Just a quick aside.  Or since this is the beginning, maybe it is an atop. Rather than being here, you should be watching Fargo.

It took me a while to find it, but holy crap!  Season 2 is merely great so far.  Season 1 was an absolute freakin’ masterpiece.  They’ve been making TV & movies for a hundred years.  Why can they only crack the code about .5% of the time?  Is there no learning curve in Hollywood?  Anyhoo . . .

Tuxedoed buttinsky Albert Martin tells Mrs. Bedsole that her niece-in-law Virgilia ^[1] is out in the garden among the vidalias, azaleas, and bougainvilleas with a man who is not her husband.  Even worse, it is Virgilia’s ex-husband Cam. She asks Albert to check on them.  He finds them fooling around in the bushes.

On the way home, Virgilia’s husband Joseph asks her where she disappeared to.  She says she was just visiting with old friends.  He says that is fine and even insists they have one of them over for dinner.  She says she will invite “a very old admirer.”  Once again, we have an AHP marriage which makes no sense.  While Virgilia is beautiful and vivacious, Joseph comes off as a sad sack.  He knows his wife is cheating on him, but is so needy he wants to be friends with the other man.  The scene in the car is shot so that, not only is Virgilia driving, she towers above her husband.  Why would she have left Cam, inventor of the Condo Fee, to marry Joseph?  Maybe Joseph invented the Assessment.

She invites Albert over for dinner. There seems to be some point to Albert asking for a sherry, but I’m not sure what it is.  Joseph McFlys away to find a bottle.  After dinner, Virgilia takes Albert out to see some metal chairs Joseph made.  She says she thinks Albert prefers to have a woman on his arm rather than in his arms.  Hmmmm, I think I see where they were going with that Sherry thing.

As they are going back inside, some scaffolding falls on Virgilia.  If this were a play, the audience would applaud.  Albert examines the frayed rope.  Joseph conjectures the wind must have cause the pulley to wear away the fibers.

The next day, Albert is finishing 20 push-ups.  He says to himself, “I’m out of condition. I got no wind.”  If he is doing push-ups so fast that he can get winded, I’d say he’s in extraordinary shape.  That reminds him — there was no wind when the scaffold fell. Why would Joseph cite the wind as the cause of the frayed rope?  Well, it might not have been windy at the second it fell, but it was heard clanging against the house earlier in the evening.

Pajamaed buttinsky Albert calls Virgilia to check on her.  She is OK, but bedridden.  He asks if she has had any other “accidents”.  No.  End of brutally expository scene.

One evening, Albert goes back to their house.  Joseph is napping and Virgilia has been delayed, so he goes to Joseph’s workshop to look for evidence that Joseph is trying to kill his wife.  He finds rope like that used on the scaffolding.  After only a few strokes with a metal rod, he manages to cut into the rope.  The demonstration actually makes Joseph’s story more credible; although he is buying some cheap-ass rope.

Then he notices a can of arsenic is missing from the spot he saw it on the night of the accident.  Necktied buttinsky Albert goes to Mrs. Bedsole and tells her Joseph is going to murder Virgilia.  They agree he can’t go to the police, but he will let Joseph know he is watching him.
He returns to Joseph & Virgilia’s house.  Joseph is just getting over a case of ptomaine.  His doctor prescribed fresh air, so he invites Albert to go fishing with him in Mexico.

They grill up some fish and make some coffee over a camp fire on the beach.  They begin discussing murder.  Fishinghatted buttinsky Albert begins a story about “a man I knew who intended to commit a murder”.

He continues that the murder did not occur because “a third person who was a friend of both the intended murderer and his victim intervened.”  This third person caused the murderer to weigh the consequences against the small satisfaction of killing his wife.

Joseph says it is very similar to a situation he knows of.  The husband knew his wife was cheating on him.  He says the man was kind of a slob but did love his wife.  “The fellow set out to protect his property.”  Wait, his what?  “The way he did it was simple.  He encouraged his wife to bring friends to the house.”  Then he saw them fooling around in the garden.

Albert is increasingly uncomfortable at the story which is clearly about him and Virgilia.  He realizes the scaffolding was meant for him.  Joseph says the man had another plan — to take the wife’s friend camping.  In a lonely spot, they made coffee in a tin can because the man had forgotten the coffee pot.  Both men got arsenic poisoning, but the man had built up a tolerance.  The other man died, but he got well.

Albert blurts out, “”But it wasn’t me!  It was Cam!”

“Cam!” Joseph cries in horror.

All the pieces are here.  It is a well-constructed piece with nice misdirection and great twist.  Joseph’s apparent tolerance of his wife’s fooling around just irritates me.

