Fridge Horror
Hammer is killed while impersonating boxer Andy Marshak—by Marshak's own father. However, the real Marshak is presumably still alive and well. What happens when he shows up? How will law enforcement deal with the murder of a man who isn't dead? How will Marshak himself react when he learns his father "killed" him? How will Mr. Marshak react when he learns he didn't?
Fridge Logic
Okay, so Arch Hammer can change his face. But how can he convcingly pose as men he's never met? How can he impersonate their voices, personalities, and mannerisms well enough to deceive the people who knew them best? If Hammer studies his targets, the episode never says so; indeed, when he spontaneously decides to become Andy Marshak at the climax, he still fools Marshak's father despite knowing nothing about Marshak himself (which leads to his Karmic Death). Required Secondary Powers, maybe?
- To be fair, he was barely even trying to fool Marshak's father, and doing a poor job of it anyway. Marshak's father seemed to just be too blinded by hatred to even notice.
- He really doesn't exactly fool Marshak's father but the man dismisses his behaviour both when he initially sees him and then outside the hotel as Andy just pretending not to know him because of what he did. From what little we learn of him, Andy Marshak sounds like he was a nasty piece of work anyway and it would have been far easier for his father to think that the man in front of him on both occasions was Andy and was just trying to avoid taking responsibility for what he'd done by denying knowing his own father than it being a complete stranger who just happened to look and sound exactly like Andy. As to whether Hammer studies his targets, considering all the newspaper clippings in his suitcase at the start about both the musician and the mobster, I think it's safe to say that he usually does. Ironically, the only time he truly gets into trouble is because of a spontaneous change that didn't give him either the opportunity or time to study the person he was becoming.
Does Arch Hammer's abilities have ontological inertia? When he's killed at the end, does his face revert back to its natural state? (Tying the above Fridge Logic and Fridge Horror points together, as Daddy Marshak would be faced with the realization that he's killed the wrong person. Yeeks.)
- When you see his body presumably finally dead just before the episode ends, it's definitely settled back to Hammer. One assumes that following the end of the episode, Mr Marshak would likely be very shortly arrested for murder (especially since there was a cop in the area already) and would be fairly traumatised to discover that he hadn't even killed the man he'd meant to.
Compounding the point above, they only said he can change his face. How does he know these men are the same height as him? I looked up the actors. Harry Townes is 5'10" and Ross Martin is 5'11" so an inch isn't gonna throw many people off. As for Don Gordon (Andy Marshak) he's 5'8", as mentioned above the dad was too angry to think straight. Still though, if say a 5'4" or 6'3" man he impersonated, wouldn't they know right away?
