If She Dies
"What if Paul Marano had turned right instead of left? Hit the brakes a millisecond quicker? Or if, if, if... The word ticks like a crazy clock trying to reclaim a single tragic second — from the Twilight Zone."
The widowed Paul Marano (Tony Lo Bianco) devotes as much of his time and energy as he can to his only daughter Cathy (Andrea Barber). Things unfortunately take a turn for the worse when the pair are caught in a car accident. While Paul survives with minor injuries, Cathy ends up in a coma. Unable to bear life without his little girl, Paul soon glimpses a different little girl on the roof of a local orphanage. When he learns that this girl, Sarah (Jenny Lewis), died many years ago, Paul theorizes that she may be working to help save Cathy's life.
Tropes
- A Birthday, Not a Break: The car accident that almost kills Cathy occurs on Paul's birthday. While he's uninjured, Cathy herself is put in a coma.
- Ambiguous Ending: Did Cathy truly come back to life from sleeping in Sarah's old bed? Or did Sarah's ghost just possess her so she could have the family she never had in life?
- Chill of Undeath: Paul notes that Sarah's skin is ice cold when she takes him by the hand to her old bed.
- Companion Cube: Sarah evidently never went anywhere without Toby, her treasured teddy bear.
- Cute Ghost Girl: Paul spots the ghost of Sarah, a young girl, on the roof of St. Amelia's Orphanage, but she disappears as soon as he turns his head. When he tells St. Agnes, a nun who works there, he learns that the orphanage is having a rummage sale, so he buys an antique wooden bed. That night, Sarah visits him in his bedroom, telling him that she's looking for Toby. The next morning, Paul pays a visit to the orphanage, where St. Agnes tells him that Sarah lived in the orphanage and died of tuberculosis in the same bed he bought yesterday many years earlier, her teddy bear Toby being her prized possession. Paul realizes that Sarah was helping him try to save Cathy by telling him to place his comatose daughter in the bed with Toby. When he does so, Cathy instantaneously makes a full recovery.
- Daddy's Girl: Cathy is incredibly close to her dad, especially since her mother's death means that he's all she has left.
- For Want Of A Nail: The plot occurs because a cyclist makes the poor decision to cross the street while popping a wheelie, just as Paul comes driving down his path.
- Grand Theft Me: Implied at the end. The first thing Cathy does after waking up from her coma is to ask her father for Toby... despite the fact that she couldn't have known the bear's name.
- Karma Houdini: The cyclist who causes the car accident in the first place disappears after it happens, and it's unknown whether he was questioned about the incident.
- Papa Wolf: Having already lost his wife, Paul is very protective of Cathy and utterly devoted to her, unable to bear parting with her through almost any means.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The cyclist who instigates the opening car crash.
- Title Drop: Paul's young daughter Cathy is left stuck in a coma after his car accident. He twice laments "If she dies..." to Dr. Brice, unable to face life without her.
- Undead Barefooter: Sarah wears a nightgown and has no shoes, given that she died in bed.
- Unfinished Business: Paul speculates that Sarah, the ghost of a young girl who died of tuberculosis decades earlier, has not moved on because she wants to help Paul save the life of his comatose daughter.
Ye Gods
Yuppie businessman Todd Ettinger (David Dukes) meets a young woman and nearly falls in love with her, but shrugs her off at the last second. While in the office later that day, Todd is confronted by Cupid (Robert Morse), the personification of love himself, who rebukes him and the rest of mankind for growing so ignorant and oblivious to true love. As punishment, Cupid strikes Todd with several of his arrows, increasing his love for the woman he saw earlier that day to the point where it drives him insane. While seeking advice for his problems, Todd discovers that Cupid has become noticeably bitter since his break-up with the fury Megaera (Carolyn Seymour) many years ago. In order to make his overwhelming love go away, Todd summons Cupid and Megaera together so they can talk through their issues and get back together.
Tropes
- All Myths Are True: Todd discovers that the gods and demigods of Classical Mythology really exist, though they keep a low profile these days since people no longer believe in them.
- And This Is for...: Cupid fires three arrows at Todd's chest in response to his rant at him. He cites the first arrow was for Todd being a self-obsessed jerk, the second for wasting his time, and the third because he just felt like it.
- Animorphism: Megaera tells Todd that she turned Cupid's mortal lover Drusilla into a tree frog, as she was angry that Cupid had been cheating on her, and threatens to turn him into a snail darter if he tries anything suspicious.
- Bookends: The episode starts and ends with Todd meeting the girl of his dreams.
- Cupid's Arrow: Cupid sprinkles Todd and the mystery woman he just bumped into with some magic dust so they'll fall instantly in love, only for it not to work. He later strikes Todd with three of his arrows so his feelings for the woman will intensify as punishment for shrugging off true love.
