Healer
"Ah, Jackie, Jackie. You're a small-timer. A roof-crawler. A poke pincher. A nickel-and-dime grifter with salt in your dreams and ashes in your pockets. Don't cut that wire. Jackie, don't open that window. You won't be able to jimmy yourself out as easily as you got in. That's not the big score in there — it's the Twilight Zone."
Jackie Thompson (Eric Bogosian), a small-time cat-burglar, breaks into a local museum to look for treasures to pilfer. What particularly captures his interest is a small, shiny stone sitting on display. When he nabs the stone, Jackie is shot in the stomach by a security guard, but soon finds out that his wound has completely healed. Realizing that the stone is the cause of his healing after he tests it on his heart attack-stricken neighbor Harry Faulk (Vincent Gardenia), the two decide to put the stone to good use by having Jackie become a faith healer known as "Brother John", healing the sick and injured in the hopes of raking in cash. As he gradually enjoys healing people for good and not for the money, Jackie has a change of heart regarding Harry's ideas, especially when the healing properties of the stone apparently stop working.
Tropes
- Adaptational Backstory Change: In the episode, Harry is Jackie's neighbor, and they seemingly didn't have much of a relationship until they began using the stone to make money. In the short story adaptation by Alan Brennert, Harry is the closest thing that Jackie has to a father. They met when they were both serving sentences in Vacaville Prison ten years earlier, and had worked together on numerous scams and swindles since their release, as well as the occasional burglary, but they only ever made enough to pay their bills until Jackie stole the stone.
- Adaptation Deviation: In the short story, Joseph Rubello dies from a heart attack. In the episode, he has lung cancer, but still lives.
- Adaptation Expansion: The episode tells of Jackie's discovery and use of the healing stone, setting himself up as a Fake Faith Healer. Alan Brennert's short story adaptation features an alternating narrative of Ta'li'n, one of the priest-rulers of the city later known as Teotihuacan, who is haunted by premonitions of the city's destruction. He also receives a vision of Jackie using the stone in what looks to him to be the distant future. Ta'li'n belongs to the ancient and never conclusively identified civilization that built Teotihuacan, which the Aztecs settled in centuries later. One of Ta'li'n's contemporaries, Ch'at'l, is an elderly healer who has been entrusted with the stone for sixty years. Furthermore, the present day sections of the short story go into further detail about the stone's limitations. For instance, it cannot cure cancer permanently, but it can cause it to go into remission, and it is unable to heal diseases such AIDS and multiple sclerosis.
- Adaptation Personality Change: Harry is almost as mercenary when it comes to money in the short story adaptation as he is here, but he still has a conscience. The episode has Harry refusing to use the stone to heal Jackie's reopened gunshot wound since he wants all their cash for himself. In the short story, Harry makes a genuine effort to heal Jackie, but he becomes scared and runs away, promising to call an ambulance as he does so.
- Adapted Out: Alan Brennert's short story omits Duende, the Mexican man who warns Jackie about misusing the healing stone.
- Bittersweet Ending: Harry may have gotten away with stealing the money he and Jackie were going to split and left his partner for dead, but Jackie manages to use the stone one last time to heal a deaf little boy, who in turn heals Jackie's bullet wound. Now calling himself "John", Jackie changes for the better and returns the stone to its rightful owner.
- Death by Adaptation: Mob boss Joseph Rubello has lung cancer, which Jackie is unable to heal after using the stone for selfish means. In spite of this, Rubello is still alive when he is last seen. In the short story adaptation by Alan Brennert, Jackie is able to heal Rubello in the short term, but he still dies two weeks later.
- Healing Hands: Small-time crook Jackie steals a rare stone from a museum and is shot in the process of escaping. He soon discovers that the stone can heal any injury when his wound disappears. The next day, his neighbor Harry has a heart attack and dies, but Jackie manages to heal him with the stone. Realizing that they can make a great deal of money this way, Jackie (calling himself "Brother John") becomes a Fake Faith Healer, with Harry as his manager. Duende later reveals that the stone only works when it is used selflessly, as Jackie fails to heal people with it and has his gunshot wound reopen soon after.
- Karma Houdini: Harry leaves Jackie for dead and runs off with all the cash they made from their healing scam.
- The Mafia: Joseph Rubello is a mob boss who Jackie used to do jobs for in the 1970s. He quit after he botched a delivery and two of Rubello's thugs beat him severely enough to put him in the hospital.
- Meaningful Rename: Jackie begins calling himself "Brother John" after setting himself up as a Fake Faith Healer. After he realizes that it was wrong to use the stone for a selfish purpose, he begins calling himself "John".
- No Honor Among Thieves: As Jackie is bleeding out from his reopened wound, Harry runs off with the cash they made from their scam and leaves him to die.