I was also distracted by the resemblances of both male leads to other actors.  Gary Merrill (Joseph) reminded me very much of Humphrey Bogart.  Sometimes it was the PTSD’d Capt. Queeg, sometimes it was Fred C. Dobbs, and sometimes it was his hot decades-younger blonde wife, ^[2] but the specter was always there.  Alan Hewitt (Albert) was a dead ringer for James Gregory in both looks and voice.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Cam was present in the episode more in spirit than he was in person.  Now as the only survivor, he is the only one who is a person and not a spirit.
• AHP Proximity Alert:  Lillian O’Malley (Flora the Maid) was just in an episode two weeks ago — give someone else a chance!  There she played “Housekeeper”.  In the very first AHP episode, she played “Hotel Maid.”  Whatever happened to Pat Hitchcock?  This used to be her beat.
• ^[1] Virgilia was the wife of Coriolanus in Shakespeare’s play.  Heh, heh . . . anus. Virgilia was like June Cleaver, though, so the name doesn’t really carry any meaning here.
• ^[2] Lauren Bacall has the honor of being ID # nm0000002 at IMDb.  Fred Astaire is # nm0000001.
• For a more in-depth look at the episode and its source material, head over to bare*bonez ezine.  Where the heck do they find this stuff?

With this episode, AHP puts the grave in accent grave.

Unfortunately, it is an acute accent. That’s not all that goes wrong here. This might be the most deadly dull episode so far.  This is surprising as it features Robert Morse.  He might be obnoxious and a terrible actor, but he ain’t dull.

Bill Fleming and his young friend Phil enter the hunting lodge and hang up their jackets, revealing their manly-man plaid flannel shirts.  They order a couple of Bourbon Sours.  After a strangely jarring edit, Phil tells Bill he was pretty talkative last night after a few too many Glenlivet Glen Rosses.  It was just the usual AHP guy-talk; you know, about killing a man.

Bill remembers talking about his cheating wife who “makes up to every man she meets except her husband” whatever that means.  Part of the problem might be that when they got married, she was “a cute, freewheeling little 22 year old cupcake” and Bill was fifty. She is currently fooling around with Bill’s former friend Baxter.  That actor is only four years younger than Bill so she definitely has a type.

Seeing an epee on the wall of the lodge, Phil asks Bill if he ever considered challenging Baxter to a dual.  They talk and talk (and talk), the two men sitting at the table, until the 12-minute mark. This could get tedious under any circumstances, but Paul Douglas as Bill is just deadly-dull.^[1]  Even though it is a fine performance, it is just mind-numbingly flat.  I completely buy him as a former boxer, and as a lumber business millionaire, though — he’s even got the flannel.  I bet that’s what attracted his young wife; no, not the flannel, the thing before that.

When Bill returns home from his hunting trip, Baxter and Laura are lounging around having drinks.  They make no effort to disguise what they were doing.  Bill takes a couple of swords off the wall and tosses one to Baxter.  Bill takes a few jabs at Baxter who reluctantly picks up the other sword.  In the midst of this tedium, I have to give AHP kudos for the duel.

Bill has no experience with the weapon, and Baxter is only a swordsman in the Urban Dictionary meaning of the word.  This is not the standard TV match where they then expertly cross swords up then down, up then down, then slide the blades down to the hilt as they gaze love-hatingly into each other’s eyes.  They clumsily clash swords a few times — more Episode 1 than Episode 6.  Mostly it is Bill chasing Baxter as he runs through the house.  He nicks Baxter a couple of times, then finally just runs him through.

Cartwright!

Bill goes to the Police Station and tells them he killed a man.  It is only now, as Bill spills his guts, that we learn Baxter’s first name is Phil.  Hmmmm.  On the witness stand, he describes how it was a fair match. Sure, being a former heavyweight champ, he could have punched Baxter out any time.  But he figures Baxter could have then sued him in that case. He sees this as a fair fight which Baxter lost.

He is found not-guilty, but immediately after the trial is called into the judge’s chambers. The judge says since Bill was the beneficiary of “the liberal provisions of the civil code in reference to duels” he must enforce another provision in that statute.  If you slay a person in a duel, you must provide for the widow and children of the person — and Baxter had a son.  Despite being found not-guilty, Bill is ordered to treat the poor 28 year old orphan as if he were a child.  Say, this is a liberal provision.   The judge orders Bill to pay out $100,000 plus a monthly allowance of $1,000 per month for life. ^[2]

His lawyer protests that it is too much, but Bill disagrees.  He says, “To be rid of Baxter . . . it’s cheap at half the price” which makes no sense.  He goes back to his house and finds his wife in her usual position of brazenly lounging around, swilling booze with another man. Surprise — it is his old pal Phil . . . Phillip Baxter Junior!  The smirking punk asks Bill, “Since I’m going to be your guest for the next 50 years, would you mind if I called you ‘Dad’?”

