The Hat
Written By: Byron Willinger & Philip de Blasi
Aspiring writer Jay Stratton (Ryan Beil) is suffering from a relentless case of writer's block as a deadline he's certain to miss quickly approaches, holding an unloaded pistol to his head to cope with the stress. Putting the gun down, Jay laments to his nervous architect wife Astrid (Sara Canning) about his idol, Stephen Bachman, who was able to write 2 to 3 bestselling novels per year and never missed a deadline in his life. Astrid calms down and shares similar woes with her husband, saying that she was recently passed over for a lead role at her firm, assuring him that even the greatest minds struggle in their quest for success.
With that, Jay visits his manager Nicole Swanson (Marlee Walchuck) for some desperately needed wisdom. Nicole tells Jay that what he needs is a good luck charm; something that he can use to physicalize his ideas. She points him to a corner of her office that houses the lucky charms of various famous writers, including the typewriter Ray Bradbury always worked with, a pipe often smoked by Richard Matheson, and a Civil War bullet H. P. Lovecraft had in his shirt pocket when he wrote his novellas. Nicole steps out for a minute to discuss business with another client, leaving Jay to stare at the lucky charms of yesteryear's greatest authors. What truly captures his interest is a black homburg hat in a glass box marked "DO NOT OPEN", which he takes out and tries on. When Nicole steps back in, she reveals that the hat was worn by Bachman whenever he wrote. When asked why she has the hat, Nicole claims that Bachman decided to retire from writing and gave it to her for safety. Hatching an idea, Nicole offers to let Jay keep the hat so he can get his inspiration back, which he excitedly accepts. Back home, Astrid enters to find Jay wearing his new hat, prompting her to get an idea. She returns wearing her own hat, a pillbox, so the couple can take matching photos.
That night, Jay sits down at his computer, wearing the hat and waiting for inspiration. Hours soon pass, leading to the next day, and Jay, having made no progress while staring at his blank screen, frustratedly tugs his hat. Jay's eyes suddenly gain transparent slits that blink vertically, and he furiously begins typing, ultimately writing an entire novel all through the night. When he finally finishes, Jay, unable to believe what he's created, takes the manuscript to Nicole, who instantly falls in love with it, picturing that bidding wars will start for the book and that Zendaya and Tom Holland will be at the premiere. She then suggests that Jay start working on a sequel, claiming that readers don’t want one-offs anymore. Jay is wary about writing a sequel, but Nicole gets under his skin by saying that he'll turn out "just like all the others" if he craps out.
Falling for her manipulation, Jay gets back to, putting out more and more books. Overtime, he becomes a household name, with glorifying reviews, book signings, and talk show appearances under his belt. One night, as the neglected Astrid lays in bed, she tries to look for Jay and finds him locked in his office. The next morning, she tells Jay that he's spent the last three days there, writing away as he chugs gallons of milk, and is starting to think that he's more interested in his books and hat than her, feeling like she's stuck in one of his novels. This unfortunately gives Jay new ideas and sends him running back to the office. Eventually, Jay decides to put the hat in his closet for a little bit, but his scalp begins itching, prompting him to pull out a clump of hair as he tries to scratch it. Not thinking too much of this, Jay gets back to his computer to find that the password has somehow been changed. Deciding to grab the hat so he can remember the new password, Jay finds the hat missing. When he sits back down, he's able to log back in, but he's once again stricken by writer's block without his hat.
