Gray Matter
In a small-town diner/general store, a trio of local townspeople, shopkeeper Dixie Parmalee (Adrienne Barbeau), Chief Connors (Tobin Bell), and Chief's friend Doc (Giancarlo Esposito), hunker down in the store as Hurricane Charlie sweeps the area. Local boy Timmy Grenadine (Christopher Nathan) comes into the store shortly after Connors finishes boarding up the windows. Timmy asks Dixie if she has any cases of Harrow's Supreme beer for his father Richie (Jesse C. Boyd), which he's done regularly for a while. As he pays for the beer with some particularly slimy bills, Timmy reveals to the townsfolk that his father has gotten "real sick", and he's terrified to go back home. As Dixie sends Chief and Doc head to Timmy's house to investigate, Timmy tells to Dixie just how things got so out of hand.
According to Timmy, Richie was always an alcoholic, but his drinking problem began escalating after he accidentally caused his the death of his wife, Martha. Firmly believing that "a real man don't cry", Richie would numb his pain by guzzling cans of Harrow's Supreme, usually whenever something began grinding him down, to the point that he was fired for drinking on the job. Richie also repeatedly promised his son that he was going to quit drinking and be his father again, but the promise never stuck. Eventually, Richie ended up drinking from a contaminated beer, and Timmy noticed some strange physical changes in him. His skin turned gray and slimy, he wanted to be surrounded by heat, he had become sensitive to light, and his thirst began to grow into a hunger for flesh.
Meanwhile, Doc and Chief explore the Grenadine house, discovering that the place is moldy, extremely hot, and covered in slime. The two also find the slime covered skeletons of numerous pets that were reported missing, as well a pair of twins, also reported missing, in the bathtub. The duo then discover Richie, who at this point has fully mutated into an indestructible, gelatinous monster. Richie kills and absorbs Chief, then begins multiplying as Doc flees. After running back to the store, Doc urgently screams that the trio need to leave town immediately. Timmy and Dixie panic as the latter calculates that the mutated Richie and his duplicates will exterminate the human race in a matter of days. The creature formerly known as Richie then bursts through the ceiling and grabs Doc as the others scream.
On a red background, a laughing Creep opens and drinks from a can of Harrow's Supreme.
This episode contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: At one point, Richie threatens to whip Timmy when he refuses to turn out the light needed for him to do his homework.
- Adaptation Deviation: In the original short story, the disaster facing the town is a blizzard. The episode changes it to a hurricane.
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: The short story ends on an ambiguous note, with the characters waiting to see whether the mutated Richie or the chief escaped the house. The episode's ending jumps straight to an apocalyptic scenario where Richie and his duplicates get out of the house and are set to eat everyone on the planet.
- Apocalypse How: Class 4, where all animals and people are set to be devoured by Richie and his spawn.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Richie's mutation into a Blob Monster gives him a strong sensitivity to light, a gradual hunger for animal (and then human) flesh, and an addiction to afternoon soap operas.
- Batman Gambit: Timmy puts on a scared and nerve-wracked façade when mentioning his father in order to convince Chief and Doc to visit Richie with his beer. This turns out to be a plot to have the men lured into Richie's clutches so he can eat them, as everyone else in town evacuated due to the storm.
- Bait-and-Switch: Chief and Doc head to a door they think Richie is hiding behind and order him out. The door slowly creaks open, only for the camera to reveal the mutated Richie standing behind the two men.
- Blob Monster: What Richie ends up transforming into.
- Bolivian Army Ending: Richie multiplies at a fast-enough rate to devour the world's populace in a matter of days... and he starts with Chief, Doc, Dixie, and his own son.
- Bookends:
- Dixie's first and last moments are spent with her using her calculator.
- Furthermore, the radio in the Cold Open details how the world population's has drastically increased. The total number of people on the planet factors into Dixie's calculations at the end of the story.
- Downer Ending: Richie fully mutates into a Blob Monster, kills Chief, multiplies at an alarming rate, and will destroy the world in a matter of days, with Doc, Dixie, and Timmy powerless to stop him. Richie then bursts through the ceiling to grab and kill Doc shortly after, and presumably Dixie and his son as well.
- Drinking Contest: Timmy tells Dixie that these were the only things his father became good for after he lost his job, being the only way they could pay their bills.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Richie kept turning to his favorite brand of beer to null the pain of losing his wife.
- Dying Town: The town where the story is set is nearly dead. Doc even says that the coming hurricane may be the final nail in its coffin. Given that Richie has been eating the residents of said town one by one, and those he didn't eat evacuated to avoid the storm, it's justifiable.
- Empty Promise: Richie's promises to Timmy that he's going to quit drinking. He even makes the promise while getting a beer from the fridge and opening it.
- The End of the World as We Know It: As mentioned above, the fully-mutated Richie is stated to eradicate the human race in six days.
