Recap / Tales From The Crypt S 5 E 6 Two For The Show

Two for the Show

Three to get deadly and four to go... away.

Crypt Keeper: (wearing a loud suit and performing at a comedy club) I tell you, ladies and germs, that ghoul-friend of mine makes me so crazy. She told me she thought she'd look good in something long and flowing, so I threw her in the Mississippi! (Rimshot; the audience groans) Hmm. And how about that Ernest Hemingway, always shooting his mouth off! (he's met by dead silence again, hearing only the sound of Chirping Crickets) Oh. Hello? Anybody? I know you're out there, folks. I can hear you bleeding! (another Rimshot) Is this on? (taps his microphone, producing feedback) Hmm. I know what this crowd wants. A little slay on words! Maybe a couple of nasty fright gags?
Heckler: Get a life!
Crypt Keeper: Something along the lines of tonight's nasty nugget? It's a little tale about marriage, or if you prefer, about wife and death. I call it: Two for the Show.

Andy Conway (David Paymer) is a self-absorbed workaholic who loves talking about himself non-stop, but he's notably taken aback when his wife Emma (Traci Lords) tells him that she's been having an affair and wants a divorce. Incensed at this news after initially talking over the announcement, mainly because a divorce will make him look like a schmuck to his friends, Andy tries to fight back against Emma's decision and ends up stabbing her to death with a pair of scissors. The altercation is brought to the attention of Barney Fine (Vincent Spano), a police officer with marital issues similar to Andy's. After interrogating Andy and taking a suspiciously personal interest in the accusation that he murdered his wife, Barney leaves when it becomes apparent that nothing actually happened in the apartment. After Barney leaves, Andy hacks up Emma's corpse, stuffs her in a suitcase, and boards a train to get rid of the evidence by throwing it out of the baggage car. As soon as Andy boards, he finds out that Barney is aboard the same train, leading to a heavy psychological game of cat and mouse between the cop and the killer. Or is it the other way around?

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Tropes:

• Adaptation Name Change: In the original comic, the Villain Protagonist was named "Harry Jameson", the wife was named "Sarah", and the cop wasn't named at all. Here, the names are "Andy Conway" and "Emma", and the cop is given the name "Barney Fine".
• Adaptational Villainy: Barney. In the comic, he was a nameless detective who got suspicious of Harry, which leads to various events seen here (Sarah's corpse being chopped up, Harry's attempt to dispose of the body, getting on the train, etc.). In the episode, Barney is a Dirty Cop who murdered his own wife in the exact same way Andy did to Emma, and psychologically manipulates Andy to help him get away with it. This change was due to the episode maintaining the trunk switch; the comic also had a chopped-up body in the switched trunk, being the result of the twist from "One for the Money..." from the same issue. Since that story was never adapted into an episode and was too extraneous to include here, the change was required.
• Ambiguously Bi: Averted with Emma and Barney's wife. Both women are ultimately revealed to have been bisexual, as they were married to men while having an affair with each other.
• Awful Wedded Life: Emma and Andy, as greatly demonstrated in the opening scene. Barney and his own wife are implied to be equally miserable with one another.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Barney gets away with killing his wife and duping the FBI into arresting Andy, who's coming face-to-face with the electric chair.
• Bury Your Gays: Both wives get murdered because they were having a passionate and romantic affair with each other while married to their respective husbands.
• Chekhov's Gun: The ID card that Andy fills out before he gets on the train, which is swapped out for a different one by Barney as part of his plan.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • The FBI agents who intend to search the train for drugs possibly being smuggled by a rich trafficker. Barney initially springs this news on Andy in the dining car and gets him paranoid enough to throw his corpse-filled luggage out early, inadvertently abetting Barney by exposing his crime to the agents.
  • The porter who has Andy fill out an ID card for his luggage is also one, as Barney watching Andy do this gives him the idea to swap it for another card, exposing his wife's corpse and letting Andy take the fall for his own killing.
• Cut Himself Shaving: Andy gives Barney this excuse to explain a slash on his face, which was caused by Emma with a pair of scissors.
• Destroy the Evidence: The episode ends with Barney feeding Emma's corpse to his garbage disposal while reading a newspaper covering Andy's arrest.
• Dirty Cop: Barney is revealed to be one, as he killed his wife, chopped up her body, and hoped to ditch the evidence via throwing the body (locked in a trunk) off a train. His entire goal was to find a patsy to pin his own murder on, and he accomplishes it by framing Andy for the murder of both of their wives.
• Disposing of a Body: Andy and Barney were plotting to dispose of their respective cheating wives by killing them, cutting them up, stuffing them a suitcase, and then throwing them off a moving train.
• Downer Ending: Andy is thrown in jail and will most likely face the death penalty after Barney pins him for murdering both his own wife and Emma, while he gets away with getting his own cheating wife out of the picture.
• Evil Sounds Deep; Barney's voice is low and deep with a stoic tone, establishing that he's a crooked cop who killed his cheating wife.
• Evil Versus Evil: Andy, an egotistical, wife-murdering workaholic, goes up against Barney, a Dirty Cop who did the exact same thing.
• Flipping the Bird: At the end of the episode, Emma's severed arm looks as though it's doing this as Barney shoves it into his garbage disposal.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The scene at the police station where Barney is introduced, showing him having an argument with his wife over the phone.
  • When they're first seated together, Barney and Andy discuss their marital issues with one another. In particular, Barney asks Andy a "hypothetical" question: if you actually did murder your wife, how would you do it?
  • While he's asking this question, Barney psyches Andy out by accurately depicting how he would murder his wife, doing so in a way that makes it seem like he knows from experience, and even saying that they "have a lot in common."
• Framing the Guilty Party: Barney's intentions all along were to frame Andy, who murdered his own wife, for murdering his wife too, so he could be cleared of killing her himself.
• If I Can't Have You…: When Emma announces to Andy that she's having an affair and wants to leave him, Andy promptly flies into a rage and kills her.
• It's All About Me: Andy only ever focuses on himself, preaching to an utterly bored Emma about his accomplishments at work nonstop. In fact, the main reason he snaps at her when she wants a divorce and ultimately kills her is because he thinks the divorce will make him look like a schmuck in front of his co-workers.
• Jerkass: Andy is a self-absorbed jerk who treats his wife as a trophy to show off to his co-workers, makes her doll herself up when he drags her to boring weekend cocktail parties, talks over her and criticizes her behavior, and treats her personal finances as an "allowance" that he gives her like a child's allowance. And that's just before he kills her in a rage.
• Lipstick Lesbian: The wives, both of whom were very feminine in style and were having a passionate affair with one another. And one of them is played by Traci Lords.
• Love Triangle: When Andy's murder is published in the newspaper, it's framed as the result of such a triangle.
• Married to the Job: Andy only ever talks about how awesome he is at his job and about how his co-workers idolize him, with this being a major factor as to why Emma can't stand him anymore.
• Memento MacGuffin: The high school class ring that Andy and Barney find on the former's bedroom floor. The climax has Barney revealing that it belonged to his wife, and she gave it to Emma when they started seeing each other.
• Not Helping Your Case: Barney's suspicions about why Andy wants to board a train for Chicago are increased when a porter tells Andy that he'll needs to sign his name and address so his luggage isn't lost, noting that the railway has a history of losing suitcases, which end up being gone forever.