As his birthday rolls around, Astrid manages to drag Jay out of the office for a candlelit lobster dinner. As Jay ravenously shoves the lobster down his throat, Astrid tells him that he looks and smells awful, but Jay refuses to take a shower because he believes the hat will get wet. Astrid keeps expressing her concerns about Jay, but he ignores her and claims that he'll take the hat off after his latest epic is finished. Having had enough with Jay choosing his career and hat over her, Astrid packs her things and leaves him. Shortly after, Jay gets a call from May Johnson (Kelly Metzger), assistant to Stephen Bachman, who claims the author wants to meet him. A starstruck Jay promptly accepts, excited at the prospect of meeting his idol. Jay ends up traveling to Bachman Square, where he discovers that Bachman (David Beairsto) is a balding, decrepit, heavily-scarred old man confined to a wheelchair and only able to speak via a notepad that May reads aloud. Through May, Bachman angrily reveals that Nicole, who used to manage him, stole his hat. Having correctly assumed the burgeoning Jay's newfound literary celebrity had assistance from her, Bachman demands that he give the hat back. When he refuses, Bachman verbally thrashes Jay, rebuking him as a thief and a talentless hack who has no business in writing, prompting Jay to leave.
Upon returning home, Jay furiously throws all of Bachman's books in the trash, replacing them with his own before sitting down for another writing session, intending to become better than him. He soon gets phone calls from Nicole, who's loving the new work and reveals that Steven Spielberg is offering to direct a film adaptation of his book, then gets another call from Astrid, who says that she landed the Oppenheimer account, both of which he ignores. After he finishes his latest book, Astrid again calls Jay, telling him that she misses him and asking her to come by her apartment. On hearing this, Jay tries taking the hat off, but finds it seemingly stuck to his head. This leads him to pry it off with a paper opener, cutting his head in the process. To his horror, Jay discovers that the hat is actually the outer shell of a large insectoid parasite that bites his finger off. As the parasite comes at him, Jay grabs his gun and shoots it dead. Examining the creature's body, Jay discovers a tongue-like appendage that has been attached to his head every time he's put the hat on, injecting all kinds of ideas in his mind by stimulating his brain stem. Jay tries to put the dead creature in the closet, but soon notices that its box contains its eggs.
Jay barges into Nicole's office to show her the dead parasite, now knowing that she knew the parasite was in the hat when she stole it from Bachman, then gave it to him so she can manipulate him to gain huge amounts of revenue from his writing, just as she did with Bachman. Ignoring her pleas about what happens to his fame without the hat, Jay reveals that the parasite's eggs have hatched into tiny versions of their ravenous parent, and he kills Nicole by shoving one of them in her face. Jay goes to Astrid’s new apartment to apologize and offer to let her come home. He finds her wearing her pillbox hat and furiously scribbling blueprints for a beautifully crafted building. Her eyes blink vertically, revealing to Jay that her pillbox also houses one of the parasites. As he takes this in and laments, a third parasite emerges from the ceiling and leaps onto the screaming Jay, preparing to kill him.
This episode contains examples of:
- Affably Evil: Nicole turns out to be greedy, manipulative, and emotionally abusive, but she plays herself up as supportive and chipper in her line of work.
- Author Avatar: Jay's idol, horror/dark fantasy novelist Stephen Bachman, is a glaringly obvious parody of Creepshow's "father" Stephen King, his name being a combination of King's birth name and his pen name of "Richard Bachman", and even being portrayed by Stephen himself as a young man. Jay becomes an ersatz King himself as the episode progresses, writing astounding novels that are swiftly turned into movies with all-star casts.
- Bait-and-Switch: The first scene of the episode has Jay holding his gun to his head as Astrid freaks out, making it look like he's preparing to kill himself. We then learn that the gun isn't loaded and he's doing this because he just can't handle the stress of his impending deadline, and that this most likely isn't the first time he's done this.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The intro has Astrid persuading Jay to keep at his writing, declaring that he's going to be even better than Bachman. As soon as he's introduced to Bachman's old hat, he keeps writing and writing, just as Astrid wanted. The problem is that he's completely neglecting her in the process.
- Big Eater: As he wears the hat (thus eating for two), Jay becomes a pretty big glutton, shoving lobster down his throat during his birthday dinner and drinking several gallons of milk, which pile up next to his desk.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Jay's manager Nicole is revealed to be the true villain of the story, as she knew all along that the parasite in Bachman's hat was giving him ideas and subtly manipulated him to keep wearing it so she can get more wealth and publicity through him. When Bachman decided to retire, she stole the hat and kept it among her collection of authors' lucky charms, giving it to Jay so she can keep getting rich and famous by her association with him. When Jay finds out the truth, he kills her by forcefully introducing her to the babies the parasite left behind.
