S1, episodes 37, 38 and 39 (last of the season)

1.37. 

Sticking up for a married woman he likes, our protagonist goes to confront her abusive husband. Weird series of events leads to him being the obvious suspect in a murder he did not commit.

Along the way, he runs into a hip DJ ( “Hey, I don’t dig you, man.”). Along with cowboys and gangsters, this becomes our plays-for-laughs-today character type. The main story itself isn't bad, but the ending doesn't twist tightly enough for me.

1.38.

Entitled The Creeper, this one's good. 

We're in a working class environment on a (predictably) hot day. There's a killer on the loose. An older woman is a moralist (“They probably asked for it. Decent women don’t get themselves killed”). Our protagonist is frazzled lady, perhaps too much so for contemporary tastes. The story throws suspicion on 3-4 people. The ending is good.

Period detail: Her husband has a beer at the bar before going in for the night shift. Well, maybe that still happens today.

1.39.

AH: “ It seems to me that television is exactly like a gun. Your enjoyment of it is determined by which end of it you're on.” 

Joanne Woodward stars (one of the few fromm the series who is still alive and kicking), but no Paul Newman. A man desperate for money. There’s an old style montage where they put the man large in the foreground, looking around, and the city images are the backdrop. 

The story involves theft and murder and has a ironic twist. Not a bad ending, but they didn't save the best for last.

S1, episodes 35 and 36

1.35

Set in Palm Beach and narrated by an old novelist. Mostly upper crust old timers. A charming prince played by the same guy who played the soccer star earlier this season. Even in B&W, we can tell he’s savagely tanned. He makes a move on an ordinary (married) woman. Why?

Well, who cares. The episode isn't much. The surprise ending is simply told to us, and it isn’t very interesting. 

1.36. 

The Mink. Yet another stole story. You just don't see that much fur any more.

Woman goes to a shop to get an appraisal of her mink stole, which was a gift from her husband. They discover the stole is stolen. I like the store owner. The woman doesn’t look like a thief. “How can you tell these days? Ladies look like the other kind, and the other kind look like ladies.” She does seem to be in a rush to get out of there. 

This woman is our protagonist and this is basically an am-I-crazy? episode, somewhat like the plague episode. They don't exactly nail  the ending. It sort of peters out. It’s supposed to be more about the woman herself and why she so dearly wants a stole. Kind of a strange last line.

The most curious aspect of the story is AH's wrap: I think I’ll take up sports again. I’m quite an athlete. I’m probably best at chess, falconry and wife beating, that sort of thing.

You just don't hear jokes like that any more.

S1, episodes 32, 33, and 34

1.32 

Brassy older babysitter (Thelma Ritter) is speaking to a police sergeant about an unsolved murder. She relishes the attention. Much of the story is flashback: she has a crush on the father of the young woman who was killed (who, we are later told, had a blonde beaver). 

So did she do it? This theory is raised by her friend, making me think she could not be the culprit. Not a bad episode. 

Period detail: trying to lose weight, she buys the bungee-cord like exercise tool. Actually, I didn't know they had these things back then.

1.33. 

The Belfry. It sounds old-fashioned, and I think this is set several decades before 1955 (funny how I have a hard time identifying the period episodes. The 1950s look so old).

We're in a small town where the local simpleton commits an axe murder in the opening minutes. The tale  is about him hiding. Pat Hitchcock is a school teacher and his love interest. (Period detail she is paid $60/month). 

Dabbs Greer is the sheriff; he lived long enough to appear in the Green Mile, Lizzie McGuire and Con Air. All told, I found the setting more interesting than the story.

1.34.

AH holds up a gun “This is for the man who has everything. It's to enable you to take some of it away from him.” Bwahh!

A man and woman are in a car. They want to get a burger. She wants to drive. “If you’re too lazy to just to walk across the street...” So they walk. (Period detail: she tells him to order her a rare burger.) She needs to return to get her bag and is killed by a car. 

The rest involves a mysterious man who can tap into lost memories (i.e., the license plate of the hit and run driver). “Have you ever heard of total recall?” (not Total Recall).

The ending is mightily deflating.

S1, episodes 30 and 31

1.30. 

We begin with a woman in agony in bed, but the bulk of the story is told in flashback. It’s all about her attempt to resist her temptation to drink at a swanky dinner party the previous night. She fails. 

This is not not so much a story of suspense and mystery (although there’s some) as it is a character study pf an alcoholic. Afterwards, AH name checks Adela Rogers St. Johns, the story writer, and gives an earnest speech about helping someone. I appreciate that they did these once in a while, although this isn't my favorite episode.

1.31.

This one's a ghost story. The series doesn't shy from the inexplicable (e.g., 1.10, the double), but doesn’t go in for the supernatural, so we can assume there's no actual ghost. 

A bet is involved: can a visiting American spend the night in a haunted room in England? It's upper class Brits vs. a somewhat loud American, right before the war. (“I have a feeling this phony war won’t last long. I quite agree.”) 

The story is kind of silly, but I like the back and forth between the Brits and the American and the ending isn't bad.

s1 episodes 27, 28 and 29

Three pretty good episodes as we near the end of Season One.

1.27. 

We have another milquetoast protagonist here, a 52 year-old man who, scrapped for cash and unable to pay his wife's medical bills, takes a dull office job with a secretive boss. The job pays $100 a week salary (“that’s quite generous”). Lorne Greene shows up and things get real (to use today's vernacular). Great set-up, though I'm not completely sold on the ending. But this sort of thing is bread and butter of the series.

Period detail: his 20th floor office has an open-able window. 

1.28 

A man and wife enter an art gallery at closing time. He bought her a painting for their 1st anniversary.   It takes a bit to fetch the painting, and when the wife sees it she is shocked. This isn't what the husband bought. Is this a joke? We actually don’t see the painting until well into the next scene, which is a nice touch.

It turns out it's a painting of the man's first wife, who disappeared a couple years ago. We get some forced exposition between him and his brother-in-law. As the episode develops, tension grows between the married couple. 

This episode had my full attention and I didn’t see the ending coming, although I don't think it's fully plausible.

1.29. 

Mr Appleby owns an antique shop but doesn't want to sell his precious goods. He needs money. A creditor arrives to tell him he needs it soon (this actor voiced Dr Freeze in a bunch of Batman stuff for the next 35 years). 

Appleby is quite the miscreant. I was somewhat bored by the episode until the ending, which I think they nailed. It's of a type they're used 3-4 times this season, sort of a fumble-at-the-goal-line effect (hard to describe without spoilers).