History Recap / NightGalleryS2E21

* DepravedDwarf: The Craighill's servant, who describes the ritual spread laid out for Mr. Craighill's memorial service in an almost ''sexual'' terminology to Mrs. Evans, which she repeats to the teenaged Ian.

Robot-Aids, Inc. is a company that manufactures robotic servants to be sold to wealthy families in the near-future. One day, the company's sales director Malcolm Hample (Creator/HenryJones) is confronted by chief engineer Dr. Kessler (Severn Darden), who is outraged over the destroyed state of a recently returned maid, as he treats the robots as more than mindless machines. The maid's owners, the atrocious Joe Fulton and and his sadistic wife (Broderick Crawford and Creator/ClorisLeachman), demand either a new maid or a refund, prompting Malcom to offer them such a maid to quell their tempers. That night, as the Fultons host a party, the new maid (Lana Wood) cleans up the mess they made when they begin to abuse her. But unfortunately for them, this allows the maid to add a new facet to her programming: the capacity for self-defense.

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-> Story by: Christianna Bran

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Robot-Aids, Inc. is a company that manufactures robotic servants to be sold to wealthy families in the near-future. One day, the company's sales director Malcolm Hample (Creator/HenryJones) is confronted by chief engineer Dr. Kessler (Severn Darden), who is outraged over the destroyed state of a recently returned maid, as he treats the robots as more than mindless machines. The maid's owners, the atrocious and sadistic Joe Fulton and his wife (Broderick Crawford and Creator/ClorisLeachman), demand either a new maid and a refund, prompting Malcom to offer them such a maid to quell their tempers. That night, as the Fultons host a party, the new maid (Lana Wood) cleans up the mess they made when they begin to abuse her. But unfortunately for them, this allows the maid to add a new facet to her programming: the capacity for self-defense.

* CreateYourOwnVillain: Nearly every character shares the responsibility for the ending of this segment, either fully or partially. Kessler notes to Malcolm that the robots displaying emotions and the capacity to learn had no input from him, but it's when the Fultons abuse their latest maid that she full embraces fights back, kills them, returns to the offices, and instigates a mutiny to KillAndReplace all of humanity.

* DefyingTheCensors: "You Can't Get Help Like That Anymore" from the lens of a 70s censor. The robot servant is [[RobosexualsAreCreeps accosted by her new client]], who calls her a "slut", and when she kills him and his wife in self-defense, it's revealed the clients were skinned and used to create new robots. The episode ends with the creator of her, who designed her with that purpose as payback for the abuse the couple put previous robots through, has fallen in love with her.

* RobosexualsAreCreeps: Mr. Fulton makes a pass at the maid knowing full well that she is a robot.

-> '''Rod Serling:'''

In Medieval Wales, a land ravaged by death and famine, the Craighill family sends a servant (Creator/MichaelDunn) to the home of a "sin eater" (a person who devours and takes on a dead person's sins so the deceased can ascend to Heaven) to the patriarch's memorial service to eat the ritual feast of sin. The only sin eater around is Mr. Evans, who unfortunately has contracted the plague. His wife (Geraldine Page) notes that her starving teenage son Ian (Creator/RichardThomas) will have to go to the Craighill house and devour the feast himself. This creates great conflict for Ian, as he hasn't been trained in the family trade and is terrified of potentially damning his own soul, but his mother suggests that he make it up as he goes before he smuggles the feast back home for a decent meal, as well as so his mother can be paid gold coins for the service. Unfortunately for poor Ian, this task is '''much''' harder said than done.

