To avenge being called a runt by Kiki, Tucker challenges her to an arm wrestle. The arrival of Betty Anne and Sam distracts Tucker into sudden defeat. Up tonight is Sam, with a tale of a horror which could strike anyone at any time - true love offers pain like no other. It drives life, and, in her story, in a way, death. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, she calls this story "The Tale of the Dream Girl."
Brother and sister Johnny and Erica Angelli, both very close, work at the Bowl-a-rama Lanes, respectively in maintenance and as a waitress. One evening, Johnny finds, in his locker, a silver ring, set with a blue stone. He absently slips it onto his finger. Erica notes the mystery item to be femininely styled. To her amusement, Johnny finds himself unable to remove it.
In the living room, as Erica does homework on the couch, Johnny broods over the irremovable ring.
From the hallway, their mother heads off to bed. Johnny bids her goodnight - but she seems not to hear. Stung, he wonders what's up. Erica puts it down to exhaustion. As she goes up to bed, Johnny stays for some late night channel surfing.
In the darkened living room, lit by television static, Johnny dozes. A soft, female voice, while near, echoes, as if from a distance. Into the room before the dozing Johnny steps a mysterious young woman. She peers down at him in calm adoration. As she leans to kiss his cheek, a distant scream of abject terror becomes faintly audible.
Johnny jerks awake, shaken, and fumbles with the stuck ring.
Next day, at the counter of the Bowl-a-rama snack bar, the manager orders a cola. Since maintenance is running smoothly, saving on hired help is proving good for business.
As he leaves, Johnny sinks indignantly onto the vacant seat, and laments lack of recognition. To Erica, he confides his troubling dreams about a girl who, while he seems not to recognise, can’t stop thinking about. He spots, at the shoe outlet, a girl whose jacket and hairstyle resemble those of his nightly visitor.
While Cheryl Lightheart and friends impudently return a wrongly sized pair of bowling shoes, Johnny approaches her from behind - but Cheryl and friends act like they can't hear him.
In the maintenance office, a vexed Johnny opens his locker, and is dumbfounded to find it empty. From afar, the girl from his dreams, clearly but with a soft echo, calls his name, and identifies herself as Donna. At the end of the corridor, from the bowling alley, Donna steps into view, and calls to him. Johnny tells her not to move, and runs off.
In the bowling alley, Johnny looks around for Erica. What sounds like the distant chime of a train signal is followed by a distant scream of terror. In horror, Johnny holds his hands to his ears. He whirls around - and the unearthly scream of terror is replaced by an earthly scream of glee, as a girl celebrates a strike.
...
Mrs Angelli inspects a stack of bills. Johnny, lying on the couch, greets her - but she walks upstairs, with no indication of having heard him. Johnny looks after her, and sees, lying on the floor, an envelope addressed simply to him.
He opens it, and hastens to show it to Erica, who reads it aloud. It pledges a handwritten devotion in verse, signed by Donna Maitland, and asks Johnny to meet her tonight, midnight, at the Bowl-a-rama snack bar.
At eleven fifty-five, well after closing time, Johnny, having donned a smart blue shirt, checks his reflection in his locker mirror, and strides into the snack bar.
From the jukebox, a bluesy record plays across the dimly lit bar, whose sole customers are a young couple in twenties attire. Behind the counter are a bearded cook and a tirelessly scrubbing waitress. The waitress greets Johnny with a knowing smile, and cryptically explains the bar, at this hour, to be staffed by the night shift.
With a soft chime, the neon clock reads midnight. On the floor behind Johnny arrives Donna. She subverts his queries with entreaty for a dance.
To the tender melody of a synthesised saxophone, the two waltz. To the none-the-wiser Johnny, Donna announces a nearing moment of departure, and urges Johnny’s accompaniment. On the clock, the second hand nears twelve thirty. In despair, Donna announces that it’s too late. She hurries off, with a promise to wait for Johnny. As he makes to run after her, he knocks over a table. He straightens - and finds the bar to have been instantaneously deserted.
Johnny hurries home. In the kitchen, to Erica, he starts to recount his adventure. She interrupts by holding up a neatly folded newspaper page. It holds a black and white shot of Donna. Erica unfolds the top of the paper, and reveals the article to be an obituary: she's dead. Erica recounts a car accident, wherein the car occupied by Donna and her boyfriend stalled on the railway. Once they’d left the car, Donna returned for the ring given her by her boyfriend - then the train came.
