Pat Hingle, who played Commissioner Gordon opposite three different Batman actors (Michael Keaton twice!), is in this one as a guy who, you know, I have no idea why anyone would want to be this guy’s friend.
Basic Premise: A man never grew up. Not really.
Writer: Reginald Rose, adapting a script he’d written for a different anthology show eight years earlier
Commentary: OK, so, Horace Ford just wants to remember how great his childhood was in a crappy neighborhood. His mother doesn’t care for it. His wife wasn’t there. He whines when his boss at the toy company where he works as a designer offers to give him a leave of absence to deal with what looks like a nervous breakdown. He holds his face in a manner that just screams “child!” I have no idea why his wife agreed to marry him. He is not an adult.
Seriously, he comes across as a whiny brat despite being 39 years old. It’s a credit to Hingle that he manages to look like such a pathetic child just by the way he holds his mouth.
Anyway, he goes back to the street he grew up on and manages to go back in time and sees his long-lost childhood friends, but whenever he goes home, some kid with a missing front tooth and a Jughead crown shows up and returns a dropped pocket watch to Horace’s wife. Eventually, Horace loses his job, so he goes back to Randolph Street, despite the fact it keeps showing the same moment every time he goes there. Can Horace stay where he wants to be?
The Twist: Oh, when Horace does go back to stay, he de-ages to his psychological age, and then the kids he used to play with beat him up because, oh who cares? He learns nostalgia for childhood is stupid and becomes an adult again when his wife finds him there. Does he get his job back? I dunno. That Jughead kid was watching the whole thing from a lampost as the episode ends.
What about Rod? You know, I don’t think I spotted him in this one.
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