Hunnicut feels the burden of truth.
Rod Serling: This, as the banner already has proclaimed, is Mr. Harvey Hunnicut, an expert on commerce and con jobs, a brash, bright, and larceny-loaded wheeler and dealer who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, must have gone for a beer and missed out. And these are a couple of other characters in our story: a little old man and a Model A car - but not just any old man and not just any Model A. There's something very special about the both of them. As a matter of fact, in just a few moments, they'll give Harvey Hunnicut something that he's never experienced before. Through the good offices of a little magic, they will unload on Mr. Hunnicut the absolute necessity to tell the truth. Exactly where they come from is conjecture, but as to where they're heading for, this we know, because all of them - and you - are on the threshold of the Twilight Zone.
Air date: January 20, 1961
Harvey Hunnicut (Jack Carson) is a used-car salesman who makes a living by spinning lie after lie about his shoddy wares. Harvey's world is brought to a sudden halt one day when a little old man sells him a Model A that he says is haunted. Though Harvey initially laughs off his bluff, he finds that as long as the car stays on his lot, he's unable to lie. The lack of his lying prowess puts him at odds with his customers, his wife, and his employees when his forced telling of the truth lets them know what his real intentions with them are. Harvey tries to foist the haunted car onto anyone he can so he can be rid of the burden of honesty, but his inability to lie hinders his efforts at almost every opportunity.
The Whole Tropes:
- The Alleged Car: The dilapidated Model A that the old man brings in to sell. Even in the early 1960s, it would have been considered 30 years old, since Harvey only pays $25 for it. The car is also haunted in a way that renders its owner (now Harvey) unable to lie, to which the man himself admits to his customers that every car on his lot is such a car.
- Alliterative Name: Harvey Hunnicut.
- Bottle Episode: The entirety of the episode is set on Harvey's lot.
- Cannot Tell a Lie: After buying the Model A, Harvey finds out, to his horror, that he can't lie about anything. Since he's a used car dealer, a bottom-of-the-barrel dealer who sells junkers specifically, his business is ruined.
- Exact Words: Harvey manages to offload the Model A despite still being bound by its curse by pitching it with carefully-selected, half-true statements.
- Haunted Technology: The old man reveals to Harvey that the Model A is haunted, and has been ever since it came off the assembly line. Harvey learns that the only way to be rid of the haunted car's effect is to sell it to someone else.
- Hilarity Ensues: The fact that Harvey Cannot Tell a Lie after buying the haunted Model A causes him to lose sales, get into a fight with his wife, and get punched by his employee Irving when he reveals that he never gives any of the employees raises in spite of all of his promises. However, he manages to avoid any serious, long-lasting consequences until he sells the car to Nikita Khrushchev.
- Historical Domain Character: Harvey finally manages to sell the Model A to Nikita Khrushchev, suggesting that the Soviet Union exhibit it as a propaganda tool to display the shoddiness of the American automobile. ("You just try saying that."). The episode almost frames the Premier's presence as an example of Invisible President, but we do see Khruschev's face as his driver is taking the car out of the lot.
- Honest John's Dealership: Harvey is the stereotypical used car dealer/lying con artist, which becomes a problem when an old man sells him a haunted car that renders him unable to lie.
- Large Ham: Harvey, a loud-mouthed used-car dealer who wears a suit that's equally as loud, if not moreso.
- Lighter and Softer: The episode leans toward the comedic side, as lemon-dealer Harvey has to deal with a haunted car that forces him to be brutally honest, and as a result, drive wedges between him and his customers, employees, and wife.
- Loophole Abuse: Since Harvey can only tell the truth as long as the Model A is on his lot, he finally manages to sell it to Khrushchev by being half-truthful in his pitch to him.
- Running Gag: An eerie musical flourish plays whenever Harvey is forced to tell the truth.
- Sleazy Politician: At one point, Harvey tries to sell the Model A to a local politician named "Honest" Luther Grimbley in order to escape its effects. However, his inability to lie means that he is forced to reveal that it's haunted. Upon hearing this, Grimbley refuses to buy it on the grounds that he wouldn't be able to deliver a single speech if he couldn't lie.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The old man who sells the Model A to Harvey.
- The Un-Reveal: The reasons as to why the Model A is haunted, and why it forces its owner to tell the truth, is left unexplained.
- Video Inside, Film Outside: This is the third of the six episodes recorded on videotape instead of film in order to reduce costs.
- World of Ham: Harvey revels in the ham for a living, and local politican Luther Grimbley comes a close second.
Rod Serling: Couldn't happen, you say? Far-fetched? Way-out? Tilt-off-center? Possible. But the next time you buy an automobile, if it happens to look as if it had just gone through the Battle of the Marne, and the seller is ready to throw into the bargain one of his arms, be particularly careful in explaining to the boss about your grandmother's funeral, when you are actually at Chavez Ravine watching the Dodgers. It'll be a fact that you are the proud possessor of an instrument of truth - manufactured and distributed by an exclusive dealer - in the Twilight Zone.