- Blank White Eyes: Those who wear one of the parasites on their heads gain a secondary set of eyelids that blink vertically, causing their eyes to briefly turn white.
- Broken Pedestal: Excited to meet his idol, Jay finds out that Stephen Bachman is a horribly weak and decrepit old man who rebukes him for supposedly stealing his hat and saying that he doesn't deserve to be a writer. Disillusioned by who his favorite author really is, Jay removes his books from his shelf and throws them in (or rather, next to) the trash, replacing them with his own and determined to become better than him.
- Call-Back: The armoire from Time Out is used by Jay and Astrid to store their hats. Thankfully it doesn't have any time-altering abilities this time.
- The Cameo: As Jay becomes famous through a comic interlude, he's seen on a talk show being interviewed by another famous Jay: Jay Leno.
- Chekhov's Gun: A literal example would be the pistol Jay keeps in his office, which he keeps unloaded and pretends to shoot himself with to cope with stress. When the parasite in his hat attacks him, he manages to load the gun and shoot it dead.
- Creator Cameo: Stephen King, who Stephen Bachman is blatantly modeled after, appears as the man himself in an old photo of him.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Given that Jay, originally a pathetic writer, ends up writing astounding novels with some "non-human" assistance, this episode could serve as Creepshow's jab at AI and the people who use it to get their work done.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: The end of the episode has Jay state that he thought Nicole's "taking chances" rant was meant to encourage him to take creative liberties with his writing, and not allowing a monstrous parasite to eat his brain.
- Driven to Suicide: The episode's beginning is framed as though Jay intends to do this, only to reveal that the gun isn't loaded and he uses it to cope with stress.
- Family Versus Career: Astrid becomes frustrated with Jay's obsession with his new hat and his newfound devotion to writing, prompting her to leave him. When he tries to get her back at the end of the episode, she herself has similarly become far too absorbed in her work to care, thanks to her own hat.
- Fat Bitch: Nicole, who manipulated Bachman and later Jay through the titular hat to gain wealth and fame, is somewhat heavyset.
- Fingore: As he wrestles with the parasitic hat, the mouth in its center bites off Jay's pointer finger.
- Foreshadowing:
- As soon as she spots Jay in his new hat, Astrid pulls out a pillbox hat that she just has lying around so she can take some matching hat selfies with him. We see her wearing that same hat at the end of the episode, revealing that it also houses a parasite.
- After Jay puts the hat in his closet and finds that his password was changed, he looks for the hat to find it missing, but he's been mysteriously logged back in when he sits back down. We learn near the end that the hat itself is what did it, as it's alive.
- Hat Damage: Averted. Jay shoots the parasite in Bachman's hat when it tries to attack him, though this doesn't damage the hat itself.
- The Hat Makes the Man: The episode is a very literal and very dark interpretation of the trope, as hats are actually parasites that give whoever wears them fantastic ideas for their line of work while slowly killing them from the inside.
- Hat of Power: The parasites that use hats as shells give their human hosts brilliant ideas via their tongues penetrating their brain stems. The downside is that the longer they stay on a head, the weaker their host becomes.
- Hypocrite: For how she was quick to leave Jay for being too devoted to his career and essentially brainwashed by his hat instead of paying attention to her, Astrid ends the episode similarly brainwashed by her own hat.
- Insistent Terminology: Whenever someone mistakes Bachman's old hat as a fedora, they're corrected that it's actually a homburg.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Jay tries at one point to write something without the hat. When he's finished, he brags that he had what it took to be a writer without a lucky hat, only to see that he's typed a string of gibberish.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Nicole stole Bachman's hat to give to another writer she could manipulate into getting her rich after he wanted to retire. She's killed when the writer in question shoves the parasite's hungry babies in her face.
