The Twilight Zone Review: Uncle Simon

By William Kozy

Uncle Simon sometimes feels like a writing exercise to see how many creative insult monikers Serling can come up with. He’ll use “garbage head”, “wilting blossom”, “passionless vegetable”, “angular turnip”, “night-crawling imitation of the female gender”, “crooked-seamed grubber”, “scrounging female ape”, “thin-lipped toothpick-legged conniver”, “money-sick crone”, “lint-headed clod”, “torpid lotus-eater”, “bovine crab”, and “ugly harpy.” Or he’ll expand the task into creating descriptive insults: “you ancient albatross with a dirty mouth,” from her, and from him: “You’re the only woman I know who looks as if underneath her clothes, she wore clothes” (ba dump bump) or “You have all the grace and femininity of a high-button shoe” and “your spindle-shanked carcass”, and “that Raggedy Ann carcass of yours.”

Many of those remarks are patently false though, when later in the episode we see Barbara (Constance Ford) all dolled up to go out on the town. Seeing her transform into a sensual-looking lady from the haggard-looking one due to constant psychological/emotional beat-downs reinforces our sense of the joys she’s been missing out on all the years caring for her uncle. Yet, I do feel that if the writing focused a little less on creative name-calling and more on plot details like the source of the antipathy between the two leads, then this episode might have received more than only 5 votes in my survey of fans and writers asking, “What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?” This ties it with 7 other episodes for 117th thru 123rd place of the 156 episodes.

The writing does an end around in managing not to do the work of exploring the characters’ history. It fakes us out by actually raising that very question when Uncle Simon Polk (Cedric Hardwicke) asks his niece Barbara why she stays there. She says she “was under the impression I was needed.” He follows up with “You are. But it doesn’t even remotely suggest why you stay.” Instead of an answer, Serling has Barbara lapse back into hate-speak: “I live for the moment when I can see you buried. When I come back from your funeral, I’m going to open a bottle of wine.”

Simon seems to have an odd preoccupation with tearing down his niece’s femininity. Sure, he insults her intelligence a lot as well, but it’s his focus on her sexual appearance that seems to give him a distinct pleasure from the way he smiles and works his mouth after every antagonistic exchange with her. Again, we are not given a clue as to where his misogyny comes from. Both characters admit to existences in which their behavioral motives are based in the current administration of torture, or one day observing the others’ demise. When she asks him why beasts like him live on while decent men die, he tells her that he keeps “this decrepit old heart beating and these over-the-hill lungs breathing, because I know how deeply dedicated you are to seeing me die.” In a sense, neither of them lives for something, they live just to see each other suffer, and that sort of life must be soul-stifling.

It all comes to a head when they argue on the staircase, and he raises his cane to strike her, an action completely uncalled for. She fends off the swing of the cane, and Uncle Simon falls down the steps. It must be the first time he’s ever attempted such an act of violence, because we can tell from Barbara’s mettle, that if that had ever happened before, she would have put an end to that, hard and fast. So why then was he impelled in that moment, when she was mostly silent and he was the one issuing vituperative name-calling in his tirade? The simple answer is that it was a script-writing shortcut to get him to die—but they could’ve accomplished that just as easily without his attempted physical assault which I just didn’t buy. He was a jerk of course, but that just wasn’t his style.

As he lies there at the bottom of the stairs, weakly asking for help, Barbara takes the opportunity to taunt him mercilessly, culminating in her declaration of freedom: “As of this second, as of this very second, I have quit suffering because of you. I am no longer sowing, Uncle Simon. As of right now, I am going to REAP!” Ms. Ford really tears into that last sentence with a richly organic viciousness. She’s so overcome with her release from servitude she runs from room to room, throwing furniture about—the music score is a uniquely dramatic one that I don’t recall hearing in any of the other episodes. Like Pip in “Great Expectations” she throws open the drapes that Uncle Simon always insisted remain closed, and she announces to the world “Hey world I’m back! I’m really back!”

