Air date: October 28, 1960
Bartlett Finchley (Richard Haydn) is a critic for a noted gourmet magazine who is highly snobby, ill-tempered, and misanthropic, though he also seems to be lonely at the same time. Finchley is also as inept with machines as he is with people, smashing them in a blind fury when he can't get them to work right. He gradually begins thinking that his inoperable machines are conspiring against him, though the people he shares this with write him off as paranoid, including his put-upon secretary, who quits. Eventually, every machine in Finchley's house turns on him. His typewriter types "GET OUT OF HERE, FINCHLEY." again and again, his television shows a flamenco dancer saying the same message directly to him, and his phone yells the message at him when he tries to make a call. His electric razor also comes alive and rises into the air, lunging at him like a cobra and slithering down the stairs in pursuit of him. Finchley runs out of the house to escape the mechanical onslaught, only to be chased by his driverless car. The car pushes him into his swimming pool, where he is pulled under by the pool's drain and drowns. Sometime later, as the police pull Finchley out of the water, they can't explain how he could sink to the bottom when he wasn't weighted down, nor can the paramedics called to the scene explain why his car is so close to the pool, theorizing he may have had a heart attack.
A Thing About Tropes:
- Animate Inanimate Object: Finchley's appliances, which become sentient through unknown means to get revenge on him for destroying them again and again.
- Asshole Victim: Bartlett Finchley, who disrespects everyone from his secretary to the police, and destroys his mechanical devices at the slightest provocation. There are no tears shed for him when his machines turn against him, his pool drowning him on its own accord.
- Attack of the Killer Whatever: The machines in Finchley's house yell at him to get out or try to attack him, including his typewriter, his television, his phone, his electric razor and his car.
- Bookends: The first shot of the episode has Finchley driving his car past his pool and then his car chases him there to his death at the end.
- Born in the Wrong Century: Serling's opening narration views Finchley, with his sheer contempt for modern machinery, as a man born either too late or too early in the 20th century.
- Caustic Critic: Finchley is a misanthropic critic for a gourmet magazine, and he never misses an opportunity to denigrate people to their faces, as well as humanity in general.
- The Dog Bites Back: Bartlett Finchley is established to hate machines as much as he does people, smashing them in rage when they act up. Soon after, Finchley's machines come alive and turn on him for his horrendous treatment of them.
- Do Not Adjust Your Set: Finchley's TV set broadcasts a woman flamenco dancing, who tells him "Why don't you get out of here, Finchley?" again and again.
- Enmity with an Object: Finchley, already a misanthrope of the highest order, hates all the machines around him and breaks them when they malfunction. In true Twilight Zone fashion, the machines come alive, and let him know that the feeling is mutual.
- Establishing Character Moment: The first scene of the episode has Bartlett berating the repairman fixing his TV after he kicked the screen in. After the guy leaves, Finchley has a meltdown over a ringing clock, and instead of just turning it off, he throws it to the ground and destroys it.
- Get Out!: The machines keep repeating "GET OUT OF HERE, FINCHLEY!" over and over.
- Haunted Technology: Finchley's electric appliances come alive and rise up against him as revenge for all his abusive treatment of them.
- It Won't Turn Off: At one point, the clock in Finchley's living room begins chiming, prompting him to go over and wreck it, only to find that it's the same clock he destroyed yesterday.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Bartlett Finchley, a man who hates and destroys machines, is destroyed by them when they come alive.
- Misanthrope Supreme: Finchley is already an unpleasant, ill-tempered man, but he's also an equal-opportunity hater, loathing men, women, and children for what he believes is incompetence. As for machines, he's prone to smashing them when they act up instead of fixing them.
- My Car Hates Me: Finchley meets his death after being chased by his own car into a swimming pool, where he drowns.
- No Social Skills: Along with his really bad temper and poor attitude, Finchley is shown to be very awkward when socializing with other people. He is prone to sudden outbursts and doesn't catch on to social cues that well.
- Pet the Dog: In what is his sole moment of kindness in the whole episode, Finchley pretends to be happy when he hears Pauline Donnelly, a woman he likes, got married, and honestly promises to send her a wedding gift.
- Properly Paranoid: Finchley believes that his machines are out to get him, which his secretary Miss Rogers passes off as delusional rambling brought on by frazzled nerves and a lack of sleep. Of course, with this being the Twilight Zone, he's right.
- Technophobia: Finchley despises all machines even more than he hates people, destroying his appliances if he can't get them to work. The first scene illustrates that he previously kicked in the screen of his television and threw his radio down the stairs, then smashes a clock to pieces when it doesn't stop chiming.
- Too Dumb to Live: If Finchley had stayed in his house, the biggest threat to his safety that would've been that stupid razor. Instead, he goes out and gets killed by his car.
- Your Television Hates You: A literal case, as Finchley's television, after previously having its screen kicked in, plays a show featuring a woman doing a flamenco dance. The woman soon stares at the camera and says "Why don't you get out of here, Finchley?"