1. This slightly misses the mark. There should have been a reference to an “allowance” in his zinger for it to truly work. Guest?
2. This does not put Bill in a Dad-role — he and Phil Jr. are equals as lovers of the tramp Laura.
3. Bill did not know his “pretty close friend” Baxter had a son?
4. So, in the 1950’s you could not show a husband and wife in the same bed, but it was OK to have a dude making out with his father’s married girlfriend?
5. And Jocasta Laura was OK with this?
6. When Phil Jr. planted this idea in Bill’s head at the lodge, he had to know he was setting his own father up to be killed.
7. And Jocasta Laura was OK with this? ^[3]

None of this would have mattered much if not for the talky opening and Paul Douglas’s lethargic acting.  I must admit, though, Robert Morse was not quite as hammy as he would become, and he elevated the episode to an “OK”.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Sadly, three months after this episode aired, he would be deadly-dead at the increasingly-young-to-me age of 52.
• ^[2] In 2017 dollars:  $835k + $8k/month.  Holy crap!
• ^[3] I know — strike-outs = lowest form of humor.
• AHP Deathwatch:  Only Dodie Heath (Laura) is still with us.
• I kept thinking Bill’s house looked like a Chinese restaurant, and his wife was dressed like a hostess.
• . . .
• Douché . . . I held out as long as I could.
• [UPDATE] For more information on the episode’s source material and author, head over to bare*bonez ezine.  I initially missed this as a search for Touche without the accent came up empty.  What are we, in l’âge de pierre?

Boarding houses were apparently much more popular in the 1950s than I ever realized.  Or maybe it is just a dramatic device that enables AHP to assemble colorful oddballs in a scene; like when an episode is set in England.

Norman Logan and William Tritt are two fairly odd balls having breakfast at Mrs. Merrell’s Boarding House. Tritt receives a telegram.  He tells Logan that if it is another telegram from him, “I shall slap your face.”  It is indeed from Logan who is sitting within slapping distance.  Logan smirks as Tritt reads the wire: “When are you going to pay me back the $200 you stole?”

Logan again confronts Tritt as he is leaving for work.  Ten months ago, Logan deposited $324 but bank teller Tritt only credited him for $124.  He suspects Tritt used the extra $200 to cover a screw-up on someone else’s account.  If he works at Wells Fargo, it is probably a fake account; if he works at HSBC, it probably belongs to a terrorist; if he works at Bank of America, I’ll be surprised if he can find his way to work tomorrow.

Tritt tells him he cannot afford to make a mistake.  “I’m going a long way at that bank,” he says.  Having risen to the position of teller at age 51, I’d say he has bigger problems.

Logan goes to the bank that day to cash in some bonds.  It just so happens that Tritt now handles that function — say, he is moving up.  He has a seat at Tritt’s desk.  After fumbling the bonds as he waits, he notices that Tritt’s desk has an unusual drawer which actually opens on the customer’s side.  When Tritt comes to his desk, Logan has a big smile.  He says he will cash the bonds later and cheerfully exits the bank to Tritt’s befuddlement.

Inside . . .

Logan’s next stop is at a toy store where he buys the most realistic toy gun in the shop.  He returns to the bank.  When Tritt joins him at the desk, Logan furtively pulls the gun on him and demands $10,000.  When Tritt goes to get one of those canvas bags with the big $ on it, Logan stashes the gun in the secret drawer. Tritt manages to alert the guard who pulls a non-toy gun on Logan. Tritt is delighted at this turn of events and tells the guard to take Logan’s gun.

Of course, the guard’s search comes up empty.  Logan helpfully removes his overcoat, scarf, and jacket to be searched.  He takes the suspenders off his shoulders and offers to drop his pants, but the bank president stops him.  When no gun is found, Tritt looks like a boob. Logan looks magnanimous for not suing.

A month later at dinner, another telegram is delivered, but this time to Logan.  He drives Tritt crazy by not opening it at the table because that would be rude.  Tritt tells the group that Logan is taunting him, that this is just part of a ruse to get him fired.  Logan tells him he has a persecution complex and opens the envelope.  He tells the other boarders it is from his mother.  Tritt snatches the telegram.  It says, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

Later, Logan comes to the bank again.  This is a fairly plot-intensive episode.  Rather than give a rote play-by-play, I’ll just say there are more shenanigans at Tritt’s expense and Logan gets another chance to drop his pants.  This guy is always about 5 seconds from taking his pants off.  I’m starting to think that was the real reason behind his ruse.

Outside . . . doesn’t matter to this guy.

This is a tight little episode.  It is stuffed full of throwaways in the background, yet has a complex story unwinding in the foreground. I liked the Christmas setting even though it seemed to last for months.  There was the “Christ-mas Spirit” of not prosecuting Tritt for his first breakdown, the tunes whistled by Logan to irritate Tritt, the centerpiece and tree that come and go with the season, the heaping snow drifts outside the bank, Logan slipping on some ice.

