Rod Serling: On display this evening, a pastiche of painting from Oddball Land.
Make Me Laugh
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Rod Serling: The poet Sir Max Beerbohm reflected that no one ever died of laughter. Object of brush and palette: the rebuttal. The clown is Jackie Slater. His occupation, a comedian. His aspiration is to collect funny bones and hang them on the walls of his life, to hide the cracked plaster and yellowed wallpaper that is part of the interior decoration of failure. Poor Jackie Slater: a bad joke told in a foreign language in an empty hall. The comic unable to coax laughter. The painting is called: Make Me Laugh, and this lightless limbo is called the Night Gallery.
Jackie Slater (Godfrey Cambridge) is a stand-up comedian who can't get people to laugh at his material, bombing so badly that his agent Jules (Tom Bosley) bails on him. While drinking his sorrows away, Jackie meets Chatterje (Jackie Vernon), a rather inept "miracle worker" who takes him on as his latest client. Jackie wishes that he can make people laugh like he's always wanted, and everyone around him soon can't stop laughing at anything he says. Overtime, Jackie finds that having people love him without effort or success is boring, so he tries to become a serious actor, only for Chatterje's wish to affect the stage crew he's auditioning for.
Tropes
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Jackie is repeatedly described as fat and ugly in the original short story. He's played in the show by the rather handsome Godfrey Cambridge (also serving as a Race Lift and Casting Gag, as Cambridge had recently lost a lot of weight). Regardless, the episode does have Jackie admitting to Jules that he was fat and ugly as a boy, making him a noted bully magnet.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Jackie makes a wish with the help of the klutzy Chatterje to be able to make people laugh. The problem is, he gets tired of it and can't turn it off when he wants to make a career as a serious actor. When he forces Chatterje to make it so he can make people cry instead, the poor guy is promptly hit by a car.
- Downer Ending: Unable to stand making people laugh anymore, Jackie tracks down Chatterje and makes a new wish: wanting to make people cry. Chatterje soberly tells him that people won't laugh at him again... and Jackie is killed by a speeding car, to the grief of the bystanders.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Jackie meets Chatterje in a bar after going there to forget about his failing career.
- Exact Words:
- Jackie's wish to make people laugh has them cracking up at everything he does, whether he's telling a joke or insulting someone to their face, to the point where one of his TV appearances left the audience in stitches just from when he took off his hat. The infuriating thing about it is that he gets tired of the easy success, and can't turn off the effect without Chatterje.
- Similarly, when Jackie eventually tracks Chatterje down and badgers him to grant a wish where he can make people cry, Chatterje's downcast tone indicates he expects the wish won't be fulfilled the way Jackie wants. Sure enough, Jackie is hit by a car and a flower vendor weeps over his body.
- Fanservice Extra: The Rocky Mountain Rockettes, the troupe of "dancers" who Jackie introduces when he wraps up his act. Scantily-clad and suggestively dancing to burlesque music, but only seen for a second.
- Freudian Excuse: Jackie tells Jules that his inspiration to make people started off when he was a kid, a fat and ugly boy who the other boys at camp would bully and push off the dock and laugh at.
- Lighter and Softer: Struggling stand-up comedian Jackie tries to make people laugh with the help of a "miracle worker", but gets tired of it pretty quickly.
- Literal Genie: Chatterje. His track record could make him a Jackass Genie, if it weren't for his utter lack of desire to harm anyone. Before granting Jackie's wish to make people laugh, he point-blank tells him that he's a klutz whose granted wishes can easily backfire. For instance, one of his "clients", a Civil War buff, wanted to be "in Abraham Lincoln's shoes". The client started thinking that he was a woolen sock and ended up in an asylum, being restrained to keep himself from stabbing his hands with darning needles.
- Loser Protagonist: Jackie was a fat and ugly kid who all the other boys in his camp would push off the dock. As an adult, he's spent 16 years trying to make it as a stand-up comic, but never generated so much as a chuckle. His wish finally lets him amuse people with his routines (or anything, really), but he gets tired of his easy success. He tries to make a new start as a Broadway actor (even playing a literal Sad Clown), but the wish keeps making people laugh at everything he does. When he chases down Chatterje and demands to make people cry instead of laugh, Chatterje somberly grants the wish, and Jackie is killed by a speeding car. Even Rod Serling feels bad for him, as evidenced in his narration.
- No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Jackie spent sixteen long years wanting people to laugh at his jokes, but once Chatterje grants his wish, he finds that the resultant success without effort is boring.
- No Sense of Humor: There are a few people not affected by Jackie's wish, notably Jules and the director he's auditioning for, likely because they're too fixated on business to laugh.
- Sad Clown: Jackie, who had a miserable childhood and is enduring a painfully failing career as a comedian. After desperately wishing to make people laugh, he gets tired of his newfound success incredibly quickly. He's also depicted as a sad clown on the episode's painting, described as such in Serling's narration, and even auditions for the role of one in a play, just to keep driving the comparison further.
