Laura prepares to stick the script to Templeton.
Rod Serling: Pleased to present for your consideration, Mr. Booth Templeton; serious and successful star of over thirty Broadway plays, who is not quite all right today. Yesterday and its memories is what he wants, and yesterday is what he'll get. Soon his years and his troubles will descend on him in an avalanche. In order not to be crushed Mr. Booth Templeton will escape from his theater and his world, and make his debut on another stage, in another world, that we call the Twilight Zone.
Air date: December 9, 1960
Booth Templeton (Brian Aherne) is an aging Broadway theatre actor who is unhappy with his life. His much younger wife flirts with every man she comes across right in front of him, while Booth continues to mourn his first wife, Laura, who unfortunately died young. After a confrontation with the arrogant director of his newest play (a young Sydney Pollack!), Booth storms out of the theater... and finds himself back in 1927. He makes his way to a speakeasy to find his flapper wife Laura and his best friend Barney Flueger, only to discover that things aren't as he remembered them, as well as the fact that his old friends aren't that happy to see him.
The Trouble with Templetropes:
- An Aesop: Live your life to the fullest, instead of obsessing over the past.
- Batman Gambit: The ghosts of Booth's past acted hostile with him as a means to get him to stop obsessing about the old days, even producing a script to follow, no less: What to Do When Booth Comes Back.
- Break His Heart to Save Him: The shades of Laura and Barney in 1927, or whatever they are, are intentionally cruel to Booth in order to get him to leave, and go back to 1960, and live in the moment instead of always thinking about the past.
- Chekhov's Gun: The script that Booth snatched from Laura is how he learns what was really going on. We learn that it's entitled What to Do When Booth Comes Back, and features all of the lines spoken by Laura and Barney.
- Cruel to Be Kind: It's after reading the script that Booth swipes from Laura that he realizes she and the others only shunned and insulted him to break him of his obsession with the past, and get him to live his life back in the present.Laura (slapping Booth): Go back where you came from! We don't want you here!
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Booth regains his drive for life and is done letting others walk all over him, motivated to take charge of himself once again.
- The Flapper: Laura was one back in the 1920s.
- Heroic BSoD: Booth spends much of the episode in a persistent funk because he's longing for the good old days. It makes it easy for others to treat him with contempt and disdain.
- The Roaring '20s: Booth continually hearkens back to the 1920s, when he was young, life was easy, and his beloved wife Laura and his best friend Barney were still alive.
- Stranger in a Familiar Land: When he returns to 1927, Booth reunites with his beloved first wife and his old friend Barney. However, while the latter two look the same as they were at time (both in terms of age and personality), Booth is the same as he is in the present, and he clearly doesn't fit in anymore. This, of course, is the point his late loved ones wanted him to understand.Barney: Yes, old man, what did you expect?
- Trophy Wife: We only get a glimpse of Booth's current wife in the distance, where she's frolicking with a young gigolo by the pool, but the dialogue indicates that she's much younger than he is.
- Wham Shot: The moment Booth leaves the speakeasy, the room goes from bright, laughing, and jovial to dark, silent, and sullen in the blink of an eye. The looks on Barney and Laura's faces make it clear what’s really going on.
- White-Dwarf Starlet: Booth is a Rare Male Example of the trope.
Rod Serling: Mr. Booth Templeton, who shared with most human beings the hunger to recapture the past moments, the ones that soften with the years. But in his case, the characters of his past blocked him out and sent him back to his own time, which is where we find him now. Mr. Booth Templeton, who had a round-trip ticket - into the Twilight Zone.
