Line #56 Recap/NightGalleryS1E2


1	-> '''Rod Serling:''' A very hearty welcome to ''Night Gallery'', and to a collection of art not found in your average museum. These are paintings which represent life, but occasionally death as well.
2	----
3
4	!! Room with a View
5
6	[[quoteright:305:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_7_41.png]]
7
8	-> Written by: Hal Dresner
9	-> Directed by: Jerrold Freedman
10
11	-> '''Rod Serling:''' Case in point: this canvas here. A bedroom, but with all the cheer and warmth of a crypt. Beneath the paint and the patina is an ingredient called jealousy. Color it a monstrous green and call the picture: '''Room with a View.'''
12
13	Jacob Bauman (Joseph Wiseman), a wealthy invalid left bedridden by an illness, uses his binoculars to spy on his younger wife Lila (Angel Tompkin) cheating on him with his handsome chauffeur Vic (Larry Watson). Jacob is soon visited by his kindhearted nurse, Frances Nevins (Creator/DianeKeaton), who goes on about her boyfriend and how they plan to marry soon. Learning that Vic is her boyfriend, as well as the fact that Frances tends to fly into jealous rages when he so much as looks at another woman, Jacob uses his new information to send his nurse a little "surprise" to the young lovers.
14
15	[[folder: Tropes]]
16	* AssholeVictim: Lila and Vic, who had been cheating with one another behind their spouses' backs.
17	* BewareTheNiceOnes: Frances, who tells Jacob that she flies into a rage when Vic looks at other women, kills him and Lila when Jacob sends her across the street with a gun to "surprise" them.
18	* CuteAndPsycho: Frances. She's bright, adorably shy, and has a cute smile, but she turns completely homicidal when she finds her boyfriend Vic showing an interest in other women.
19	* EarnYourHappyEnding: Jacob's plan perfectly succeeds, getting his cheating wife and her lover out of the picture without even having to leave his bed.
20	* EurekaMoment: Jacob comes up with his plan when Frances goes into detail about what she does when Vic locks eyes on another woman, as he glimpses him and Lila making out in the building across the street.
21	* {{Foreshadowing}}: The opening shot shows Frances and Vic engaging in a passionate kiss as Jacob spies on her. He later spies the chauffeur and his own wife sharing an equally-passionate kiss in the building across the street, revealing the truth to the audience and that Jacob has already begun formulating a plan to get rid of them.
22	* GoldDigger: As noted by the smug and condescending tone she takes with him, Lila quite obviously married the bedridden Jacob for his money and freely cheats on him with Vic.
23	* {{Homage}}: Jacob being bedridden and spying on the outside world with his binoculars is likely to bring ''Film/RearWindow'' to mind.
24	* UnwittingPawn: Frances, as Jacob takes advantage of her episodes of psychotic jealousy to get Lila and Vic out of his life.
25	* VillainProtagonist: Jacob, who sends his nurse to murder her boyfriend and his wife, having sex with one another behind their respective lovers' backs.
26	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Frances is last seen heading into Vic's building, and she's heard gunning him and Lila down, but we don't hear of what happens after the end. Although, in his narration for the next segment, Rod Serling implies that she (and likely Jacob) were arrested and sentenced to years in prison.
27	[[/folder]]
28	----
29
30	!! The Little Black Bag
31
32	[[quoteright:305:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_8_57.png]]
33
34	-> Original story by: Creator/CyrilMKornbluth
35	-> Teleplay by: Creator/RodSerling
36	-> Directed by: Creator/JeannotSzwarc
37
38	-> '''Rod Serling:''' For your approval now, a painting which has to do with time. Not the brief moments left to our culprits in the previous story, their years of imprisonment were minute little fragments compared to the time we talk of in this picture. We talk ''centuries'' now, and what happens when men from one century send back items quite unbidden to men of another. We call this painting: '''The Little Black Bag.'''
39
40	A pair of homeless winos, former doctor William Fall (Creator/BurgessMeredith) and his friend Hepplewhite (Creator/ChillWills), discover a black medical bag in a trash can while looking for something to pawn off for booze money. Investigating the bag, William finds that the instruments within look far more technological than any of those he used to practice with, and gradually learns that the bag itself comes from the year 2098, having been dropped in 1971 by accident. By practicing with the tools inside the bag, William learns that they can heal any ailment in mere seconds, which he does to a little girl with strep throat and two men from the homeless shelter he lives in, one with cancer and the other with rheumatoid arthritis. While William wants to continue using the bag for the good of mankind, Hepplewhite, still wanting to use it for money, begins developing other plans.
41
42	[[folder: Tropes]]
43	* TheAlcoholic: Hepplewhite and William, whose drinking cost the latter his medical career. The wine bottle that Hepplewhite swipes from the latter and breaks was even said to serve as his lunch, dinner, and cocktail hour that day, and he finds the bag when he roots through a trash-filled oil drum for something he and Hepplewhite can pawn off for petty cash to spend on more booze.
