Suspense — Help Wanted (06/14/49)

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One good thing about Suspense is that there is no time excruciatingly wasted by the odious Cryptkeeper or odious crypt-occupier Henry Rollins. [1] Alfred Hitchcock was great in that capacity, but there isn’t enough of him to go around. Well, not without making a big mess, anyway.

Mrs. Griffen comes to Mr. Crabtree’s apartment to collect his past due rent. He assures her that he will pay the 18 months due once he gets a job. Since he is 64, it better be soon. She gives him 2 weeks notice.

Sadly, he is supporting his daughter’s residency at a fancy private, er . . .  spa that has 500 thread-count walls. He has done everything he can to conserve money — did a reverse mortgage, sold his life insurance policy, claimed he would move to Camp LeJeune 1953 – 1987, and bought gold from that 10 year old Devane kid downstairs.

A young woman [2] listed on IMDb as Mrs. X (née Mrs. Twitter) knocks on his door and offers to pay him for his services, which is opposite the transaction that I’m used to. But, to be fair, she is responding to a job application he sent in, not a card shoved at me on Las Vegas Boulevard. I mean him. I said me, but I meant him.

The job specifically calls for an old dude with an accounting background so that he is used to the tedium.  The hours are the same as his odds of living to see Ike elected:  9 to 5.  It pays $100/week which, sure, sounds princely — but that is for 6 days.  He is really being paid to not do a goddam thing — like George Costanza with the Pinsky File, Sherlock Holmes’ Red-Headed League, or a University Presidentette. [3]

After leaving Crabtree, she calls Mr. X whose name she unwisely took at marriage. Mostly, she just compliments herself on her Marlingesque [4]  performance.

Crabtree goes to his new job and admires his name on the door. Inside, he finds a small office with a large window, no visitor chairs, a desk nailed to the floor, a calendar, and a cat. And get this — all of these are important to the story!  I’d say Suspense was ahead of its time, but I’m not sure most shows today are that well-crafted. Kudos!

Hey, for an office with no chairs, something looks pretty sit-able there!

Six months later, Mr. X finally visits the office. Crabtree says he is happy to meet him at long last. X reveals that the reports Crabtree submits are routinely burned without reading, like Kristi Noem’s unsold books in her publisher’s warehouse. Crabtree was actually hired to assist Mr. X in, as he puts it, “a very ingenious murder.” Boy, that X family really thinks a lot of themselves!

X marks the spot by saying the target is Mrs. X’s first husband — X’s Ex, who is blackmailing them. He is threatening to accuse Mrs. X of being a bigamist. Mr. X is a public figure and such an accusation back then would ruin them.

Later that day, as X told him, a man arrives asking for a “contribution”.

Spoiler!

What follows is one of those situations where writing it out would take forever, and be even more tedious than usual. Shockingly, this is because it is a good, twisty episode.

Of course it is primitive, and the organ is still overwrought and intrusive.  However, there was a creativity in this series that was missing from, oh say, Science Fiction Theatre.   As frequently happens, I’ll never watch it again, I can’t recommend it, but this was a great episode . . . grading on a curve of Sweeneyesque magnitude, of course.  Well done, Suspense!

Other Stuff:

[1]  Honestly, I thought I read he had died recently.  Also, WordPress Blocks is garbage.  It took me forever to figure out how to make the icon appear to create the [1] super-script.  At least Adobe gave me the option to roll back their update which is a massive, chaotic piece of shit.

[2]  Well, relatively young. Otto Kruger (Crabtree) is in contention for oldest actor I’ve covered yet — born in 1885.

BTW, the landlady is played by 70’s mainstay Ruth McDevitt. I say 70’s mainstay not because of the numerous 1970’s TV series she appeared in, but because her age stayed in the 70’s throughout her entire decades-long career. Like Burt Mustin, she seems to have been born at age 75.

[3]  Certainly there is no reason a woman can’t do this job, but why is every moron university president that makes the news a woman?

[4]  Referring, of course, to my favorite actress Brit Marling.  I stand by that despite her last effort, which was literally years in the making, being a collosal bore.

I see the short story Help Wanted was later adapted as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (five episodes before I started this nonsense).

Tales of the Unexpected — Taste (04/12/80)

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Blindfolded Richard Pratt swirls the salty liquid around in his mouth and spits it out.  “Oh, this is a very good-humored fellow!” he exclaims.  “A benevolent cheerful little chap!  A bit naughty!”  Well, I’m glad he got to know the guy before blowing — oh wait, he is one of those pretentious wine snobs assigning human characteristics to a cocktail of decaying vegetation.

