Recap / Tales From The Darkside S 4 E 9 Sorry Right Number

Sorry, Right Number

Katie Weiderman (Deborah Harmon), the wife of critically acclaimed horror novelist William Weiderman (Arthur Taxier), receives a peculiar phone call on a seemingly ordinary night while talking to a friend. The voice on the other end is incoherent, but sounds both feminine and horribly distraught, prompting Katie to believe that it may belong to a member of the family, such as her college bound daughter Polly (Katherine Britton) or her younger sister Dawn (Rhonda Dotson). To this end, Katie calls the former and visits the latter to learn that both are alive and well. When she returns home, she tragically discovers that William died of a heart attack after staying up too late. Ten years later, on the anniversary of William's death, Katie happens to finally discover the truth behind the mysterious phone call, but is unfortunately far too late to do anything about it.

Tropes:

• 555: Dawn's phone number is said to be 555-6169.
• Author Avatar: William Weiderman, the "king of horror", is very obviously modeled after Stephen King, who wrote the short story that the episode is adapted from.
• Bookends: The beginning and end of the episode focus on a closeup of Katie's phone, which gives the call that drives the plot forward.
• Cannot Spit It Out: When Katie's future self ends up making the mysterious phone call, she's too overcome by shock and emotion to tell her former self that William is going to die unless he can be brought to the hospital, only managing to blurt it out just as the line goes dead.
• Chekhov's Gun: The tape containing the "edited" version of Spider's Kiss William records for Jeff. Ten years after he dies, Katie rediscovers it inside his desk and impulsively calls the old house number, leading her to make the prophetic phone call that starts the whole thing.
• Downer Ending: Even though her daughter Polly gets her happy ending by getting married to the man of her dreams, Katie realizes that the call she got about William's heart attack was actually herself from ten years in the future, but is too overcome by shock to tell her past self to save him before the line goes dead, the episode ending with the sound of her crying her eyes out over a shot of the phone that started all the trouble.
• Empty Nest: Katie is shown to miss her eldest daughter Polly while she's at college, especially since she was good at keeping her rambunctious younger siblings in line.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Before Katie learns the truth about the phone call, she assumes that the dramatically stammering and crying voice on the other end was that of her daughter Polly, her mother, or her sister Dawn. She and William visit Dawn's house to check on her when it seems that she's the only possibly culprit, but only at the end of the episode does she learn that the caller was her future self.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Katie unearthing the tape of Spider's Kiss that William made for Jeff and watching it prompts her to call her old number out of reflex, triggering the time loop that said phone call causes.
• Exact Words: Katie is certain that the panicked phone call came from someone in her family. We learn at the end that it came from her future self.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Katie gains one after the Time Skip, cutting it short after William died.
• Foreshadowing:
  • While on the phone in the opening scene, Katie discusses with her friend Lois about how William is paranoid that he's not feeling his best and can't seem to sleep. The near end of the episode has him dying of a heart attack after he stays awake too long.
  • That same phone call is where Katie spells out that she's fearful about being left alone when her children are grown up, which comes to pass ten years after William's death, when Polly is getting married.
• Future Self Reveal: The end of the episode reveals that Katie herself was the caller she got early in the episode, calling from ten years in the future to tell her former self to take William to the hospital before his heart attack, but ends up becoming too overcome with shock to spit it out.
• Happily Married: Katie and William, to the point where the former becomes a grieving mess after he dies, and stays miserable ten years later.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Before William suffers his heart attack, he briefly coughs as he sits to watch the film of the novel he's become famous for.
• The Insomniac: William is repeatedly said to be suffering from insomnia, which ultimately kills him via a heart attack.
• Jump Scare: Jeff gives his dad one when he creeps on him in his study, to which William shows no response. He tells Jeff that since "Scary is [[his]] business", it's pretty much impossible to frighten him.
• Lost in Transmission: When Katie receives her future self's call, the future self in question is too overcome by the emotion and shock of hearing her own voice that she can't tell her former self to save William while she's still able, before the line goes dead.
• Monochrome Past: When Katie's future self tries to leave the prophetic phone call she heard in the past, the flashbacks of the events leading up to when Katie receives the call during the opening act are in black and white, while the scenes in the future are in color.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Spider's Kiss movie, as seen on Dawn's TV is represented by footage from Dawn of the Dead (1978), which series producer George Romero directed. Dawn herself is most likely named after the same film.