- Out Of Body Experience: After being brought back to life, Harry describes to Jackie that he was moving outside of his body, able to see all of his neighbors gathered around him while he was temporarily dead.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The opening narration is spent directly rebuking petty crook Jackie as he breaks into the museum. The closing narration is more humble, however, praising him for his new outlook on life.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Jackie revives Harry with the stone after he has a heart attack. Harry, however, refuses to return the favor when Jackie's bullet wound reappears, running off with the money that they made from their TV ministry.
"Now he is John, no longer Jackie. Perhaps not Brother John, brother to all men, but at least fit to walk among men who care. Because caring is part of the secret, the secret we all learn. That the heart cannot heal what the eye cannot see. Not even — in the Twilight Zone."
Children's Zoo
Four-year-old Debbie Cunningham (Jaclyn Bernstein) goes through another day of hearing her abusive parents, Sheila and Martin (Lorna Luft and Steven Keats), constantly arguing with one another. She then shows them an invitation she got from a friend, inviting her to a place called "The Children's Zoo". When Sheila and Martin begrudgingly accept her request and take her, they learn that this particular zoo has an interesting gimmick to it.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Debbie's parents Sheila and Martin are frequently abusive towards her, verbally, emotionally, and perhaps physically. Her mother yells at her without the slightest provocation, her father often ignores her, and the two of them spend all of their time arguing with each other, with no regard for the effect that it's having on their daughter. This leads Debbie to trade her parents in for a new pair at the titular zoo.
- Awful Wedded Life: Sheila and Martin are always arguing, and Martin’s implied to be cheating on Sheila, all while they don't care how any of this affects their young daughter.
- Breather Episode: The short serves as a darkly comedic interlude between the thought-provoking "Healer" and the morose "Kentucky Rye"
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After spending her young life putting up with her abusive parents, Debbie travels to the titular zoo to trade them in for another couple who have learned what it takes to be good parents, all three of them walking off to a better life together while her original parents frantically plead for her to reconsider.
- Five Stages of Grief: As Debbie tours the zoo, she glimpses five couples who represent each stage. The first couple plead to be released by claiming that they don't know what they did wrong (denial). The second couple furiously threaten the staff and guests to let them out (anger). The third couple are just sleeping like complacent animals, possibly having submitted themselves to their fate (depression). The fourth couple try flattering Debbie and attempt to spoil her into freeing them by saying they’ll give her anything she wants (bargaining). The last couple Debbie encounters are wiser and more humble than all the others, admitting that their former son was right to bring them there. They tell Debbie that they've learned from their mistakes and now know what it means to be good parents (acceptance). Debbie is convinced to let them out and chooses them as her new parents.
- Friend to All Children: Melody, the zookeeper at the titular zoo, given that all of her customers are children with horrid parents.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Debbie's father, despite being a smoking, drinking Lazy Bum who cheats on his wife, is shown to care about Debbie more than his wife, yelling at her to give Debbie a break and putting on an affectionate voice in her presence.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Sheila and Martin become the newest additions to the Children's Zoo as punishment for their atrocious treatment of Debbie.
- No Indoor Voice: Sheila and Martin, as part of how atrocious they are at parenting.
- Parents as People: The last couple Debbie meets admit that they aren't perfect, as well as the fact that they weren't good parents to their original child, but they tell her that they've learned from their experiences and know what they need to do differently to be better parents. This convinces Debbie to choose them as her replacement parents.
- People Zoo: The titular zoo turns out to be a place where children with abusive or neglectful parents bring them to be imprisoned like animals while they pick out new ones. Debbie inspects five potential pairs of parents locked in cells before deciding on the couple who she wants to become her new parents.
- The Quiet One: Debbie only says one word during the whole episode, staying silent the rest of the time.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Debbie's unnamed friend who gives her the invitation to the Children's Zoo.
- World of Jerkass: The short is evidently set in a world full of rotten parents, so much so that there's a place where said parents' children bring them in to be traded for better parents.
Kentucky Rye
Businessman Bob Spindler (Jeffrey DeMunn) successfully closes a huge deal, and celebrates by getting royally plastered. On the drive home, Bob nearly comes close to colliding with another motorist, then comes across the Kentucky Rye, a tavern where the fun seemingly never stops. After enjoying himself even more, Bob accepts a whirlwind offer to purchase the tavern for $1,600, only for Bob to learn that he's been given a raw deal.
Tropes
- An Aesop: Don’t drive drunk.
- The Alcoholic: Bob, who celebrates nearly every occasion with a stiff one. Or ten. His stubborn refusal to have someone drive him home after his party leads to him and another driver getting themselves killed, as well as Bob himself getting trapped in an Ironic Hell.