He further identifies the wine as a 1959 German [1].  The TV host says he has gone four for four.  The show is watched by Sybil Schofield and teenage daughter Louise, who are expecting him to join them for dinner.  Louise complains that Pratt is boring, and always stares at her without looking like George Clooney. [5]

Louise goes to the study to ask her father what sort of glasses they should use because Pratt is just the kind of humorless dilettante [3] that would not see the whimsy in my vintage Flintstone jelly glasses.  Schofield is preparing for Pratt’s challenge by masking the bottles like [insert COVID reference here]. [4]  

While the Schofields wait for Pratt to join them and American writer Peter Bligh for dinner, Pa Schofield explains that at every gathering he challenges Pratt to identify the vintage of a mystery wine.  So far Pratt has beaten him every time.

Louise answers the door.  While Pratt has her alone, he gives her a gift, his new book about — surprise! — wine . . . to a girl too young to drink (well, in our backward country that looks down on giving alcohol to minors and windowless vans, anyway).  The repulsive old man has inscribed it “from an admirer.”

Before dinner, they prepare for the wine-tasting.  Schofield knows to give Pratt a bottle of soda water so that he may “sponge out the palate and scour out unwanted tastes” . . . such as famously decaying British choppers, presumably.  Being a refined English gentleman, Pratt takes the bottle to another room to gargle and spit in the shitter. [2]    

Inexplicably, however, he then has some appetizers and a Mosel Riesling before the big event.  Schofield retrieves the wine from the study where it has been assuming room temperature.  To be fair, they did explain why it had to be that room. 

Schofield is confident he will stump Pratt this time.  He does not even think it would be sporting to have their usual wager.  However, Pratt is so cocky that he insists on raising the stakes.  Rather than the usual ante of one case of wine, he proposes fifty cases and a box of Slim Jims!  Then Pratt proposes £10,000!  However, his real proposal is that the stakes be “the hand of your daughter in marriage” as he is tired of his own hand.

Schofield protests that Pratt has no hot underage daughter of his own to wager against Louise . . . no, seriously, he does.  Pratt counters that he will put up his house to match the bet.  Obviously Louise is not on board.  Her father explains to her why this is a sure thing.  

The claret is poured for each person.  Pratt does his usual tasting, savoring, swirling.  He pronounces it a “very interesting little wine, gentle, gracious, almost feminine in its aftertaste”.  He deduces it is from Bordeaux, then slowly and methodically deduces the exact year, location, rue, and the pronouns of the vintner.  He nails it!

Louise quite reasonably bolts out at the prospect of marrying this disgusting old fool.  The housekeeper then enters and hands Pratt his reading glasses . . . which she found in the study!

Schofield picks up the other bottle and raises it over Pratt’s head.  He perfectly sells that he is going to bash Pratt’s head in, but at the last moment, merely dumps the contents on him.  Again, the jaunty closing theme is the perfect punctuation.  Strangely, this amusing cop-out makes me more appreciate the ending of a different TOTU episode.  Surely, the cut-away in Neck is confirmation that a head is about to roll.  Cut-away indeed!

Another perfectly fine episode that I will never watch again or recommend to others.  This is what Ray Bradbury Theatre could have been with a bit more edge.

Of course, the final word in human trafficking comes from the Odd Couple, linked below.  Well, you know, except for slavery and stuff.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  If there was a famous German born in 1959, I couldn’t find ihm / ihr / sie.  [UPDATE:  Found one — that’s what took seven months.] 
  • This episode is labeled as “TOP RATED” in the always-suspect IMDb episode list.
  • [2]  OK. the loo.  The fact that, in 10 seconds of research, I could not find a clip of Ted Baxter saying Looouuuu makes me question this whole internet thing.
  • [3]  Mea Culpa:  Dilettante does not mean precisely what I thought.
  • [4]  That’s not a Bidenesque literalism, I just couldn’t think of anything I liked in seven months.
  • [5]  George Clooney was my instinctive reference.  That seemed ridiculous, so I changed it to David Cassidy (1970’s teen idol).  Then I saw that Clooney is now actually a little older than Pratt, so it makes perfect sense (but a far finer specimen).  So I changed it back.
  • Ron Moody (Pratt) starred in Mel Brooks early forgotten film, The Twelve Chairs.