• Not His Sled: Inverted. The episode maintains the trunk switch, but due to "One for the Money..." not being made into its own episode, or made part of this episode, the owner of the second trunk and the corpse within had to be changed.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: Barney delivers one to Emma's corpse as he shoves her into the garbage disposal: "You know, Emma, you don't look so bad for a woman who's been hacked up and thrown off a train."
• Paranoia Gambit: Barney knew all along what Emma, Andy, and his wife were up to, so he plays one on Andy, following him everywhere and placing hints that he's onto him in his head, saying that additional officers will be coming to his apartment, the FBI will be on the train for a random drug search, etc. It works perfectly in the end, as the irrational Andy ultimately blurts out that he killed Emma in front of the agents, who take him away and put him on death row.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Since the showrunners needed to maintain the trunk switch for the twist, but didn't have the screen time to add "One for the Money..." onto the story, Barney was made to be the one with the other hacked-up body that Andy switched.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Emma tears Andy a new one with his obsession with his work and his constant talking down to her, culminating in the reveal that she's been cheating on him and wants a divorce, but Andy is so absorbed in his latest yarn that he doesn't believe her at first, nor does he even listen.
• Red Herring: The class ring that Andy finds on the floor of his and Emma's room. He initially thinks that it belongs to Barney and he left it behind, bringing it up when he accuses Barney of having sex with Emma, but Barney shows him that he's already wearing his own ring in the baggage car. He then reveals to Andy that the ring he found is a woman's ring, and that his wife gave it to Emma when the women began their affair.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Andy thinks that Barney is the person having an affair with his wife. He's wrong about this, but Emma was having an affair with someone Barney knew personally, which is why Barney has been after Andy the whole time.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Andy's unseen neighbor, an old lady who phones the police to report the disturbance between him and Emma, and indirectly gets Barney rather interested in the case.
• Spot the Thread: Barney assures one of the FBI agents that Andy didn't kill both of their wives, stating that Emma left on a plane for Cancun. However, Andy's cover story was that she went to Chicago, and was doing so on a train.
• Stalker without a Crush: Barney follows Andy everywhere he goes after the two first meet, as part of his above-mentioned Paranoia Gambit.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Unbeknownst to Andy, Barney, the officer who interrogates him over Emma's murder, did the exact same thing Andy did with Emma to his own wife (kill them, cut them up, stuff them into a trunk, and board a train to get rid of the evidence after learning that they were cheating on him).
• "Strangers on a Train"-Plot Murder: An indirect case. Andy and Barney each murdered their own wives in the exact same way, and boarded the same train in order to dispose of the bodies. The swap comes into play when Barney manages to trick Andy into taking the fall for his murder.
• Thriller on the Express: Andy and Barney find themselves on the same train after committing the same crime, where the crooked cop psyches out the egotistical workaholic by making him think that the FBI is plotting to search the train for drugs when it arrives in Peoria, falsely convincing Andy that he's on board because one of the passengers is a millionaire who's smuggling drugs who he's tasked with busting.
• Trophy Wife: Andy views Emma as one of these, given his self-absorbed nature.
• Unwitting Pawn: Andy ends up being the unknowing fall guy for Barney, who succeeds in pinning him for the murder of his own wife by his hand.
• Villain of Another Story:
  • Barney evidently learned everything that his wife was up to, and with whom, before the episode began. He sets his sights on Andy to dupe him into taking the fall for his own murder of his own adulterous wife, who he dealt with in the exact same way Andy did.
  • Assuming that his lies have some kernel of truth to them, Barney points out that one of the passengers is a drug-smuggling millionaire that he's working to bust, and he's the reason why the FBI is plotting to search the whole train when it stops in Peoria.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Barney is viewed as a responsible and upstanding officer by the FBI agents who raid the train for drugs, as they arrest Andy for the murder Barney himself committed.
• Villain Protagonist: Andy, who kills his wife and boards a train to ditch the body.
• Wham Shot: After swapping tags with a different trunk in the luggage compartment, Andy decides to open it to show Barney and the FBI that he doesn't have anything of note inside... only to reveal a cut up corpse. What really makes things bad about this? It's not Emma's corpse. It's the corpse of Barney's wife, who it turns out Emma was having her passionate affair with. Andy didn't know this while Barney did, and the crooked cop uses this revelation to pin the blame on Andy for murdering both of their wives.
• Whole-Plot Reference: To Strangers on a Train, given that the episode focuses on two strangers aboard a train who share a connection in the form of spousal murder.
• Workaholic: Andy pays far more attention to his work life than his married life.
• World of Jerkass: Our main protagonist is a self-absorbed bore who only cares about his standing at his job and kills his cheating wife when she tries to leave him. His rival is a crooked cop who did the exact same thing with his own cheating wife. The only thing the viewer needs to worry about in the end is who gets caught, since redeeming anyone in this episode is utterly impossible.
• Yandere: Andy murders Emma because she was having an affair and planning to ditch him, while Barney murdered his wife for the same reason.

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Crypt Keeper: (still onstage) That Barney's my kind of guy. He comes up with a plan, but it's Andy who has to hatchet. (snickers) I guess it's true what they say: Better dead than wed! (another Rimshot; he is once more met with silence) Hmm. Time for my finish. (whips out a grenade, then pulls the pin and lobs it into the audience; it explodes, leaving the skeletal crowd in pieces) Now, that's what I call bombing! Take my life, please! (a final Rimshot sounds as he cackles)