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.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents — You Can’t Trust a Man (05/09/61)

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Singer Crystal Coe finishes her set.  She says the drums sounded like a jungle uprising, which is problematic enough to permanently finish her set today,  She also says the musicians sounded like they merged with the Stihlworkers [1] union, but what do chainsaws have to do with anything?

She sends her assistant home.  Her not-quite-ex Tony enters without knocking.  He reminds her he took a rap for her in Cleveland so their baby would not be born in jail like Bane; or in Cleveland.  For seven years, he never heard from her.  Suspiciously, not even a birth announcement.  Or a demand for half of the $.15/hour wage from his job in the prison workshop.

While in prison, he saw her picture in a magazine.  Sadly, since it was in a Reader’s Digest [4], it was not large enough to cover a hole like the one his cellblock neighbor Andy Dufresne would finally escape through in 4 years.  The article told how she had become a famous singer, been through a couple of husbands, ended up with a rich old oilman, and included her recipe for Apple Brown Betty [2] which has a different meaning in the can.  As does “in the can”.

Crystal generously asks how much he wants to forget they were married and never divorced even though she did it for free.  What a gal!  She has tried to destroy any paperwork that would connect them.  Tony reminds her that he never ratted her out to the man she robbed, or the man she married, or “the man”.

They get in her car and she drives to her beach house although, strangely, I’m not sure whose idea it is.  Crystal pulls over to get gas, and Tony tries to bail out.  Crystal stops him because she says she doesn’t want to have a man seen exiting her car.  I have to halt the proceedings and thank bare*bone e-zine for clearing up the motivations for me, because I was completely baffled how they got there and what either’s plan was.

When Crystal gets the gas card from the glove compartment, Tony sees she has kept his old gun . . . in the glove compartment . . . for 7 years apparently.  She eggs him on to take it, but he says he doesn’t want it.  Hunh?

When she signs the credit card slip she writes a short SOS note to the gas jockey.  She then cleverly indicates which road they will be taking.  As they drive on, 1)  she again accuses Tony of trying to shake her down, 2) he again denies having any interest in her or her money, 3) I get confused again.

Tony says any man who marries her deserves all the grief he gets.  He asks her to drop him off at the bus stop, but she refuses.  The cops appear behind them with sirens a-blarin’.  Crystal slams on the brakes and, in the confusion, grabs the gun.  1) She again accuses Tony of wanting her money, 2) he again denies it, 3) I again have to go off-campus to research their motivations.  As the cops approach, she shoots Tony.

At the police station, she says she did not know him.  She says he was waiting in the car after her show, although, I don’t see how that makes her story any more credible.

Back at South Fork, her oilman husband tells her she can stop working because he has r^ped the environment enough for the both of them.  The detective returns her car.  Turns out Tony invented a novelty in the prison workshop  — the Popeil Pocket Anus [3] — and sold it for millions, although mostly in cigarettes.  The Detective says they will really have to dig into his past to find his beneficiaries.

Meh.  I didn’t like the leads, the motivations were not dumbed down enough, and it still seems a simple matter for Crystal to get away with it.  The cops might not find her connection to Tony.  It’s not like there was a laptop full of incriminating emails and pictures already in the hands of the authorities that would certainly be used as evidence immediately if there was one honest law enforcement officer in the whole food chain.

Even if they found out about her first marriage, her story is pretty solid.  She could claim she lied to protect her husband — the rich current one.  Sure, she’s a bigamist, but that  is even more reason for her to have lied.  The zinger about the cash doesn’t work by itself because she is already rich.

So, a rare off-week for AHP.  To be fair, maybe my assessment was tainted by the 2 stretched out characters.  Or the aspect ratio problem. [6]

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  In retrospect, maybe it was steelworkers, but that still makes no sense to me.
  • [2]  No idea why that popped in my head, but I did learn that it was named after the skin color of the woman who invented it in 1864.  OK, now that’s problematic!
  • [3]  My apologies to the fine people at Popeil for this fictional abomination offered in the first amendment spirit of parody.  We still have that, right?
  • [3]  Would also have accepted “Super Shiv-o-Matic” or “Popeil Pocket Shank.”
  • [4]  I thought surely Reader’s Digest was as dead as Time [5] and Newsweek, but it is hanging in there.
  • [5]  I thought surely Time was as dead as Newsweek.
  • It is a few years old, but this list of magazines by circulation has some surprises,
  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.  Andy Romana (gas jockey) made it until last year.  He had the great line as the Admiral in Under Siege, “If I goddam can’t control you, I might as well support you!” If only Deputy Chief of Police Dwayne T. Robinson had been so pragmatic.
  • Title Analysis:  OK, Crystal commits a crime, lies about being pregnant, lets Tony spend 7 years in jail, never writes or makes a conjugal visit, when she gets a letter that he is coming, she creates a plan to get rid of him . . . and he can’t be trusted?
  • [6]  Pictures are from dailymotion since I lost Peacock+ this week.  Dailymotion always seems a little shifty, but I have the DVDs somewhere, so my conscience is clear.