Badly shaken, Johnny realises his undeniable acquaintance with a ghost - who wants him to go with her, apparently because of the irremovable ring.
By his locker, Johnny smears his ringed finger with chilli sauce, to no avail. He wipes his hands, and closes the locker door - behind which, inches from his face, is Donna. Startled, he yelps. Disturbed, he demands she take back her ring. With a tender stare, she beseeches his accompaniment. He closes his eyes, and yells in fearful protest. While Erica runs to the scene, Johnny opens his eyes to find Donna to have instantaneously vanished.
Back home, the phone rings, and Erica answers - it’s Donna. Fraught with nerves, Johnny takes the receiver, and angrily demands for an end to this bizarre joke, and to be left in peace. Donna sadly agrees to bother him no more. The ring slips from his finger, and falls to the floor. Swayed by this new evidence, Johnny resolves to find Donna.
That night, Johnny and Erica search the cemetery. Johnny wanders alone. As Erica catches up, he jumps, and falls over a leaf-covered gravestone. From the top, he brushes some leaves, and finds the name Donna Maitland.
Erica agitatedly probes Johnny’s blocked memory: she recounts the car accident. Johnny, stunned, starts to remember. He recalls the rumble of the train; the terrible scream, and involuntarily yells Donna’s name. He softly recalls his attempt to push her out of the way - but it was too late. From the gravestone, he brushes more leaves, and finds the epitaph: "Donna Maitland and John Angelli… 'together eternally'".
He realises the second name to refer to himself. Erica tearfully confirms. She unfolds the newspaper, to reveal the full headline: "TRAIN TRAGEDY: TWO KILLED", beneath which, by the photo of Donna, is a shot of Johnny.
Why didn't she tell him? Because he didn’t remember - he just came back from the accident as if nothing had happened, and for some really weird reason, recalled nothing of it - not even his own death.
He wryly realises the reason for their mother seeming to ignore him. Erica gives a tearful laugh. Now that he knows, life can go on as normal...
Through the distant mist approaches Donna. To Erica, Johnny softly confesses his inability to stay. She stays her sobs with an encouraging smile, and urges Johnny after Donna. Brother and sister share a long, final hug, and tearfully affirm their love. As they part, Erica collapses into sobs. Johnny hesitates, produces the ring, and looks to Donna for permission. She smiles and nods.
Johnny places the ring in Erica’s hand, kisses her cheek, and walks to Donna.
As Erica watches, the two spirits kiss, and walk into the mist. Johnny gives his sister a final look. She peers at her keepsake, and starts to walk home.
Erica would always miss Johnny, closes Sam, but found solace in the thought of his happiness with Donna. Tucker muses on the thought-provoking premise of being a ghost without realising it. With apparent sincerity, Kiki concurs - and with Tucker off guard, insults him once again. She runs. Back on the warpath, Tucker gives chase. Gary quickly douses the fire.
This episode provides examples of:
- Afterlife Antechamber: The Bowl-a-rama snack bar, after hours, serves as a meeting place for discarnate spirits.
- Anger Born of Worry: As Johnny frets over his spectral predicament, both he and Erica become somewhat irate.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Of a platonic variety, between Johnny and Erica, as Johnny prepares to leave with Donna.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Through the graveyard, Johnny and Donna walk to an obscuring mist. Implicitly, such entry to the afterlife can only be reached at certain times.
- Benevolent Boss: The manager seems a jolly, easy-going sort. Although dialogue implies he acted as a Bad Boss to Johnny, especially when he's elated saving on hired help since Johnny's death. He backtracked when he saw it made Erica upset.
- Bittersweet Ending: Johnny realises himself to be dead, and that he can no longer linger. While Erica grieves at his passing, she takes comfort in knowing him to have found happiness with Donna.
- Came Back Wrong: Very slightly; while Donna is recognizably her old self, her mysterious detachment from the world around her, and oblique entreaties for Johnny to accompany her somewhere, at times have him severely unnerved.
- Cursed Item: The dream girl seems to be haunting Johnny after putting on the ring.Erica: Are you sure it's the ring that's causing all this?