- Life Drinker: The parasites that live in hats slowly kill their hosts the longer they're kept on their heads.
- Living Hat: Evidently, hats are actually the shells of parasitic creatures that leech onto human hosts and inject an appendage directly into their brain stem, stimulating it and granting them all sorts of great ideas. In doing this, they gradually drain their hosts' life force and compel them to eat and drink huge amounts of food for sustenance.
- Match Cut: As Jay, stunned by what he managed to write overnight, calls himself a genius, the episode cuts to Nicole finishing the sentence for him.
- Missing Time: As he wears the hat, Jay misses days, then weeks, as he gets absorbed into his writing.
- Monster Is a Mommy: The parasite in Bachman's hat turns out to have laid eggs in its hatbox. When the babies hatch, Jay uses them to kill Nicole for manipulating him.
- Mythology Gag:
- The ashtray from "Father's Day" can be seen in Nicole's office, placed among her collection of famous authors' lucky charms.
- In the illustration accompanying his opening narration, the Creep is seated at a typewriter, where he's been typing, over and over, "All work and no play makes the Creep a dull boy."
- Nothing Is Scarier: We have no idea where the parasite in Bachman's hat came from, or where the parasites in Astrid's hats came from. We also don't know how they're able to appear empty when the hat usually isn't worn.
- Shout-Out:
- Nicole's collection of authors' lucky charms include Ray Bradbury's typewriter, Richard Matheson's pipe, and H.P. Lovecraft's Civil War bullet. She also refers to Stephen Bachman's lucky hat as "his Golden Ticket to success."
- The parasites that inhabit the hats, which attach themselves to human hosts' heads, bear a strong resemblance to Headcrabs.
- As Jay presents his book to her, Nicole says that she's picturing Zendaya and Tom Holland attending the bidding war/premiere, and later tells him that Steven Spielberg is offering to make a film adaptation.
- During the comic montage detailing his growing fame, Jay is seen on the set of The Tonight Show, being interviewed by Jay Leno. The episode apparently takes place in a world where he's still hosting it.
- Astrid calls Jay late in the episode to let him know that she was given the Oppenheimer account at the firm.
- Shmuck Bait: Jay first spots Stephen Bachman's hat in a locked glass case labeled "Do not open." No points guessing what he does next.
- Signature Headgear: Stephen Bachman's hat, which he always wore when he wrote. It's later revealed that the hat acts as the shell for a parasite that was slowly killing him while stimulating his brain stem to give him great ideas for novels, and Nicole stole it from him and gave it to Jay to dupe him to keep writing so she can get rich through him.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Jay discovers in the end that Astrid also found a parasite in her pillbox hat, which has been giving her all sorts of new designs for buildings for her firm.
- Sudden Downer Ending: Jay gets revenge on Nicole for manipulating him, and though his writing career will never be the same without the hat, he's more than likely earned enough money to keep himself secure for a long time. Feeling satisfied with himself, Jay heads to Astrid's new apartment to apologize to her and invite her back home, only to discover that she's under the thrall of her own hat parasite, just as another one leaps from the ceiling and prepares to kill him.
- Symbiotic Possession: The parasite housed in the titular hat sits on Jay's head and injects an appendage to stimulate his brain stem, filling his head with good ideas for novels. In exchange for this, it compels him to eat and drink constantly to feed it, while it slowly drains his life away in the process.
- Trademark Favorite Drink: Jay goes heavy on milk as he keeps on writing, likely to feed the parasite on his head.
- The Voiceless: Stephen Bachman, whose hat Jay wears for inspiration, has been reduced to a sickly and decrepit old man who lost his voice, requiring him to write on a notepad and have his assistant speak these words aloud.
- Writers Suck: Jay suffers from a strong case of writer's block and a lack of inspiration. When he finds Bachman's hat and wears it, he gains a boatload of great ideas for his work.
