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.

Charlotte and Mark are playing tennis — him in long pants and her in a knee-length skirt.  This struck me not so much because of the formality and oppressive transphobic  cis-gender conformity imposed by Big Tennis in the past, but by how great California weather must be.  Here in sweaty South Florida, such a stunt would be suicide.  It is also nice if you can play on a private court at a huge estate with rolling hills and an old geezer watching.  What?

Oh, that’s Charlotte’s boss, 65 year old Howard Rutherford.  He reminds Charlotte her lunch hour is about over and tells her fiancé Mark to beat it.

Rutherford reminds her he is worth $11 million, and this is back when that was a lot of money. ^[1]  His ex-wives have been taken care of, and not in the usual AHP way.  They have been paid off so a new Mrs. Rutherford would be his sole heir.  He puts his hand on her leg and says she is a lucky gal.  He estimates that because of his bad heart, he has only a few months to live.  With no heirs, she would get his entire estate rather than, say, leaving it to that depressing Children’s Hospital down the street. ^[2]

Charlotte protests that she is going to marry Mark.  Rutherford is very practical, saying there will be plenty of time to marry Mark after he croaks in a year or so.  She still declines, but he suggests she run it by Mark.

When Mark hears the arrangement would only be for about a year, it sounds like a good deal to him.  Especially since this is before Viagra was invented.

I love the economy of these 30 minute episodes.  There is a quick cut to soon after the the Rutherfords’ wedding.  Rutherford gives his wife a necklace with a single pearl on it:  “A token of an old man’s love and gratitude for sharing his last days.”  He says he regrets that he won’t be around to give her more.

Another quick cut to the couple having dinner at opposite ends of a long table like the Citizens Kane  Citizen Kanes.  Rutherford impressively rolls a single pearl down the long table to Charlotte.  As she catches it, we see she is wearing a necklace with five pearls on it — one for each anniversary.

Charlotte sneaks out to see Mark.  She wants to get a divorce so she and Mark can be together.  He is committed to waiting for the old man to die “so the money doesn’t go to some seedy charity.”  Mark says all the lonely nights are rough for him too, but his argument is somewhat undercut when a girlfriend walks in.  Charlotte slaps him and storms out.

Another quick-cut to Rutherford giving his wife another pearl — for their fifteenth anniversary!  He again voices his fear that this will be the last one.

Mark comes to the house after seeing in the paper that Rutherford is sick.  Charlotte sees that Mark has a 10 year old son, Billy, from a previous marriage, so I guess the mother is the one who walked in on them.  Charlotte invites the boy back to play tennis tomorrow.  Mark sees this as a sign that he can maybe get back together with Charlotte, but she is having none of that.

After spending time with the boy over the summer, Charlotte says she and Rutherford want to pay for the boy to go to prep school and then to a fancy college so he can learn to embrace communism and hate the country that gave his benefactor the opportunities to succeed so Billy could have every advantage.  If all goes well, he’ll be calling them racists by Christmas Break

Cut to their 25th anniversary.  Rutherford finally dies.

Suddenly, I couldn’t get a decent well-lit shot without the logo. Elon Musk had the right idea — fire half the coders before they destroy the product. I’m also looking at you Microsoft, Adobe, and WordPress!

Mark comes to visit.  Charlotte gloats about inheriting all the money.  Her glee at Mark’s being left with nothing is truly infuriating.  However, Mark is even more concerned about her impending marriage — to Billy!

An all-around great episode.  Just goes to show you (and by you, I mean me) that you can have a great AHP episode without a murder.  It was a surprising choice to have Charlotte grow to love the old man pretty quickly.  It could have been a very different story, but I trust the pros at AHP to make the right choice.

The other thing that is baffling is AHP again flirting with incest . . . and getting away with it!  In the same year that Rob and Laura Petrie were sleeping in separate beds, AHP has a woman whoring herself out for money, her cuckolded fiancée secretly banging another chick, and her marrying her ex-fiancée’s young son — a boy that she had de facto adopted when he was 10 years old.  OK, it’s only incest under the Pornhub definition, but it’s still pretty weird.

