Hush
Screenplay By: John Harrison
Story By: Zenna Henderson
Directed By: Allen Coulter
Buddy Warren (Eric Jason), a child prodigy and the son of a talented inventor, stays in his father's workshop and creates animatronic toys while sick with the flu. Local teenager Jennifer (Nile Lanning) is hired to babysit him while his mother Beth (Bonnie Gallup) goes out for the evening. During this time, Buddy shows Jennifer his latest creation: the Noise Eater, a machine that is able to detect sound and silence the source by literally sucking the life out of it. The Noise Eater ultimately ends up destroying its control mechanism and goes haywire, sucking the sound out of every noisy object it can detect, including the family pets. When Buddy discovers this development, he enlists Jennifer to help him stop the Noise Eater before it escapes the confines of the house and makes everything quiet.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: The short story ends with everyone dying and the Noise Eater escaping the house to silence everything. The episode ends with Jennifer tricking the machine into destroying itself, but not before it kills Beth and the family pets.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Noise Eater promptly silences its control mechanism early in the episode, after one of Buddy's makeshift toys pushes the control onto the floor and causes it to start beeping uncontrollably. This leads the Eater to go insane and try to silence everything it finds, as well as being unable to be shut off.
- Ambiguous Situation: In the opening scene, it's all but stated that Buddy's mother Beth is having an affair. She's seen on the phone with someone, talking about going out to dinner, then tells Jennifer that she's going to a reception at the high school (even though Jennifer claims that the reception was on Thursday), mentioning that "Mr. Scott" was giving her a lift. Given how Beth's only other scene is when she gets killed, we never learn the truth.
- Asshole Victim: Beth could possibly count, if the evidence pointing to her cheating on her husband, away on business, is legitimate.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Jennifer kills the Noise Eater by stabbing its motor with the screwdriver she finds in the couch, her banging on the tool with a fire poker allows the Noise Eater to be duped into silencing itself.
- Badly Battered Babysitter: Jennifer, who tries to protect Buddy, the child she's been hired to look out for, from the killer machine that's looking to suck out their very lives.
- Big "NO!": Buddy gives one when he sees the Noise Eater going for its remote control.
- Bittersweet Ending: The episode ends with Jennifer managing to stab the Noise Eater's motor and fooling it into silencing itself, saving both her and Buddy's lives in the process. However, before this could happen, the Noise Eater managed to kill Buddy's pets and his mom. The original short story's ending was much worse, as Jennifer and Buddy end up being "silenced" and the Noise Eater escapes the house to keep "silencing" things.
- Cheerful Child: Buddy gives Jennifer a hug when they first meet, and is quick to show her his new inventions.
- Chekhov's Gun: The screwdriver that Jennifer finds wedged in the couch cushions when she arrives to babysit Buddy, which she uses to stab the Noise Eater's motor when it corners her. She promptly hits the tool with the fire poker to attract the machine, which ultimately silences itself.
- Child Prodigy: Buddy is a young genius whose father is a noted inventor. Taking after his old man, Buddy spends his time building functioning makeshift toys out of spare mechanical parts, which he shows off to his mother and Jennifer.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Anything that has the life sucked out of it by the Noise Eater. Beth, picking an inopportune time to come home, experiences this firsthand.
- Death by Adaptation: The Noise Eater is killed by Jennifer thanks to a little ingenuity on her part, while it managed to suck out her and Buddy's lives in the short story.
- Death Glare: The Noise Eater manages to accomplish this despite having no face, turning the business end of its nozzle to Jennifer after she stabs its motor with the screwdriver.
- Devil in Plain Sight: Jennifer becomes nervous the instant she's introduced to the Noise Eater, lying that it's "cute" as it aims its nozzle at her.
- Disappeared Dad: Buddy's father Harry is absent, said to be away on business, and has been for a long time.
- Domestic Appliance Disaster: The Noise Eater's resemblance to a vacuum cleaner and it's malfunction driving it to silence whatever it finds makes its rampage a dark version of the trope.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Buddy's dog barks as the Noise Eater starts silencing things in the workshop, prompting the malfunctioning menace to storm outside and silence the pooch. It does so near the end of the episode, ultimately allowing Jennifer to stab its motor with the screwdriver and trick the machine into silencing itself.
- Foreshadowing: The small closet that's seen early in the episode is used again by Buddy and Jennifer, who uses one of the former's toys inside it to distract the Noise Eater while they hide inside.
- For Science!: The reason why Buddy makes his contraptions and finishes constructing the Noise Eater his father was making, aside from giving his mother and babysitter some quiet time.