* AbusiveParents: Though Ian's mother appears to mean well, she quite obviously gaslights her starving son into performing his sacred duty when he clearly doesn't want to. And all for ''three gold coins''.
* AllForNothing: After all the struggles Ian goes through to avoid absorbing any sins, the ending reveals that it was all for naught, as his father died while he was at Mr. Craighill's house, and he needs to eat the both the sin-laden food he smuggled out of the house ''and'' the new feast prepared for his father, to save the souls of both men.
* AndIMustScream: Ian's screaming as he eats the ceremonial food he smuggled out of Mr. Craighill's house indicates that the sensation of sin-eating, or at least the amount of sins his father has amassed, is unbearably painful.
* KarmaHoudini: Ian's mother gets no punishment for her treatment of her weak and haggard son, who miserably eats the sin-laden food to save his dead father's soul and the soul of Mr. Craighill for a measly three gold coins.
* KnightTemplarParent: Ian's mother downplays it a great deal. She's not aggressive towards her ailing son, but she manipulates and gaslights him into performing the sin-eating ritual he so desperately tries to avoid. She's even seen ''smiling'' as her son writhes in agony while devouring his father's sins, and there's no reason she couldn't have performed the ritual herself (though it's hinted that the values of her time period explicitly forbid it).
* LegacyCharacter: The role of a sin eater is ritualistically passed from father to son. This isn't a happy example, either, since Ian is ''forced'' to take on his father's role, and therefore devour the collective sin of all the dead people his late father had previously eaten, to keep his father's soul from being damned. He'll also be forced to shift the same burden onto his own future son to ensure he'll likewise be spared.
* SinEater: Ian's father is dying, and his starving son, who hasn't been trained in sin-eating, must travel to the home of the late Mr. Craighill in his father's place. Ian pretends to have eaten the ritualistic feast and absorbed Mr. Craighill's sins, then returns home with the uneaten food. When he gets home, his mother tells him that his father has died, and he needs to eat the food anyway, as well as ''another ritual feast'' to absorb ''his father's'' sins. He miserably does so, horrifically screaming the whole time as he absorbs the sins.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Ian's mother is controlling and emotionally manipulative, and sends her starving son to suffer for a mere three gold coins, but she still needs Ian to complete his task so Mr. Craighill and her husband's souls will be saved from damnation, especially after the myriad of sins the latter's absorbed.

-> '''Rod Serling:'''

Robot-Aids, Inc. is a company that manufactures robotic servants to be sold to wealthy families in the near-future. One day, the company's sales director Malcolm Hample (Creator/HenryJones) is confronted by chief engineer Dr. Kessler (Severn Darden), who is outraged over the destroyed state of a recently returned maid, as he treats the robots as more than mindless machines. The maid's owners, the atrocious and sadistic Mr. and Mrs. Fulton (Broderick Crawford and Creator/ClorisLeachman), demand either a new maid or a refund, prompting Malcom to offer them a new maid to quell their tempers. That night, as the Fultons host a party, the new maid (Lana Wood) cleans up the mess when they begin to abuse her. But unfortunately for them, this allows the maid to add a new facet to her programming: the capacity for self-defense.

* TheDogBitesBack: After destroying their last maid and nearly doing the same to their new one, the Fultons are killed by the maid in question when she develops the ability to defend herself. Their skins are then worn by other robots on display in the Robot-Aids offices.

* HateSink: '''The Fultons''', who are horribly abusive to their robotic servants and everyone else around them, to the point where they destroy their last maid when she didn't do her job well enough.

* KillAndReplace: The robots are strongly implied to have learned to impersonate humanity by skinning their victims and wearing said skins.
* RidiculouslyHumanRobots: The robotic servants are capable of adaptive learning, feeling emotions like pain and distress, and as the abusive Fultons learn (the hard way), defending themselves by force. It's even implied at the end that their human appearances came from skinning people who they killed in defending themselves.
* TemptingFate: Malcolm's rant about how the broken robotic maid is just an amalgamation of unfeeling mechanical parts, during which he notices she's crying.
* UngratefulBastard: Dr. Kessler was the only character in the segment who didn't treat the robots as mindless automatons. Despite this, he too is skinned alive by the robots when they go rogue.
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: The segment centers around a company that offers robotic servants to wealthy consumers, and the Fultons go to the head office to complain and demand their robotic maid be replaced after it "broke down". This particularly pisses off head technician Dr. Kessler, who sees right through their lies and outright reveals that they destroyed the robot themselves. Malcom writes off his concerns, until he gets a better look at the damaged robot.

'''Dr. Kessler''': (''quietly'') They're not ''just'' machines.\\

** The second act pushes it further as the Fultons have their ''new'' maid clean up the mess from their party that night, and they immediately start abusing it... until it's made clear that this one has [[TheDogBitesBack self-preservation instincts.]]