Time for a taste of her own medicine.
Rod Serling: Picture of an aging man who leads his life, as Thoreau said, 'in quiet desperation.' Because Harmon Gordon is enslaved by a love affair with a wife forty years his junior. Because of this, he runs when he should walk. He surrenders when simple pride dictates a stand. He pines away for the lost morning of his life when he should be enjoying the evening. In short, Mr. Harmon Gordon seeks a fountain of youth, and who's to say he won't find it? This happens to be the Twilight Zone.
Air date: December 13, 1963
Harmon Gordon (Patrick O'Neal) struggles to keep up with his much younger wife Flora (Ruta Lee). One night, after a blow-up, Harmon calls over his younger brother Raymond (Walter Brooke), a doctor, and begs him to test a youth serum on him. Reluctantly, Raymond agrees, but while the serum works, it has unexpected consequences.
A Short Trope from a Certain Fountain:
- Beauty Is Bad: Flora's looks are the only decent thing she has going.
- Book Ends: The episode begins with the aged Harmon bending over backwards to please his young wife Flora. Later, Raymond lampshades this towards the end that now it's Flora's turn to take care of a younger spouse at the expense of her own happiness.
- Bottle Episode: This episode takes place entirely in Harmon and Flora's apartment.
- Domestic Abuse: Flora verbally abuses Harmon at every opportunity, belittling him over his age and correspondingly slower lifestyle. She mockingly refers to him as "Big Daddy" and says that if they ever visited Egypt, she might leave him for a mummy. Harmon says himself that she can barely stand to be around him, but he tolerates her treatment of him as he loves her deeply.
- Driven to Suicide: Harmon tells Raymond that he's so miserable about not being able to give Flora what she wants, he's reached the point of not caring about his own life, and threatens to jump off the balcony if Raymond won't give him a shot of the youth serum, despite Raymond's protests that it's not ready for human testing.
- Establishing Character Moment: Flora's first scene shows her dancing, knocking over a family heirloom, and treating Harmon disdainfully, thus demonstrating her role as the episode's villain.
- Fountain of Youth: Desperate to keep up with Flora, Harmon asks his brother Raymond to test an experimental cellular serum on him in the hope that he will become young again. Although it has been successfully tested on animal subjects and human glands and organs, Raymond says that it will be 20 years before it is ready for human testing. However, he reluctantly agrees to inject Harmon with the serum after his brother threatens to commit suicide. The next morning, Harmon has the appearance of a man of about 40 and regresses to 30 in front of Flora and Raymond. It soon becomes clear that the effects of the serum are out of control. Within hours, Harmon has become a toddler.
- Gold Digger: Flora Gordon used to work on the chorus line before Harmon fell in love with her, and she clearly didn't marry him for love, given how awful their home life is.
- Henpecked Husband: Deconstructed in Harmon's situation. A more confident husband would've laid down the law, but Harmon is so scared of angering Flora that he allows her to have her way.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Of the "Love is Blind" variety. For reasons beyond anyone's comprehension, Harmon is unconditionally in love with Flora and believes she deserves nothing but the best, despite the fact that she's a selfish, heartless woman who's done nothing to earn Harmon's affection beyond looking pretty.
- Hourglass Plot: Implied by Raymond. She's spent the better part of the story making her husband indulge her at the expense of tiring his old self, and often threatening to leave him for younger men. As the episode draws to a close, Raymond points out that his brother's de-aged condition leaves him in a position where someday, Flora will be the older spouse tiring herself to please him, and he can always leave her for a younger woman.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: If Raymond's words are anything to go by, Harmon wasn't always the feeble pushover Flora made him. Before they were married, Harmon was as self-confident as he was bright and discerning. Nowadays, he's nothing but a "quaking fool" who hardly ever raises his voice to Flora.
- Ironic Hell / Laser-Guided Karma: Flora is forced to settle down and raise her husband lest she lose her husband's riches. Even better: Raymond points out with unrestrained glee that in a couple decades, the tables will have turned: Flora will be the old spouse serving Harmon day and night, and Harmon will be the younger spouse who can leave her for someone else.
- Love Martyr: Harmon is a male variety of this, loving Flora with all his heart, to the point where it's prompted him to resent himself just because Flora doesn't think he's any fun as an old man.
- Minimalist Cast: This episode features only three credited actors: Patrick O'Neal, Ruta Lee and Walter Brooke.
- Never My Fault: When Harmon wishes Flora would be more careful (regarding an antique statue she "accidentally" knocked over), she retorts "someone should've wished that when we signed the marriage papers".
- Nice Guy: Harmon Gordon. Not only does he avert the Dirty Old Man trope, but unconditionally loves Flora, even though she is a toxic person. Also his brother, Raymond, who loves his brother and makes sure Flora gets her comeuppance for mistreating Harmon.
- Parenting the Husband: A quite literal example. Raymond forces Flora into staying with his brother and taking care of him as he re-ages with the threat of cutting her out of the inheritance if she refuses. The icing on top of all this is that she has to do the job herself (meaning no servants or outside help).
- Plot-Inciting Infidelity: Downplayed. Flora often claims she'll leave Harmon if he doesn't dote on her every whim, and her continued disdain for him, expressed in this and other ways, makes him desperate enough to threaten suicide to force his brother to give him the youth serum.
- The Promise: After reluctantly dosing Harmon with the youth serum, Raymond tells him that if anything happens to him because of its effects, he'll destroy Flora for destroying his brother.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Raymond gave an off-screen one to Flora, right to her face, about how she's a heartless, shallow, predatory gold-digger.
- Rich Bitch: Flora Gordon. Rich? By marriage, yes. Bitch? Let's see, married an older man for his money, forced him into a lifestyle well beyond his years, and tried to bail on her husband at the end.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Once Harmon reverts to infancy, Flora prepares to walk out... only for Raymond to point out that, with Harmon effectively "dead", he's in control of the estate, and threatening that if she leaves, she gets nothing.
- Shout-Out: Flora refers to Raymond as "the poor man's Kildare" and later says "I ask for Vince Edwards and look what they send me."
Rod Serling: It happens to be a fact: as one gets older, one does get wiser. If you don't believe it, ask Flora. Ask her any day of the ensuing weeks of her life, as she takes notes during the coming years and realizes that the worm has turned: youth has taken over. It's simply the way the calendar crumbles... in the Twilight Zone.