44	* BittersweetEnding: William manages to heal three people with the bag, but Hepplewhite kills him, and then accidentally kills ''himself'' with one of its scalpels. In doing this, the bag is deactivated and thrown into a garbage chute, costing more people its miraculous healing powers.
45	* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The homeless duo are introduced as they're preparing to share a bottle of cheap wine, which also foreshadows how they argue about how to use the titular bag. To demonstrate his selflessness, William lets Hepplewhite have the first sip as he goes on about how nothing is greater than a drink shared between friends. Hepplewhite, on the other hand, displays his errant greed by downing nearly half the bottle as William talks, then ends up throwing it against a wall when William tries to get it back. Hepplewhite even mentions that he and William met when they were trying to mooch a dime off one another.
46	* FriendToAllChildren: William displays a fondness for kids, as a poor Puerto Rican mother seeing the bag and begging who she thinks is a doctor to help her ill daughter prompts him to refuse pawning the bag for 8 bucks.
47	* GenderFlip: Hepplewhite was female in the original story.
48	* HomelessHero: William, who has faith in both medical science and the innate goodness of mankind. He was largely rendered homeless when his chronic drinking started "interfering" with his job, leading to the city's medical board stripping him of his credentials. Thankfully, his discovery of the bag fills him with a new drive to help the sick and injured again.
49	* IncorruptiblePurePureness: William, being a doctor, wants to use the bag's contents to better humanity. He unfortunately trusts the wrong man to be as altruistic as him.
50	* KarmicDeath: After Hepplewhite uses it to kill William, he evidently forgets that he's not a doctor and kills himself with one of the bag's scalpels in front of an audience of actual doctors, thinking that he was demonstrating its power.
51	* MrExposition: Gillings, the Time Travel Experimentation clerk from 2098, who informs the loss of the bag and the fact that one of its instruments was used to kill someone to his superiors, as well as for the benefit of the audience.
52	* RiddleForTheAges: The questions of who originally owned the titular bag, why they left it around the TTE department so it could be sent back to a random year, and why exactly it can't be retrieved, are left unanswered.
53	[[/folder]]
54	----
55
56	!! The Nature of the Enemy
57
58	[[quoteright:375:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_9_84.png]]
59
60	-> Written by: Creator/RodSerling
61	-> Directed by: Allan Reisner
62
63	-> '''Rod Serling:''' This offering is a landscape, lunar and low-keyed. Suggestive perhaps of some of the question marks that await us in the stars, and perhaps pointing out the moment when we'll collect something other than moon rocks. This item is called: '''The Nature of the Enemy.'''
64
65	Simms (Joseph Campanella), team leader of Mission Control at NASA, oversees the rescue operation of a failed attempt to establish a base on the moon, having to deal with the press while he's at it. The rescue team finds all the previous astronauts missing and a giant metallic platform near the base's ruins. The evidence points to an attack by a mysterious enemy, but what exactly the enemy might be is yet to be seen.
66
67	[[folder: Tropes]]
68	* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: The ending reveals that the astronauts of the lunar base and the rescue team are being slaughtered by a giant mouse that inhabits the moon.
69	* BatmanCanBreatheInSpace: The giant mouse is no different from the mice on Earth, other than [[RodentsOfUnusualSize its gigantic size]] and the fact it is able to survive on the Moon, which has no atmosphere.
70	* BlatantLies: Simms tells the reporters that gather at Mission Control that there's no evidence of an attack so far, even though the last transmission from the lunar base claimed "We are under attack!"
71	* ChromosomeCasting: Fitting the lunar landing/space exploration motif, there are no female characters present.
72	* {{Cliffhanger}}: The short ends right as Simms and everybody else at Mission Control sees the giant mouse on the live feed from the Moon, without showing if the mouse will fall for the giant mouse trap.
73	* DoomedPredecessor: The lunar base was wiped out by the mouse, and the rescue team doesn't make it out either.
74	* {{Foreshadowing}}: One of the reporters points out that the metallic platform resembles a giant mousetrap. As it turns out, that's exactly what it is.
75	* GainaxEnding: The titular enemy is... a giant mouse that lives on the moon somehow.
76	* OhCrap: Steve, before being killed by the enemy. Simms later does it when he himself sees the titular enemy: a giant mouse.
77	* RayOfHopeEnding: While both lunar crews are dead, a trap for the giant mouse is set, and it comes very close. There's a good chance the trap will be set off, killing the mouse, and the bodies can at least be retrieved to give them a proper burial. Though it's not specified how many mice there are, or if that's the only one.
78	* RodentsOfUnusualSize: A giant mouse is the culprit behind the deaths of the original lunar settlers and the rescue team.
79	[[/folder]]

Context Recap / NightGalleryS1E2