- Establishing Series Moment: Early in the episode, Chief Connors reminisces on something his father told him:Chief: He'd say, "Son, there are things in the corners of this world, that if you look 'em right in the face, they'll drive you insane."
- Evil Feels Good: Richie slowly succumbs to this the more he mutates, telling his son that the transformation feels "kinda nice".
- Foreshadowing:
- Timmy studies a math book that is opened to a page on multiplication, showing just what his mutating father will eventually be capable of.
- Ms. Parmalee makes a passing mention that the only thing her empty store is carrying is cat and dog food. This turns out to be the case because Timmy has been bringing all of the town's pets to Richie so he could eat them, hence the vast amount of missing pet posters inside the building.
- Good with Numbers: Dixie is shown to be quite good at math, having tutored Timmy some time ago. Her first scene has her use her calculator to measure the amount of money in her store's register. In the end, she uses it to find out the rate at which the mutated Richie will devour the human race.
- Immune to Bullets: Chief opens fire on the mutated Richie, but the bullets have no effect on the creature's gelatinous skin.
- Laughing Mad: As an early sign of his gradual Face–Heel Turn, Richie first reaction to discovering that he's puked up a small amount gray slime is to brokenly laugh.
- Match Cut: Timmy running out the door after seeing his father mutate cuts to Doc slowly opening the same door to check on Richie.
- Men Don't Cry: As lampshaded by Timmy, Richie is a firm believer of this mentality, keeping to himself and bottling up his emotions, and then just taking up the bottle in general. It's worse because his wife died right after a huge fight the two had, which only heightened the pain.
- Me's a Crowd: When he mutates, Richie is capable of multiplying himself indefinitely.
- Mythology Gag: There are several homages to Stephen King throughout the episode:
- The posters of missing animals feature pets from Stephen's previous works, such as Cujo, Church, and Kojak.
- The Grady Twins are also among those labeled missing. Their skeletons are seen within the Grenadine house.
- Timmy enters the store wearing a yellow raincoat, and there's also a passing mention of a man that became scared after seeing "something in the sewers."
- The store counter contains a "Marsh Wheeling" cigar box. The bucket that carries pig's blood from Carrie is also seen on the counter, used to collect tips.
- The mold that is seen growing on the beer case and throughout the Grenadine house is similar to the plant-life from "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" from the original film.
- A miniature replica of Christine can be seen on a table in the Grenadines' kitchen.
- The ashtray from "Father's Day" is seen twice through the episode. Once on an endtable behind Richie's chair, and again on the coffee table, covered in mold, when Doc and Chief investigate the house.
- All three of the elderly townspeople are played by actors who have previously appeared in adaptations of King's stories. Adrienne Barbeau played Wilma Northrup in the original Creepshow, Giancarlo Esposito played the gamer in Maximum Overdrive, and Tobin Bell appeared in a short film adaptation of "My Pretty Pony".
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: While it can be seen as understandable by some, Timmy's fear of angering his father keeps him from getting the man some desperately needed help. It's because of that fear that he keeps on bringing food to his mutating father, allowing him to mutate to a point where he is set to devour the world's population in a matter of days.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The substance inside the slimy can that causes Richie to mutate is never revealed.
- Offing the Offspring: It's implied that Richie and his spawn will devour Timmy when he breaks into the diner.
- Police Are Useless: Doubly subverted with Chief, who stays in town to prevent looting and attend to those who may need help during the hurricane. When he learns that Richie has been neglecting and apparently terrorizing his son and sent him out into the storm to get beer, he goes to deliver said beer and check up on him. When he discovers the skeletons of the missing Grady twins, he immediately goes to arrest Richie, but he unforunately didn’t account for Richie having turned into a Blob Monster who feeds on human flesh, who absorbs him.
- Rapid-Fire "No!": Doc lets out a stream of them as he comes upon the Grady twins' skeletons.
- The Reveal: All those posters of missing pets, and the mention of the missing twins mentioned at the beginning? Turns out they're missing because Timmy has been bringing them to his house so his mutating father could eat them.
- Shout-Out: A patch on Chief's jacket reads "King County Georgia", a reference to The Walking Dead.
- The Teaser: A brief Cold Open shows Hurricane Charlie making its way along the coast as Chief boards up the diner's windows.
- Those Two Guys: Chief and Doc spend the whole story, sans the ending, sticking together as they check on Richie.
- Tragic Monster: Richie didn't intend to turn himself into a ravenous, blood-thirsty blob. He was just a broken man struggling with loss. His Men Don't Cry mindset rendered him unable to open up about the heartbreak he was undergoing, and he turned to Harrow's Supreme as a means to numb the pain.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Doc pukes into the Grenadine's bathtub when he discovers the slimy, skeletal remains of a cat.
- Weakened by the Light: A side effect of Richie's transformation is a strong sensitivity to bright light.
- Would Hurt a Child: Among the mutating Richie's victims are the half digested skeletons of a very familiar pair of twins. It's also implied that he eats his own son after he eats Doc and Dixie.