Science Fiction Theatre – The Strange Lodger (02/08/57)

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The redundantly-named Poll-O-Meter was invented to detect what people are watching on TV, presumably for tax purposes because everything is for tax purposes.  Specially designed vans collect this data as they drive through communities. [6]

That is, “Until the morning of June 20th when the Poll-O-Meter gave a result which was apparently contrary to reason and possibility” and not just finding a viewer of HBO’s Girls. [3]  Dr. Jim Wallaby was called in to explain the results and so people could make fun of his name.

As they drive, the POM efficiently detects the viewing in each house.  All is well until one house is determined to be watching channel 84, which was never assigned by the FCC. [1] You might ask then why there is even an 84 on their dial?  Well, I’d like to know why my Toyota’s speedometer goes to 160 MPH. [5]

They go into the house to be sure nothing is escaping taxation.  In a rare departure for this series, there is actually a funny scene.  The woman who lives on the first floor is a motormouth.  She enthusiastically answers Wallaby’s questions even though her TV won’t be delivered until tomorrow.  Her upstairs tenant, Mr. Rohrbach, says he was watching channel 9.  As Wallaby leaves, the woman amusingly continues babbling about the mahogany-cased TV she does not have yet. [2]

That night, Wallaby is still trying to figure out how he was getting a signal from Channel 84.  His beautiful girlfriend has an idea:  Go back and see what was being transmitted on Channel 84.  Wallaby, the driver, a camera-man, and the cute girl crowd into the micro-bus.  The result is not what I usually see from this scenario online.  They report the phenomena to the FCC.  Wallaby describes the transmission as “a scrambled alphabet”, although there are clearly words on the screen.  To be fair, I guess he was technically correct.

We see Rohrbach setting up equipment in his apartment.  He begins scanning a page from the encyclopedia, which is how I went to sleep when I was a kid.

Back in the office, the bus gang is reading a printout of the “scrambled alphabet”.  Wallaby says it was a “brain breaker” to crack the code which, as far as I can see, was mostly inserting spaces between words.

Wallaby is visited by a man from the government.  He says he works “for the agency that investigates UFO”.  Singular.  He repeats, “UFO, Unidentified Flying Objects.”  So I guess the O used to include the S.  Since this was filmed before the Bill of Rights — hey, my public school education pays off again — they go back to search Rohrbach’s apartment.

Rohrbach returns, but isn’t too upset by Wallaby’s intrusion.  The conversation turns to Einstein and E = MC2 , as it frequently does during a home invasion.  Rohrbach says it is not only possible to send TV pictures via energy, but also objects and people.  When Wallaby returns to the Van, they take another look at the Channel 84 transmission.  They see Rohrbach teleporting out, Star Trek style.

The UFO man suggests Rohrbach was an alien scanning the encyclopedia to transmit back to his superiors as a report on Earth, which seems like cheating.  I guess that’s why he didn’t just simply teleport the whole encyclopedia.  Sure, he would have gotten the gold gilded pages and rich Corinthian binding, but he would have been nailed as a plagiarist like a certain scumbag president in Volume B.

This is the last episode of Science Fiction Theatre.  It was a paradoxical sci-fi series because the first season embraced the new technology of color broadcasting, then it reverted to lower tech B&W in season 2.  B&W was really a better fit because it lowered your expectations of a well-written and competently acted show.  On the other hand, after 60 years of color TV, we now know that color is not a sign of quality.

The series never aired on a major network or NBC — it was syndicated.  I’m not sure what the air date stated on IMDb means then, but it would have had stiff competition that night from Rin Tin Tin, Flicka, and Coke Time with Eddie Fischer (apparently guest starring his daughter Carrie this week).  Woohoo!

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  For kidz reading this, TVs used to have a VHF dial for Channels 2 – 13 and a UHF dial for Channels 14 – 83.  They also had a knob for Brightness, but it didn’t make the shows any smarter (Gallagher, circa 1985).
  • [2]  This episode was directed by Eddie Davis who directed the series’ best episode, Sun Gold.  He also directed Killer Tree which contained the exact same chatty woman gag.  It was such an unexpected bit of humor and characterization that I Iaughed both times.
  • [3]  A better reference would have been HBO’s Arliss, but so few people remember it despite running 7 seasons, that it is a little too good of a reference.
  • [5]  Done because engineers want the actual top speed to be in the high-visibility 10:00 to 2:00 territory.  In supermarket parlance, this was formerly known as the Bud Light Shelf Display Zone.
  • [6]  As was actually done when the BBC used Detector Vans to see who was watching Masterpiece Theater without a license.  They soon found it cheaper and more accurate to scan for the sound of snoring.