    • The footage that William sits down to watch is of the zombie played by John Harrison, who directed this episode, harassing the characters.
  • The music that Dawn falls asleep listening to is a portion of the score from Day of the Dead (1985), also directed by Romero.
• Of Corpse He's Alive: When Katie discovers William dead in his chair, he's positioned in a way that makes it look like he fell asleep, and Katie discovers the truth when he slumps over.
• Oh, Crap!: Polly's roommate has a mild one when she tells who she thinks is an admirer of one of her friends that she's in the shower, only to hear Katie's voice asking for her daughter.
• The Operators Must Be Crazy: Partially with the operator who William asks to connect the phone to Katie's sister Dawn, which turns out to be off the hook. Though she does her job well, once she finds out who he is, she quickly gushes over him and Spider's Kiss, asking if he can autograph her copy of the book before he hangs up.
• Potty Emergency: While clearing up the confusion about why someone was at her front door, Dawn tells William and Katie that it was her husband Jerry, who was locked out with no key and had to piss really bad, ultimately using a screwdriver to force his way back in.
• Prank Call: William thinks that the hysterical sounding phone call his wife received was some kind of crank caller who dialed the wrong number because they were crying too hard. The ending shows that he was more on the nose than he thought, but the caller wasn't intending to prank call anyone.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Katie's opening phone call indicates that William is paranoid about any deviation from his normal health being an omen of his imminent death, like a brain tumor. His death does indeed come about by the end of the episode, but as the result of a heart attack brought on by sleep deprivation.
  • She also thinks that the phone call she gets from her future self is a member of her family, since she recognized the voice. She contacts her daughter, sister, and mother to check up on them, only to see that they're still safe. This theory is also proven to be correct when it's revealed that the caller was actually her future self.
• Running Gag: People trying to scare William by going "Ooga Booga!" at him (first Jeff, then Katie), which gets no response from him. William himself ominously says the phrase as he reveals the pistol he's kept in his glove compartment to Katie, wanting to be prepared if things get dangerous.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Overlapping with the time loop below, Katie hearing the phone call from her future self prompts her to call and visit every female relative she's able to meet, who all seem safe. Ten years after William dies of a heart attack, she impulsively dials the old house number and makes the very same call, triggering the loop.
• Show Within a Show: The hugely successful Spider's Kiss franchise that William has written, which we see has branched out into films.
• Sibling Rivalry: Katie's younger children Jeff and Connie, who are introduced having an argument about wanting to record and watch the Spider's Kiss film with the "gory stuff" kept in.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Katie's young son Jeff, who has his father tape the showing of Spider's Kiss that's being broadcast that night. The tape William records for him is rediscovered a decade after his death by Katie, who makes the phone call that drives the whole plot by impulsively calling the number of her old house.
• Stable Time Loop: Katie hears a panicked phone call from a feminine voice regarding her husband William, who dies of a heart attack in the second act. The end of the episode reveals that the call came from herself from ten years in the future, who was too overcome by shock and emotion to tell herself to take William to the hospital before the line went dead.
• Struggling Single Mother: Katie's sister Dawn is married, but her husband Jerry is away on business during the episode, leaving her to try and handle her infant son Dustin herself, who has been teething on the phone and left it off the hook.
• Supernatural Phone: Katie's phones are apparently able to call herself from across time. The phone call the episode centers around is made by her future self to her own house ten years in the past, but the line quickly goes dead before Future!Katie can tell her past self to take William to the hospital before his heart attack, indicating that it has some degree of sentience and wanted Katie to suffer for its own amusement.
• Time Skip: After Katie cries over William's dead body, the episode skips ten years into the future, on the day of Polly's wedding. It's on that day that Katie ends up making the phone call that she became obsessed with in the past, but makes it too late to save her husband's life.
• Toilet Humor: After calling her mother to see if she was behind the mysterious, incomplete phone call she heard, Katie tells her that she has diarrhea as a means to tell her that she needs to hang up. William cracks up at this, telling Katie that he's got to remember the line when his agent calls.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: After she unearths the Spider's Kiss tape and puts it into the VCR, Katie impulsively tries calling her old home number, inadvertently making the phone call that got her so riled up in the first place.

---