply to girls with blue eyes, however, and this floozy has brown eyes. He lays a big kiss on her and tells her a secret — he’s only 17. She seems more concerned with him repeatedly saying he will be born at 11:00 tonight than the fact that he was actually born just 17 years ago. He tells her a story about his father fooling around with a blonde.
He goes on at length about his father with the blonde and how he left without even saying goodbye. When he shoves her, a sailor takes him out back to teach him some manners and, strangely enough, how to tie a bowline knot.
In a nice scene, he is able to talk David down. Like all sailors on leave, the old salt takes the 17 year old boy to the hot dog stand. No that’s not a euphemism — they actually go inside and he has a frankfurter. The sailor tells David about the Chief Gunners Mate that he 
is really going to “let have it” one day; maybe he was jealous of the Chief Gunner. See, cuz he had a mate . . . . David commiserates that there is someone in his life he would like to see dead also. He says ominously, “Tonight, somebody dies.” Well, I wouldn’t ever bet against that.
He leaves that bar and goes to Dooley’s [2] where his father played piano. The bartender is more concerned about his age than the blonde, but relents and gives him a boilermaker — way to ramp up. When the new piano player starts playing, David attacks him.
Blah blah blah, a news flash comes on the TV that David’s father has just been executed for the murder of his blonde girlfriend. Who says the news is always bad? As if that isn’t enough good news, he got fried only 2 months after the murder. David doesn’t take it as well as me, however. He hurls a glass through the TV screen and tries to pull it off the wall. He continues making a spectacle, crying, “I’m glad he’s dead! I hated him! I hated him!”
The failure of this episode falls squarely on the character of David Logan. I point to the character because I suspect the actor Clint Kimbrough did a great job doing what the script and director asked for. He is just such a whiny punk, though, it is hard to care. On the other hand, I found Norma Crane to be excellent as the blonde. The sailor was either great or terrible; I’m just not sure which. He did make an impression, though.
Rating it the worst episode of the series is pretty harsh. While David Logan was insufferable, the supporting cast really came through.
Other Stuff:
- [1] Of course they were all thieves and murderers, but they were otherwise of good character.
- [2] Reference to Dooley Wilson, the piano player in Casablanca?
- AHP Deathwatch: A new record, three survivors! Most notably, Michael J. Pollard and Clu Galager still show up occasionally.
- Written by Evan Hunter who would later write The Birds for Hitchcock. He also wrote 55 books about the 87th precinct. Or was it 87 books about the 55th precinct? It bugs me that he has a character named Meyer Meyer which is a rip-off of Major Major in Catch-22. It is especially galling that he did it 5 years earlier.
I don’t know whether to credit writer George R.R.R. Martin or director Jim McBride, but they pulled off a task I thought was impossible. They made a rock & roll segment which, not only did not make me cringe, but kept me entertained throughout. Of course, I have a few issues, but they mostly fall into the categories 1) I didn’t give it a chance, and 2) not enough of a good thing.
Pitkin climbs out of the car. Keen observers (i.e. not me) will notice that it is day-time now. He puts his thumb out and an old pick-up stops. He takes a look at the driver and says, “You look just like Elvis Presley!” The driver — Elvis — says, “Do I know you, mister?”
Pitkin decides to bury Elvis and assume his identity. He will honor Elvis’s memory, he will protect his legacy, he will ensure that the world will still have his music, he will use this 2nd chance to avoid all the mistakes that Elvis-Prime made. But mostly he will keep his own ass out of the electric chair.
I was thinking ahead that, in course-correcting, Pitkin should wait a few years later to call Priscilla Presley and should kick Col. Parker’s ass out a few years earlier. But I never jotted it down because that just wasn’t the point.
Whereas Voice of Reason assembled a diverse group of both white men and white women, this episode goes one better and has four clones of the same white guy kick off the action. They are parked conspicuously about 15 degrees off-kilter in a hotel parking lot waiting for newsman Donald Rivers. The crusading journalist, the progres-sive savior of the oppressed, the afflictor of the comfortable, [3] the champion of the underdog, outsmarts them by sending a homeless guy in his coat & hat out to be killed in his place while he sneaks down the back stairs.
After congratulating the network for their courage in airing the episode, Rivers goes to Exhibit A, 
Rivers interrupts his own show to tell viewers that the show’s parent company is giving a press conference airing on some of his affiliates. The corporate spokes-weasel says they do not control Rivers’ show and they are appalled by the sensationalism. She says his informant is mentally ill and, “The name of his show not withstanding, he is only interested in ratings.”
Avery’s unified theory is that the government is creating clones which they can control. These look-alike clones will then be used to replace world leaders and other powerful individuals. For Exhibit G, they completely wreck the time-space continuum by using a clip from a future episode, season four’s 
I try not to pre-judge, but this does not bode well . . .
chews out LeBreaux, the French cop, for their “frog talk” and reminds them they promised to keep him safe while he was “here to get me a new face.”
Gould is a complete dick, smoking a cigar in her office after she asks him not to. He demands they get started immediately on replacing his face and, really, who can blame him? Dr, Renaud tells him, “Here at the institute, we feel that cosmetic surgery is just one step in a much larger process.” He suggests they get down to business “before I shove this desk down your stinking throat!”
That night, Gould sneaks in to Bloc 6 where the surgery will be done. He picks up a couple of instruments which look like a garlic press and a mixer to me, but I’m no brain surgeon; or chef. On the X-Ray screen there are a lot more shots of brains than you might expect from a cosmetic surgeon. He finds a room of men either bald or with their head in bandages. One of them repeat–edly asks, “Bon jour, comment tallez-vous?” I think they were lobotomized, but to be fair, Gould never answers him.