Barbara is next seen sitting in a room with a lawyer named Mr. Schwimmer (Ian Wolfe), who explains the outline of the will to her. She is not to throw anything from the house away. It all goes to her “in perpetuity.” The house, furnishing, securities, and sizable cash set up in trust for her. She smiles. What’s the catch? She must stay in the house. But that’s fine with Barbara, because after all where would she go? It’s her home. But here’s the real catch: “you are to care for all of your uncle’s experiments.” This puzzles the two of them, so Mr. Schwimmer reads on: “My beloved niece, Barbara, would be responsible for the well-being of my latest experiment. She will care for it, look after it, and see to its wants and needs.” And a representative of the law firm will stop by the house once a week to check if that is indeed being done. If it is found that she hasn’t done so, then all his possessions will go to the state university.

Schwimmer and Barbara investigate the laboratory to see what Simon’s latest experiment just might be, and when they open a locked closet, the opening triggers the start-up of a robot (Robby the Robot, who was also seen in the episode “The Brain Center at Whipple’s.”) The robotic voice intones that it will be a few days before it is at maximum potential, and then it turns to Barbara and greets her by name. This alarms her.

A week later we hear the robot voice stridently calling after Barbara, who strolls downstairs looking all put together nicely, ready to live out her life more fully. The robot tells her she must not go out because Mr. Schwimmer is due to come by, but Barbara mimic’s the robotic voice, assuring the robot that the lawyer will arrive by 8 PM. The robot points out that he is like an infant, evolving, and will soon have all his faculties, and be a whole being. And right before her eyes, the robot shows immediate signs of taking on the traits of Simon as it detects a craving; half-surprised, it reveals that it would like a cup of hot chocolate, just like Simon always called for. Barbara’s expression clearly shows that she does not like where this is going. Ms. Ford does tend to register facial expressions that leave no doubt at all what she’s feeling and thinking, but for the most part her performance rings with a satisfying tone. The doorbell rings and it is Mr. Schwimmer who enters and asks nicely how “Mr. Polk” is doing. Barbara can only stare at the robot with trepidation.

Later, the reincarnation enters another phase as the robot has taken the keys to the laboratory and bans Barbara from entering it. “It belongs to me,” he demands. As she turns to leave, he climbs the steps after her, demanding hot chocolate and that she close all the drapes. The kicker is that his voice has morphed into Uncle Simon’s human voice, and has levied its first insult at her: “you peanut-headed sample of nature’s carelessness”. Barbara shoves her tormentor down the steps, this time, quite on purpose. It lies at the bottom of the steps clearly damaged, and calling out weakly, “help me…help me…”

We come to our last scene. Mr. Schwimmer is politely showing himself out after his weekly stop-by, and he comments, “Pity about his leg, but he manages to get around, doesn’t he?” I like Ford’s doomed melancholic responses, “He makes his wants known,” and “Indeed, he does, indeed he does.”

Simon/Robot enters, walking with a cane and echoing the late uncle’s demands for hot chocolate “in the English bone china cup, and if it’s not hot, I’ll throw it on the floor.” She mutters in defeat that she’ll go fix it for him, and when he commands her to speak up saying, “You’ll fix it for me what?” She answers solemnly: “I’ll fix it for you now (pause pause pause)…Uncle.” She is indeed defeated, declaring uncle.

I suppose what I find a bit dissatisfying about this episode and a few others like it, is that it’s one of those stories that places a character in a predicament that doesn’t seem all that hard to wiggle out of. You watch it and you can easily devise hundreds of murderous ways to dispatch the robot. Next time for instance, shove him from the top of the stairs not just three steps up. She could then easily tell Schwimmer, “oh dear, oh my, I kept warning him to be careful, but he just keeps insisting on using the stairs and this time he tripped.” We’ve already seen that Schwimmer was quite sweet and understanding about the robot’s first tumble. There were no consequences for her despite the will stating that she must take care of the experiment. Or even, what would be the problem with simply not doing anything at all that the robot demands? Surely it doesn’t need hot chocolate to survive, or the drapes closed. So what would be the repercussions of her simply flipping the bird to the robot with a snide, “Eh, do it yourself.” What would happen? It would still be in fine working order when Schwimmer comes for inspection. And if the robot complained, a cute little knowing eye roll from the human Barbara to the human Schwimmer would suffice, as she could say with a wink to Schwimmer, “Oh yes Uncle Simon, I’ll get you another hot chocolate.”

My…calculations…indicate…a…ra-ting…of this…episode…is a 5.1.

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