Other Stuff:

• [1]  This is a little like Indecent Proposal, but 32 years later the offer was only $1M.  True, that proposal was for just one night, but it was offered by 1993 Robert Redford, and not 2023 Robert Redford.
• [2]  To be fair, he did add a codicil giving them $2M if they did not ever play the 1-877-KARS4KIDS jingle again while he was alive.
• Ted Jack Cassidy (Mark) was Ted Baxter’s brother on MTM, starred in the first Columbo (directed by Stephen Spielberg), and was David Cassidy’s father.  He died in a fire at age 49.
• I was planning to post about the AHP version of Poison that I had somehow missed years ago in its proper rotation.  Turns out, though, that I actually liked the Tales of the Unexpected version better.  Where’s the fun in that?
• Kudos to Michael Burns for not ending up with the ignominious fate of many kid actors (i.e. dead, drug addict, adult actor).  He went on to be an author, a professor, and horse breeder.
• Inevitably:

My casino has a manager, it’s M-E-Y-E-R.  Peter Falk plays Meyer Fine, manager of a high-class speakeasy / casino during prohibition. ^[1]  Enjoy his performance, because it’s about all you’re going to get out of this episode.

He enters the main room of his apartment above the casino, wearing a tuxedo shirt, a bow tie, and a fabulous robe.  He sits down, and his servant John kneels and removes his shoes.  What the heck?  I’ve watched twenty-eight seasons and two boring, boring movies of Downton Abbey, but I’ve never seen Mr. Barrow tying anyone’s shoes; although he did seem do a lot of kneeling in front of dudes.

Even more baffling, John is just swapping them out for another pair of shoes.  Not slippers, shoes — they clunk when tossed aside.  What’s going on anyway?  John just told another minion that Mr. Fine was “having his bauth” (the accent is a very funny reference to John’s gangsta past).  Did he put on a pair of shoes (all by himself, like a big boy) to walk one room?

Fine then tours the floor of his casino.  Sadly the rule of no cameras in casinos does not apply to this AHP episode.  He is shown to be a sensitive, caring man.  We see him worry about an injured dealer, caution a man who is betting over his head not with it, and confess that he is terrified of death.

Turns out the high-roller — Hunter Combs — comes from big money as his father is president . . . of a railroad, I mean.  Meyer’s concern is not all humanitarian.  He worries that if the father knew his son was wasting his life gambling, whoring, banging his sister-in-law, and smoking crack that these establishments might get the wrong kind of attention.  You know, unless the kid was also funneling $10 millions of graft from the Communist Chinese into the family coffers.

Later that evening, Fine is told that Combs “blew his brains” out in the subway.  A police Lieutenant tells Fine and his fellow managers that he plans to close down “the private clubs you fellas have been running . . . for restricted membership.”  He says Combs went through $250,000 in 11 months, which was worth something back then. ^[2] He warns that Hunter’s father will destroy the three men, and that all news of it will be suppressed in the corrupt media.

The next night, Fine sees a man at the bar he does not recognize.  He learns the bouncer let the man in when he produced a “courtesy card” from another establishment even though it needed 2 more punches for a free sub.  Strangely, the bouncer had no curiosity about the box he carried which was big enough for a human head.  Seconds later, the man pulls out a camera the size of a human head, and takes a picture of the casino and its clientele.  He runs off running from the casino. ^[3] Fine tells his goons to “take care of him.”  Seconds later, the man is shot dead in the doorway of his detective agency.

Fine is distressed to hear that the man was killed when he only wanted him roughed up a little.  He meets with the other club managers and talks about this business they are in.  He says the death was not what he intended. They are interrupted with news that the hothead who shot Combs was just killed in a drive-by.

He worries that “The Dutchman” has called a meeting of all the club managers except him, and there will be pizza and girls.  For the rest of the episode, his forehead is glistening.  He decides he needs to tell The Dutchman his side of the story in person.

The next morning, as he is walking down his steps, he is shot in a drive-by.  He is able to stagger back inside  where John tends to his wound.  John suggests he hide out in Jersey.  Fine says he couldn’t stand to let The Dutchman see how scared he is.

Fine takes a pistol from his desk drawer and puts it to his head.  He breaks down that he doesn’t have the courage to use it.  He begs John to help him.  Which he does.

The lieutenant is baffled that John killed Fine after he had been so generous to him. The lieutenant says, “Didn’t ya ever hear of a thing called gratitude?”  I’m baffled that this is considered such a pivotal point that it is the title of the episode.  The themes up to this point had been Fine as a competent, sensitive man in a rough trade.  Next, he opened up about having such a fear of death that he couldn’t even attend a funeral.  Nothing foreshadowing the gratitude angle.  Sure, maybe John was so grateful that Meyer saved him from a life of crime that he . . . er, committed a heinous crime for him.  But it feels tacked on.