Johnny: What do you mean? - Dark Reprise: Johnny's winsomely corny note of Erica to be his favourite sister, with her laughing observation of being his only sister, repeated when he prepares to approach the afterlife, takes on a poignant profundity.
- Dead All Along: A reputedly famously influential example: Johnny came home from the car accident, seemingly unaware of it having happened, and, with some capacity for solid interaction with his environment, but sensed only by Erica, he carries on as normal.
- Death by Adaptation: The story of Donna's death is the story told in Mark Dinning's 1959 song "Teen Angel." In this version, her boyfriend died with her despite surviving in the original song, which is sung from his point of view.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: As described in the briefly visible newspaper article, the car accident resulted in shattered limbs scattered across half a mile.
- Foreshadowing: At one point, Johnny hallucinates the sound of a train coming, accompanied by a woman screaming. It's later revealed that Johnny not only witnessed Donna's death, but was also a victim of the accident.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The text of the newspaper article produced by Erica gives away the fact that Johnny's as dead as Donna.
- Genki Girl: The waitress is quite jolly.
- Ghost Amnesia: On return from the car accident, Johnny somehow excludes memory of both the deaths of himself and Donna.
- Haunted Fetter: Unable to remove Donna’s ring from his finger, Johnny supposes it to bind her to the mortal realm. He seems right, to some extent, but when he initially tells her to leave him alone, it falls off.
- I See Dead People: Erica, implicitly because of their closeness, is the only one to sense Johnny’s presence.
- Jacob Marley Apparel: Donna consistently wears the same outfit. At the night shift of the Bowl-a-rama snack bar, a young couple wear twenties attire.
- Little "No": On recalling the car accident, Johnny murmurs a staggered "no."
- Long Last Look: Unable to deny Donna’s escort to the afterlife, Johnny bids a tender farewell to Erica.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Johnny quickly regrets his confused, frightened demand for Donna to leave him alone.
- Named by the Adaptation: Neither the boy nor girl were named in Dinning's "Teen Angel."
- Offscreen Teleportation: Donna initially follows Johnny by instantaneous reappearance across improbable distance.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Donna plaintively entreats Johnny to go with her.
- Poor Communication Kills:
- Donna keeps insisting that Johnny comes with her, giving the latter an unnerved impression that the former intends to forcibly steal him away to the afterlife, whether he's ready to go or not. If only she had bothered to bring him up to speed that they were going steady in life and they were both dead, it might've cleared the air that she didn't mean him any harm to begin with. Though she expressed confusion by Johnny's reluctance, believing he should have remembered their love.
- In resumption of his earthly life, Johnny seems to have forgotten everything pertaining to the railway accident, including his relationship with Donna; it may be that he, through posthumous disorientation, continues to repress his memory of her.
- Red Herring: Johnny noticed Cheryl Lightheart resembles the dream girl. Believing it's some sign, he tries to talk to her, but just dismisses her. Since it's revealed that Johnny's dead, Cheryl can somehow hear him but to can't see him to her confusion.
- Sad Clown: Initially, Erica makes light of Johnny’s mysterious dreams, seemingly to delay the inevitability of her brother's detachment from the mortal realm.
- Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Erica and Johnny's mother either treats her kids rather coldly or doesn't even acknowledge Johnny. In reality, she doesn't know Johnny is there as he is a ghost, coupled with the fact that her alleged coldness is a result of her grieving for her late son.Johnny: No wonder mom's so bummed out all the time.
- There Are No Coincidences: After Erica startled Johnny, he tripped and luckily found Donna's grave in front of him. Erica believes that deep down Johnny knew it would be there, since it's his grave too.
- Together in Death: Johnny and Donna, as noted by their gravestone, and observed by Erica.
- Wham Line:
- When Johnny returned to tell Erica he was with Donna, Erica revealed the newspaper clipping of her death.
- "Then what happened?" "I turned around. I tried to push her out of the way, but it was too late."
- Wham Shot: Two of them. Johnny wipes away the leaves covering the lower half of Donna's grave to reveal it's also his grave as well. Erika then unfolds the other half of the newspaper to reveal Donna's picture and his own.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The whole plot is based on the song, "Teen Angel." Johnny's name, John Angelli, seems to be a shout-out to the song "Johnny Angel."note