- Bald of Evil: The Kentucky Rye’s original owner, who dooms Bob by tricking him into buying the bar from him, is bald.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The bar’s original owner acts friendly to Bob, but it’s just an act. He tricks Bob into buying the bar from him so he’ll be trapped there for eternity, and then laughs at his suffering to gloat about screwing him over.
- Blatant Lies: In Bob’s flashback, when Bob’s coworkers insist on giving him a ride home and tell Bob to hand over his keys due to being drunk, he refuses and tells them he’ll call a cab. Since the episode begins with Bob driving drunk, we know he’s lying.
- Dead All Along: After managing to walk away from a car crash, the drunken Bob wanders into the titular tavern and, after befriending the patrons and owner, winds up buying it. The next morning, Bob wakes up in the tavern... which is now dusty and abandoned. The somber man who pressured him into buying the place is in there with him, and as they look outside, they see police officers and paramedics cleaning up a car crash outside the "Kentucky Rye". The victims? The somber man and Bob, who ran the former off the road, causing him to crash his car, before crashing himself.
- Downer Ending: Bob discovers that he killed himself and another driver, who had a wife, while driving drunk. As punishment for his vehicular misdeeds, he's forced to spend eternity trapped in the deserted tavern, with nothing but empty bottles for company. Upon realizing the truth, he breaks down and starts crying.
- Drunk Driver: Bob and his co-workers celebrate closing a big deal. As ever, Bob has way too much to drink and becomes angry when several of his co-workers suggest either driving him home or calling a cab. Instead, he drives drunk and runs another car off the road. Bob is injured in the process and seeks refuge in the Kentucky Rye. The owner sells him the place for $1,600, the last $100 of which is contributed by a strange, somber-looking man. The next morning, Bob wakes up to find the place covered in cobwebs and dust, no one else there except for the strange man. It turns out that the man is the driver who Bob ran off the road, having died in the accident. Bob himself was killed in the accident, and is now trapped in a deserted tavern for all eternity.
- Evil Laugh: The tavern's original owner gives one to Bob, once he realizes the circumstances of his predicament.
- Evil Old Folks: The bar’s original owner is an old man, and he tricks Bob into trapping himself in the Kentucky Rye for eternity, and then laughs at his misfortune.
- Flashback: Shortly after the episode begins, we’re shown a flashback of the events that lead to Bob trying to drive home while drunk.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: The bar’s original owner wears glasses, and he’s a nasty guy.
- Gilligan Cut: When the flashback ends, the story instantly cuts back to the present.
- How We Got Here: As Bob talks to himself while driving drunk, the episode cuts to a few hours earlier, where we learn that Bob got drunk as a means of celebrating the huge deal he closed.
- I Never Told You My Name: The original owner of the Kentucky Rye mysteriously knows Bob on a first name basis, despite the fact that he never gives his name to anybody there. Being the thoughtless fool he is, Bob never brings this up.
- Ironic Echo: "It's yours! It's all yours!" The Kentucky Rye's original owner says it to Bob once he buys the place, and again when he realizes it's his Ironic Hell.
- Ironic Hell: After learning that he was killed in an accident that he caused by driving drunk, Bob is doomed to spend eternity alone in the now-deserted Kentucky Rye bar as punishment for killing another driver in said accident, surrounded by empty bottles.
- Lethally Stupid / Too Dumb to Live: Bob’s moronic decision to drive while drunk causes him and another driver to get in an accident and die.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Once he discovers the truth about himself, Bob becomes despondent at killing another man and damning himself to an Ironic Hell.
- Never My Fault: After Bob crashes his car into a tree by swerving to miss hitting another car, Bob blames the other driver and calls him an idiot, despite the accident being entirely Bob’s own fault for driving in the wrong lane.
- No Name Given: We never learn the names of the other driver and the bar’s original owner.
- Offscreen Teleportation: When Bob wakes up in the morning and looks out the window, he turns and sees the other driver is now standing behind him. After he looks out the window again and sees the driver’s dead body being taken away, he turns back and sees that the other driver has now disappeared from the bar.
- Stealth Pun: The episode begins with Bob drunkenly singing Rod Stewart's "Some Guys Have All the Luck". He sings the majority of the lyrics ("Some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the breaks, some guys have all the pain"), but not the last one ("Some guys do nothing but complain"), as though the episode is poking fun at Bob's lack of self-awareness at his belly-aching.
- Wham Shot: There are two. First, the other driver’s dead body being taken away on a stretcher. Shortly after this, Bob’s own dead body being taken away on a stretcher.
"Bob Spindler, new owner and sole customer of the Kentucky Rye. A hell of a tavern, where last call goes on forever — in The Twilight Zone."