- Death of the Old Gods: Cupid tells Todd that the gods and demigods of Ancient Greece and Rome didn't go away after the empires fell. They continue to exist, but they now take little interest in the affairs of mortals, considering that they're no longer believed in. Todd later meets Bacchus, god of wine and festivity, who now goes by the name Ed Bacchus and owns a wine label known as Olympus Wines.
- Dominatrix: Implied. Todd's friend Peter offers to set him up with a woman that he knows who is into some pretty strange things. Todd turns down the offer since he wants a more substantial relationship.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Todd finds Cupid at a wine tasting Bacchus is holding, drinking his issues with Megarea away.
- God Couple: Cupid and Megaera are revealed to have been an item in the late 19th to early 20th century, until he cheated on her with a mortal woman named Drusilla. When Cupid convinced Jupiter to turn Drusilla into a demigod so they could be together, Megaera retaliated by turning her into a tree frog. Todd ultimately realizes that the only way that he can either finally get together with the woman Cupid made him fall in love with, or have his intense love for her lifted, is to help Cupid and Megaera patch up their own differences. To this end, he lures the two of them into his office and traps them with a spell given to him by Baachus. In the end, Cupid apologizes to Megaera and they resume their relationship. As a reward, Cupid arranges for Todd to finally get the woman of his dreams.
- Happy Ending: Todd manages to fix Cupid and Megarea's relationship, and as a reward, he finally gets together with his dream woman.
- I Have Many Names: Todd doesn't recognize the name "Bacchus" until he looks in a book of Classical Mythology, where he learns that he was the Greek/Roman god of wine. Todd soon discovers that he has gone incognito as a mortal businessman named "Ed Bacchus", and now runs the Olympus Wines company in downtown Los Angeles.
- Lighter and Softer: The episode is a lot more light-hearted than the one it's paired with, appearing as a quirky romantic comedy that heavily features mythological beings.
- Locked in a Room: Todd uses a spell provided to him by Bacchus to trap Cupid and Megaera in his office so they can reconcile their differences. They manage to do so and get back together.
- Meet Cute: Todd and the woman who Cupid makes him fall in love with when they bump into each other at a café. At the end of the episode, they meet once again when the woman crashes her car into Todd's. Having realized that they were meant to be together, they kiss in the middle of the street.
- No Name Given: The woman that Todd falls in love with is never named.
- Putto: Surprisingly averted, as Cupid appears as a middle-aged man in a suit. He even lampshades to Todd that his depiction as "the naked kid with the bow and arrow" was actually "some idiot painter's idea".
- Rage Against the Heavens: In the dead of night, Todd rants to the skies that Cupid and the gods of old aren't going to break him.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Cupid's rant about yuppies and how they don't fall in love at his command, as directed to Todd.
- Small Role, Big Impact:
- The woman who Todd bumps into in the beginning, as Cupid drives him madly in love with her.
- Bacchus also provides a small but important role, revealing just why Cupid is so upset and giving Todd the spell that traps Cupid and Megarea in the latter's office.
- Summoning Ritual: Todd uses a spell provided by Bacchus to summon Megaera to his apartment in order to convince her to get back together with Cupid.
- Take That!: Cupid rebukes the "yuppie" culture of the 1980s by ranting to Todd, a yuppie himself, that the life of a yuppie is hollow, empty, and calculated, focusing only on acquiring money and possessions while shrugging off immaterial concepts like true love, even calling him a "yuckie" to mock him. When he gets overwhelmed with love against his will, Todd eventually realizes that Cupid was right.
- Title Drop: Todd exclaims "Ye gods!" when he successfully summons Megaera to his apartment.
- Unfazed Everyman: Todd's secretary April, who finds nothing peculiar about the fact that her boss is dealing with the relationship issues of mythological deities, only notifying him of his schedule, reminding him when he's late, and asking what specific brand of something that he wants.
- Valentine's Day Episode: Even though it aired in October, the episode makes perfect Valentine's material, as it focuses on a man overcome with uncontrollable love for a woman, and tries to fix the relationship troubles of Cupid himself so he can get the love to stop. A heart even appears over the scene where Cupid and Megarea fall back in love.
- World of Ham: Todd, who becomes quite the ham, ends up meeting mythological beings from Ancient Rome and Greece, who are similarly hammy.
"The delicate thistledown of romance blows willy-nilly in the scented breeze of chance. On the other hand, perhaps true love is just a crap shoot, with the dice loaded and the odds rigged from on high Mount Olympus, a condo for immortals in that subdivision called — The Twilight Zone."