- Fowl-Mouthed Parrot: Buddy's family owns a parakeet who squawks "Shut up!" repeatedly, prompting Beth to wish how Harry would teach it to say something more polite. The Noise Eater kills it when the squawking insults don't stop.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: Jennifer's heart can faintly be heard as she and Buddy hide in the closet, as well as when she huddles in the corner in fear. Buddy himself lampshades that the Noise Eater will go for both of their hearts when it silences everything else.
- Hell Is That Noise: The Noise Eater emits a noise that resembles a combination of a baby's cry and a deflating balloon whenever it drains the noise out of something, which lasts longer depending on the size of its victims.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Thanks to Jennifer's quick thinking, the Noise Eater dies after it's tricked into silencing itself.
- Homemade Inventions: Harry, Buddy's father, is a noted inventor, and his son eagerly follows in his footsteps, filling his workshop with homemade toys crafted with spare parts. Beth also does her nails in an automatic buffer her husband is said to have invented.
- Inciting Incident: Buddy leaving his makeshift toys running while he confronts Jennifer, talking to her boyfriend on the phone, allows one of them to knock the Noise Eater's control onto the floor. The Eater then silences the control and goes haywire, ultimately killing Buddy's pets and mother by the end of the episode.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Downplayed. Buddy spends the episode sick with the flu, which has him coughing very loudly the whole time. When the Noise Eater goes out of control, he tries to cover his mouth so it doesn't detect said coughing and kills him and Jennifer.
- It Can Think: The Noise Eater behaves like an animal once it destroys its remote control, able to detect where the nearest source of noise is, brute-force its way through a locked door, and even expresses confusion when surrounded by multiple sources of noise, debating which to silence first.
- Killer Rabbit / Killer Robot: The Noise Eater, which destroys its remote control and goes mad to silence whatever it detects. Its breathing gasbag and mouth-like sucker even makes it appear alive, and its diminutive size doesn't hinder its demented quest to silence things.
- Life Drinker: The Noise Eater is able to make things quiet by literally sucking their life out.
- Lighter and Softer: It's the last episode to be played largely for horror, but Jennifer and Buddy's pleasant demeanors and the handmade robots the latter shows off make the episode rather endearing. Furthermore, compared to the much darker ending of the original short story, the episode ends with the Noise Eater being killed before it can escape the house.
- Like Father, Like Son: Buddy and his father Harry are both bespectacled geniuses who invent things around the house, to the point where Beth makes the comparison word for word. Buddy also tells Jennifer that Harry started building the Noise Eater, but it was him who finished it.
- Littlest Cancer Patient: Buddy spends the episode sick with the flu, and Jennifer tries to protect him after his mother leaves the house for the evening, since his furious coughing is likely to signal the Noise Eater.
- Nice Girl: Jennifer does her best to comfort Buddy, who greatly enjoys when she looks after him, by saying that the Noise Eater is a great success for the young prodigy.
- No Indoor Voice: Buddy's coughing, which can be heard all throughout the house. He desperately tries to shut his mouth so the malfunctioning Noise Eater won't be able to kill him or Jennifer.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Buddy blares "Ride of the Valkyries" as he activates his makeshift toys and sets them to fight with each other.
- Self-Made Orphan: Buddy's Noise Eater ends up killing his mother Beth, but Jennifer thankfully kills it before it can do the same to the pair of them.
- Smart People Build Robots: Buddy makes functioning toys out of spare parts in his father's workshop, and constructs the Noise Eater to give his family a little more quiet time.
- Spared by the Adaptation: The original short story ends with the Noise Eater killing everyone and escaping the house to make everything quiet. In the episode, however, Jennifer and Buddy live and the Noise Eater is tricked into killing itself.
- Title Drop: Jennifer keeps telling Buddy to "hush" as the Noise Eater, alerted by the boy's coughing, tries to break down the door to the workshop.
- Troubled Fetal Position: After turning on numerous appliances to keep the Noise Eater distracted, Jennifer huddles into a corner in abject fear as the rouge robot rapidly silences them all.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Jennifer's boyfriend, who calls her in the first act after Buddy hopes she doesn't get distracted by inviting him over and making out with him. When Buddy leaves the workshop to confront her, he leaves his toys running, one of which pushes the Noise Eater's control to the floor and allows it to silence it. From there, the machine kills most of the electric appliances in the house, the family pets, and even Beth, once she returns home, all because of this one phone call.
- Vader Breath: The Noise Eater is able to "breathe" through a gasbag while it's turned on, reinforcing the theme that it's almost alive.
- Vicious Vac: The Noise Eater, which can silence something by literally sucking its life out. The end of its nozzle resembles a sucking mouth, and it "breathes" through a gasbag on its side, making it look as though it's a living thing.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Noise Eater, in its malfunctioning quest to silence everything, is all too eager to do so to the sick Buddy.
