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The Twilight Zone (1959) S5E28: "Caesar and Me"
(aka: The Twilight Zone S 5 E 148 Caesar And Me)

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Caesar and Me

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/57b81c5a9cbe97f1f5c3acc647df7332.jpg
A signed publicity photo of the cast.

Rod Serling: Jonathan West, ventriloquist, a master of voice manipulation. A man late of Ireland, with a talent for putting words into other people's mouths. In this case, the other person is a dummy, aptly named Caesar, a small splinter with large ideas, a wooden tyrant with a mind and a voice of his own, who is about to talk Jonathan West into the Twilight Zone.

Air date: April 10, 1964

Jonathan West (Jackie Cooper) is an unsuccessful Irish ventriloquist who is perpetually broke, reduced to selling valuable keepsakes like his grandfather's watch to pawnbrokers just to get some petty cash. At the boarding house where he lives, he is mercilessly taunted by Susan (Morgan Brittany/Suzanne Cupito), the wicked daughter of his landlady Agnes Cuhady (Sarah Shelby), for failing to find a job. Unbeknownst to everyone, Jonathan's ventriloquist dummy, "Little Caesar", turns out to have a mind of his own, and regularly talks to him at will. Despite Jonathan's reassurances that they're on the verge of a big break, Caesar apathetically tells him that they've hit rock bottom.

When Jonathan and Caesar go to a local nightclub for an audition, their performance is poorly received. The following day, Jonathan is unable to find any employment because of his lack of vocational experience and status as an immigrant, and may also be forced to leave the boarding house because he's far behind on his rent. Caesar berates Jonathan for being a hopeless "clod", but has a solution to his money woes: robberies. While hiding in his suitcase, Caesar directs the reluctant Jonathan into breaking into a delicatessen and stealing its money. Jonathan intends to use the stolen money only to pay his rent, but Caesar pressures him into committing more burglaries, which is overheard by Susan. Now aware that Caesar can talk, Susan sneaks into Jonathan's room in his absence and unsuccessfully tries to speak with the dummy. Jonathan catches her coming out of the room and shoos her away. Inside the room, Jonathan expresses a desire to skip town, but Caesar cajoles him into carrying out another burglary. The duo sneak into the nightclub to break into the manager's office, but are caught by a night watchman after they empty the nightclub's safe. They manage to bluff their way past him by giving an impromptu routine.

When Jonathan and Caesar arrive at the boarding house, Susan again eavesdrops on their ensuing argument. The next morning, over breakfast, Susan hears her aunt Agnes read about the nightclub theft in the newspaper, prompting her to call the police to tip them off about Jonathan and Caesar out of sheer wickedness. Two detectives arrive at the boarding house and interrogate Jonathan, who tries to make Caesar open up about his role in the crime spree. Caesar, however, remains silent, prompting Agnes and the detectives to stare at the one-sided exchange and think Jonathan mad. Realizing that Caesar has deliberately abandoned him, Jonathan willingly has himself arrested. After the detectives lead Jonathan out of the room, Caesar turns his head around and addresses Susan, saying that he likes her "hip attitude" and offers to help her run off to New York. He assures Susan that Jonathan will now be gone "for a long, long time" and that the two of them are now "a team". He also advises that Susan kill her aunt with the poison darts she was playing with earlier, which causes Susan to smile an evil smile.


Tropes:

  • Anti-Villain: Jonathan is just a poor, kind man who trusts his career criminal dummy - at that point his only friend - too much.
  • Bratty Half-Pint: Susan. She's absolutely vile to everyone and her aunt does absolutely nothing to correct her behavior. By the end of the episode, she ruins Jonathan's life for her own amusement and is strongly implied to kill Agnes under Caesar's goading.
  • Cassandra Truth: Jonathan attempts to prove to Agnes and the police that Caesar is both alive and ordered him to rob the delicatessen and the nightclub. However, Caesar refuses to speak in front of them, leading them to presume Jonathan to be insane and arrest him.
  • Cruel Twist Ending: Jonathan's dummy Caesar has a mind of his own and persuades him to turn from their unsuccessful stage act to a life of crime. One conversation between them is overheard by Susan, the young niece of the boarding house's owner, who regularly taunts him for his lack of professional success. After overhearing a second conversation, Susan tips off the police about Jonathan and Caesar's crime spree out of her own wickedness, and when Jonathan tries to get Caesar to confess, the dummy remains silent, leading the police to suspect that Jonathan has lost his mind. At that point, Jonathan gives himself up and is led away, at which point Caesar turns his attention to Susan, deciding to recruit her as his latest partner in crime.
  • Demonic Dummy: Caesar is alive and possesses the mind of a criminal, prompting Jonathan to rob local businesses with him to get some actual success in life after their stage act falls flat.
  • Enfant Terrible: Susan takes sheer delight in tormenting and insulting Jonathan at every opportunity. After she overhears him arguing with Caesar about robbing the nightclub, she reports him to the police out of sheer vindictiveness as opposed to it being the right thing to do. When Caesar speaks in front of her, she plans to keep it to herself even though it can prove that Jonathan is perfectly sane. It takes very little effort on Caesar's part to convince Susan to run away with him, and it's heavily implied that she'll kill her aunt Agnes in order to escape her.
  • For the Evulz: Everything Susan does is to satisfy her irrational hatred of Jonathan, from refusing to validate his claims that Caesar is alive after overhearing him and Jonathan in conversation, and tipping off the cops about his whereabouts just because she wants him to suffer.
  • Have a Gay Old Time: When the club's night watchman finds Jonathan and Caesar robbing the manager's office, Caesar remarks "Who are you, the house dick?" At the time, "dick" was slang for a detective or cop, but it's since taken on an extremely different slang meaning.
  • Ironic Echo: Caesar assures the nervous Jonathan before their crime spree begins by saying that the two of them are a team. After leaving Jonathan to get carted away by the police, Caesar uses the same phrase to describe himself and Susan, which calls the benefits and permanency of the partnership into doubt.
  • Karma Houdini:
    • Since he's a dummy who's "obviously" not capable of independence, Caesar gets away with the crime spree and sticks Jonathan with all the blame.
    • Susan also receives absolutely no comeuppance for ruining Jonathan's life for kicks. She doesn't call the police because it's the right thing to do, but only because it will hurt someone she irrationally hates, and even goes on to kill her aunt so she and Caesar can run away to New York. However, it's implied that she's just the latest in a long line of "owners" Caesar has been manipulating, so much like he did to Jonathan, he'll likely cast her aside once she's no longer useful to him.
  • Kids Are Cruel: Susan hates Jonathan for no given reason. When she realizes that Caesar is a living thing who has been manipulating him into robbing stores and businesses, she tips off the police only because it'll make Jonathan suffer. It's also strongly hinted that she's preparing to kill her aunt Agnes so she and Caesar can flee to New York.
  • Little Miss Snarker: Susan, as part of her cruel and bratty nature.
  • Not-So-Imaginary Friend: In this case, a Not-So-Imaginary Enemy. Caesar has a mind of his own and uses his influence over Jonathan to persuade him into committing various robberies. He later abandons his ventriloquist by refusing to speak in front Agnes and the detectives, making it appear that Jonathan is insane and entirely to blame for the crime spree.
  • Pushover Parents: For some reason, Agnes lets her niece be around poison darts and doesn't stop her from insulting Jonathan relentlessly. The ending indicates that Susan will even kill her with the aforementioned darts to escape her.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Caesar's name is a reference to Caesar Enrico "Rico" Bandello, the titular character of Little Caesar. He also has a prominent scar on the right side of his face, as is the case with Antonio "Tony" Camonte from Scarface (1932).
    • Caesar tells Jonathan that robbing the nightclub will be a really big "shew", making this the second reference to Ed Sullivan's distinctive pronunciation of the word, and thus his variety show, in the series.
  • Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Susan is, to put things simply, a psychopath. The first thing she's seen doing is shooting actual poison darts at people, something that could seriously hurt someone or even put out an eye (even if they weren't poisonous) at Jonathan and her aunt. She also has no empathy for anyone around her and an irrational hatred of Jonathan, tipping off his burglaries to the police simply because it'll hurt him. By the end of the episode, her intervention ruins Jonathan's life by sending him to prison for many years, and it's implied that she'll be teaming up with Caesar to flee to New York, even killing her aunt with the poison darts to free herself from her boarding house.

Rod Serling: Little girl and a wooden doll, a lethal dummy in the shape of a man. But everybody knows dummies can't talk – unless, of course, they learn their vocabulary in The Twilight Zone.

Alternative Title(s): The Twilight Zone S 5 E 148 Caesar And Me

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