However, I have to apply a lesson that I learned after bitching about Ray Bradbury Theatre for 6 seasons; or maybe I just got 6 years older.  OK, nothing much happens here.  Peter Falk has a nice showcase.  Gangster-turned-valet John is a character I’ve never seen before.  But in service of what?  There is no suspense, no scares, no twist. ^[4]  It is just a day — granted, a big one — in Meyer Fine’s life.  Meh, maybe that’s enough.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Upon further review, I see Alfred says the episode takes place in 1916, which places it well before Prohibition.  I guess the illicit activity here is the gambling and scantily-clad college girls dancing in the back [scenes cut for time].
• [2]  Holy crap — about $6.7 million today !
• [3]  That was a typo, but I kinda dig it.
• [4]  If you still crave something dark and creepy, check out the magazine cover this story was originally published under in 1922.  Yikes!  You were warned.
• The AHP gang must have known there wasn’t much here.  Alfred’s intro and outro both feature a complete non-sequitur — a violent western saloon brawl!
• I always feel validated when I see that Jack at bare*bones shared my opinion of an episode.  It’s like beating everyone at Final Jeopardy.  Tonight (06/25/22 — it took me  while to get motivated) I nailed Gertrude Stein, which not many guys can say.

Are you getting déjà vu of another time you wasted time on the internet?  Maybe doubly so if you read last week’s post.  Post Mortem came up in the rotation last week as an episode of Suspense.  Turns out the same Cornell Woolrich story was also the basis of an AHP episode which I inadvertently skipped 6 years ago.  OMG, six years?

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]

Her hubby Steve brings in a sunlamp and says, “Honey, you’re so beautiful you must be perishable.”  That might seem like a dopey line, but what’s the last thing you said to a naked woman?  I think mine was, “Why, yes, that is my MAGA hat on the dresser.” 

Steve wants to make some investments but his wife Judy wants to keep their nest egg safe in the bank.  He scoffs at the 3% it is earning, which this week sounds pretty great to me.

That afternoon, Judy gets visited by several reporters.  They tell her that her late husband’s horse won the Irish Sweepstakes.  Did he own a horse that bought a ticket?  The Irish Sweepstakes was a lottery, not a horserace. ^[3] She invites them in and throws some o’ them Belmont Steaks on the grill.  The ticket is worth $133,000 ^[4] — if she can find it.  

Judy and Steve search the house.  Judy is sure she searched her husband’s clothes before giving them to Goodwill.  Ergo, they deduce that the ticket is in the suit her dead husband was buried in.  Who says you can’t take it with you?

After meditating during the commercials, Judy says they should dig up the body; and also . . . must . . . buy . . . Lucky . . . Strikes. ^[5]  Steve is against it, saying it would give him nightmares.

While Steve is out of town at the AVN Awards, Judy goes to the Shady Rest Cemetery.  She hires the caretaker to dig up her husband who is buried next to Uncle Joe who’s moving not at all.  And if you get that reference, you watch too much MeTV.

A man claiming to be a reporter shows up.  He offers to watch the body being dug up, and will search it for the ticket so Judy is spared.  He finds the corpse’s jacket has the ticket and an I VOTED sticker.  In a shockingly honest move for a reporter, he gives the ticket to Judy.  

When Steve gets home from the convention, he is upset that Judy dug up the body.  He is soon calmed after hearing the exhumation was uneventful, by the thought of $133,000, and by the fresh toasted flavor of Lucky Strike.

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.

Just like in the Suspense version, Steve waits until his wife takes a bath, and tosses the sunlamp in.  Again, his character does not make sure his wife is dead before telling the cops.  Her surprise return and the arsenic report seal his fate.  She nearly forgets to retrieve the ticket from his pocket before he rides, ironically, Old Sparky. ^[6]

Now is the literary analysis where I methodically deconstruct the Suspense vs AHP adaptations of this story.  Er, the big difference is that I watched the Suspense episode 2 weeks ago and barely remember it now.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Bonus Points for scratching her foot with a hanger.  Bonus Bonus Points for it not being a wire hanger, causing me to think of Joan Crawford in a bathtub. ^[2] 
• [2] Would also have accepted “Bonus Bonus Points for not being a wire hanger, causing me to think about the turnover of Roe v Wade.”
• [3]  It is not like AHP to make a mistake this yuge.  I suppose the reporters must have been talking about a metaphorical horse, but it sure isn’t presented that way.
• [UPDATE — Dammit!  There actually was a horserace component to the Irish Sweepstakes.  I have to either start fact-checking these things, or stop fact-checking them.]
• [4]  That would be $1.3M today, or $3.1M at the end of the Biden presidency.
• [5]  Not everyone is smoking like a chimney in this version, but Steve is smoking in this scene.
• [6]  Sadly, it appears that the electric chair was never used in California, almost certainly dooming my proposal to maximize efficiency with the electric couch.