The other boarders are really non-entities, but the script gives them bits of business. There is old, and I mean old, Mrs Merrell, bits about bad eggs, and later counting the oysters in the oyster stew.  One of them is even played by J. Pat O’Malley who was in every TV show ever made since 1864.

90% of acting seems to be in the casting.  Philip Coolidge is perfectly cast as the nervous, shifty Tritt.  Dick York is far more successful here than he was in Vicious Circle.  There, as a supposedly menacing thug, he was laughable.  Here, as the smirking tormentor of Tritt, he is charismatic and amusing.

Despite the lack of a murder or cheerleaders, a great episode.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
• Also dead:  Sadly, Elizabeth Montgomery.  Only relevant here because she played Dick York’s wife in Bewitched, but it’s an excuse to link to a hot picture.

Attorney Arnold Shawn has his client Kenneth Jerome on the witness stand when his wife Naomi enters the courtroom.  His client has been involved in a auto accident which killed a woman.  Not being a Kennedy, he is looking at hard time.

Naomi is troubled by Arnold saying in court that he is searching for truth when he has been banging other women; and of course, the lawyer thing.  She flashes back to a conversation they had a month ago when she confronted him about the cheating.  Naomi accused him of dismissing it as if it were “a night out with the boys” which would have been a second problem.  Arnold said that after 10 years of marriage, having another woman show him some attention made him feel like “king of the barnyard” which is 1950s for cock of the walk.

Strangely enough her emotional flashback expands to include Al Carmody dropping by with info on the prosecution’s surprise witness Henry Babcock.  He is going to testify that when Jerome hit the woman, he was running a light.  Babcock is a model citizen, but Carmody and Arnold are sure they can dig up some dirt on him in pursuit of, you know, justice.

A month later, back in the courtroom, in what must be the longest hit-and-run trial ever, Arnold calls Babcock to the witness stand.  He testifies that Jerome hit the woman, backed up 50 yards to take a look, then drove off.  Unable to deny the facts, Arnold accuses Babcock of volunteering to testify because he wanted to be famous.

Seeing Arnold once again turn the truth into a lie, Naomi has another flashback.  Soon after the first flashback, Arnold says he was working late.  Naomi accuses him of lying, and has proof he was seeing the woman he had promised not to see again.  He casually continues eating a sandwich, and accuses her of being prudish.  She asks why he married her in the first place.  He answers, “Your father was an extremely influential man a dozen years ago and he had an extremely attractive daughter, also a dozen years ago!”  Oh shit!

Naomi is not so much on the pro-honesty band-wagon at this point.  As if Arnold hasn’t hurt her enough, he continues, “After all, it’s been 10 long years since you were 25!” Wait, she’s over the hill at 35?  That’s just into MILF porn range!  She is certainly no zero, but she seems to be rocking a size-zero dress — and back when that meant something.  This woman is svelte.  Brian Keith always seems like a coiled spring of hostility, and he is really brutal to her.  She is crushed.

Back in the courtroom, Arnold is cross-examining Babcock . . . I guess — I’ve never seen an episode of Law & Order, or Judge Judy.  Arnold brings up a lot of irrelevant facts such as why Babcock did not hear the woman earlier, that he doesn’t make much money, that he is lonely since his wife died, that he’s the janitor at a strip joint ^[1], that he is color-blind, and that he was fired from his job for having cataracts that impaired 85% of his vision. Well, those last two actually sound pretty relevant.  He is ruled incompetent as a witness and Jerome is found not guilty.

Naomi catches her husband in the hall.  She has the papers for him to sign so they can get divorced.  He thinks the current situation is fine and even suggests she get a little action on the side too. He tells her, “You could still be an attractive woman if you tried.”  See, he can be nice when he wants to.

In the parking lot, Naomi runs his ass down.  Too bad the only witness was just proven by Arnold to be an incompetent witness due to lousy vision.  D’oh!

This one is a little bit of a slog.  Naomi certainly isn’t the hag Arnold makes her out to be, but she is kind of dull.  Arnold is just thoroughly unpleasant with his cruelty and twisting of the law.  Two such presences do not make for a great viewing experience. However, the ending is pleasantly sharp and ironic . . . if you don’t think about it.

We are never told when Babcock had the corrective surgery.  If before Jerome’s accident, he should have spoken up.  If after then Arnold was right to nail him.  Either way, he has had the surgery by he time of the trial, so he could easily testify against Naomi.  But why would he after Arnold humiliated him on the stand?  Well, he was described as a model citizen.  Pffffft — should have stopped thinking while I was ahead.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] The Chichi Club, where Arnold tells us young beautiful girls dance.  Sure, he shows a picture of the intersection, but we’re supposed to take his word about the girls?
• And what cruel bastard hires an 85% blind man to work in a strip club?
• AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.