- Smooth-Talking Talent Agent: Downplayed. Jules, Jackie's agent for 16 years, treats Jackie like a best friend and assures him that he's still funny when his opening act bombs. However, a call he places to the bar where Jackie drowns his sorrows reveals that he's dumped the comedian like dead weight to manage a steel guitar band in Philadelphia, saying that he can't keep damaging his professional reputation. Once Jackie's wish is granted, Jules eagerly comes back to him, largely because the band was booed off stage in Ohio.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The ending, where the old flower vendor weeps over Jackie's dead body, is underscored with rowdy big band music.
- Time Skip: After Jackie's wish comes true, we skip ahead sometime later, where he's currently on a whirlwind tour in Vegas after reuniting with Jules, only now he's bored with his easy success.
- The Unwitting Comedian: Tired of his career in stand-up comedy, Jackie tries to make a new start as a serious theater actor. Unfortunately, his wish makes the directors and his fellow actors laugh non-stop, even though the lines he's delivering are heart-wrenching. This is the last straw for Jackie, who tracks down Chatterje to get rid of his comedic "talent."
Clean Kills and Other Trophies
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Walter Doniger
Rod Serling: Our second painting this evening has to do with the stalker and the victim; the hunter and the hunted. That rare breed of homo sapien whose love of butchery is not a sport, but a consuming passion. Offered to you now: Clean Kills and Other Trophies.
Colonel Archie Dittman (Raymond Massey) is a proud and accomplished hunter who kills innocent animals not for sport, but for his sheer, unending love of bloodshed. He's thoroughly loathsome toward his son Archie Jr. (Barry Brown), a timid young man who breaks out in a cold sweat from just being near a gun, and desires to make a man out of him. To this end, the Colonel has his will altered to deliver an ultimatum to Archie Jr.: he must shoot and kill an animal within the next 15 days, or he won't be receiving any inheritance. Though Archie Jr. doesn't have what it takes to intentionally kill anything, his father's butler Tom Mboya (Herbert Jefferson Jr.) has other plans for the Colonel, aching to make him learn what it feels like to be the hunted for a change.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Archie utterly loathes his son for being a coward, forcing him to kill something within two weeks or he'll be out of his will, even when his lawyer warns him that Archie Jr. could sue him in a court of law.
- Chromosome Casting: There are no women present, given the episode's strong hunting theme.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Through Tom's tribal gods, Archie dies and turns into a trophy mounted on his wall, letting the hunter know what it's like to be the hunted.
- Everyone Has Standards: Archie's lawyer defends his son in spite of the fact that he legally represents the Colonel. The ending even implies that he's taking the role of Archie Jr.'s new father figure.
- Hate Sink: Archie, a racist, misogynistic, and utterly sadistic hunter who rebukes his son for being a cowardly weakling too afraid to lift a gun. Tom calls upon his peoples' gods to punish Archie by turning him into a head mounted on the wall, letting him know how his victims have felt.
- Hunting Is Evil: Archie hunts not for sport, but for bloodlust. His son, who gets nervous even by the sight of a gun, is viewed as a coward, so the Colonel puts a clause in his will that claims his son won't inherit a cent from him unless he kills an animal within fifteen days time. Archie's butler Tom, who is African by birth but went to school in England, actually argues with his employer about it. Archie points out that Tom's native tribe hunts, but Tom points out that for his people, hunting is a matter of food and survival, certainly not for the bloodlust that Archie makes of it. How the story ends depends on whether you are viewing the episode, or reading the original short story. In the former, Tom appeals to his native gods, who transform Archie into a head mounted on the wall. In the original story, being forced to kill drives Archie Jr. insane, and he gives this fate to his father in a more hands-on manner.
- Human Head on the Wall: When Archie forces his son to kill a deer to gain his inheritance, he's punished by Tom's tribal gods. As a result, his head is lopped off and mounted on the wall above his fireplace.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Archie is killed and turned into one of his own trophies as punishment for his lust for blood and his abusive treatment of his son.
- Lighter and Softer: Compared to the original short story. The episode ends with the abusive, hunting-obsessed Archie being turned into a mounted trophy by the black magic of his butler Tom. In the original story, his son goes insane and does this in a more hands-on approach.
- Magical Negro: Archie's butler Tom, who went to school in England while he was born in Africa. He worships the tribal gods from his native country, and invokes their wrath upon Archie for the abuse he puts him, his son, and the world's creatures through.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Archie calls Tom, his butler who was born in Africa but went to school in England, a "specimen" or "pagan savage" (as well as the n-word in the original short story), saying that his beliefs in "black magic" have made it so that he's never left the jungle. Archie also hints at being a misogynist, as he views the women's liberation movement as abhorrent.
- The Sociopath: Archie doesn't hunt for sport, but to satisfy his own sadism and his need for superiority over the world's creatures.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Archie rebukes his son Archie Jr. for being a "coward" and not wanting to kill anything, cutting him out of his will unless he kills an animal within 15 days.
