History Recap / TalesFromTheCryptS1E6CollectionCompleted

!!Tropes:

* WouldHitAGirl: While Anita pleads with him to hand over MewM ew, Jonas shoves her into his table.

->'''Crypt Keeper:''' (''sitting on the head of a fallen statue'') Before I get to tonight's terror tale, I'd like to introduce you to my pet: Peeves. ''(cut to a shot of a taxidermized dog)'' He has a terror ''tail'' of his own. (''cackles'') Tonight's skin-pimpling story, is about a couple with their ''own'' pet peeves. I call this chunk of chilling charnal chatter: '''Collection Completed.'''

After faithfully working at the Suntime tool company for 47 years, Jonas (Creator/MEmmetWalsh) is forced into retirement, and isn't happy with it one bit. He is too wound up to enjoy his new leisure time, and his wife Anita (Audra Lindley) irritates him even further with her constant [[FriendToAllLivingThings doting on her menagerie of pets and adopted strays]]. While pruning the backyard hedges, Jonas learns from his neighbor Roy that Anita's animal obsession runs deeper than he first thought. Anita herself even starts treating him like a pet, such as [[IAteWhat giving him a tuna sandwich made with cat-food]] and hiding his medicine inside a brownie, prompting him to declare that he's [[Film/TheElephantMan not an animal, but a human being]]. To add insult to injury, Anita also adopts a bulldog and names it after Jonas, saying that it reminds her of him. While Anita didn't mean any offense, Jonas' feelings are still hurt. When one of Anita's cats knocks over a pitcher of lemonade, Jonas tries to attack it with his pruning shears, but trips and falls into a pool filled with slime and decaying leaves. He tries to clean himself up in the bathtub, only to find it full of fish, declaring this to be the last straw.

The next morning, Jonas cheerfully tells Anita that he's found a new hobby and starts spending long periods in the basement, ordering her to keep out. She finds Jonas the bulldog standing motionless in the backyard and discovers, to her horror, that Jonas' new hobby is taxidermy. Arriving in the basement, Anita shrieks in agony after discovering that Jonas has killed and stuffed ''every'' animal in the house, except for Mewmew the cat. As he prepares to start pouncing on the poor cat, Anita grabs the gold-plated hammer given to Jonas as a retirement gift and bashes his head in. Sometime later, Anita and Jonas are sitting in the living room with the TV on. As Anita gets up to start making lunch, Roy stops by to see how the two are doing, and promptly goes slack-jawed to find the corpse of Jonas, sitting in his favorite chair, haphazardly stuffed and stitched back together.

* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: Downplayed with Jonas. He's a grump, but he ''does'' have a valid right to be one with how his wife dotes more on animals than him, espescially when she starts treating him like a pet. He only goes on the warpath and taxidermizes them all when he's pushed one time too many.

** After Jonas resolves to try talking things out with Anita, the scene cuts to Anita conceding that she was too wrapped up in her own problems to recognize someone else was in need, apologizing and admitting that it's time for a fresh start. We then see that she's talking to Mewmew.
* BerserkButton: When Jonas attempts to kill and stuff Mewmew, her last living pet, Anita loses it and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard kills him with his new hammer]].
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Anita is unfaltingly friendly to animals of all kinds, but when her husband kills and stuffs all but one of her pets, she completely snaps and kills him.
* BludgeonedToDeath: Anita kills Jonas by hitting him in the head with the gold-plated ballpeen hammer he was given as a retirement gift from Suntime.

* CrazyCatLady: With her affectionate nature towards all animals, Anita is a definite case, as far as Jonas is concerned. Eventually, she even starts treating Jonas as if he were an animal himself. After Jonas goes nuts and demonstrates his new "hobby" on her pets, she bashes his head in when he goes to do the same to Mewmew. The ending hints that the experience drove her crazy for real, since she's revealed to have crudely taxidermized Jonas himself and talking to him like he was still alive.

* DeathByIrony: In response to Jonas threatening Mewmew, Anita kills him with the gold-plated hammer he was given for his retirement. His corpse is then crudely stitched and stuffed, just as he had subjected to all of Anita's pets.
* ElvisLives: A passing news report on couple's TV set states that Elvis' spirit may be alive in an Iowa woman's Doberman Pinscher.

** Jonas grouses about being a ReluctantRetiree, then trips and spots Mewmew, loudly questioning how the cat got inside.

* HopeSpot: Roy almost talks Jonas into calming down and simply talking things out with Anita. Then Jonas sees her having a heart-to-heart with Mewmew and gets weirded out again.

* MummiesAtTheDinnerTable: The episode ends with Anita having a conversation with the taxidermized corpse of her husband, which she has seated in his armchair so he can watch television.

** While much is made of Anita's obsession with animals, seeing what Jonas does to her pets drives her off the deep end in such a way that she'll do '''anything''' to protect Mewmew.

* ShearMenace: When Jonas starts losing his mind, one of his first acts is to chase Mewmew around the garden with an enormous pair of hedge clippers.

** ''Series/{{Lassie}}'' is also glimpsed on the TV twice.
* SparedByTheAdaptation: Mewmew doesn't make it in the original comic. It's possible she gets to live here because in the comic, he was Anita's only pet and the rest of the animals were strays that Jonas trapped.
* StatingTheSimpleSolution: After Jonas vents about Anita hiding his asprin in a brownie, Roy suggests that he simply ''talk'' to her about it instead of grouse in the basement. This appears to work, but it's revealed that Anita is having her heart-to-heart with Mewmew.

* WouldHitAGirl: While Anita pleads with him to hand over Mewmew, Jonas shoves her into his table.

* ChekhovsGun: The gold-plated hammer Jonas gets as a retirment present.

->'''Crypt Keeper:''' ''(sitting on the head of a fallen statue)'' Before I get to tonight's terror tale, I'd like to introduce you to my pet: Peeves. ''(cut to a shot of a taxidermized dog)'' He has a terror ''tail'' of his own. ''(cackles)'' Tonight's skin-pimpling story, is about a couple with their ''own'' pet peeves. I call this chunk of chilling charnal chatter: '''Collection Completed.'''

After working at a tool company for 47 years, Jonas (Creator/MEmmetWalsh) is bitter over being forced into retirement. He is too wound up to enjoy his new leisure time, and his wife Anita (Audra Lindley) irritates him even more with her constant [[FriendToAllLivingThings doting on her menagerie of pets and adopted strays]].

While pruning the backyard hedges, Jonas learns from his neighbor Roy that Anita's animal obsession runs even deeper than he first thought. She starts to treat him like a pet in various ways, such as [[IAteWhat giving him a tuna sandwich made with cat-food]] and hiding his medicine inside a brownie, prompting him to declare, "[[Film/TheElephantMan I am not an animal! I am a human being!]]" To add insult to injury, she even adopts a bulldog and names it after him, saying it reminds her of him. While Anita didn't mean it, Jonas' feelings are hurt. When one of Anita's cats knocks over a pitcher of lemonade, Jonas tries to attack it with his pruning shears, but trips and falls into a pool filled with slime and decaying leaves. He tries to clean up in the bathtub, only to find it full of fish, declaring this the last straw.

The next morning, Jonas cheerfully tells Anita he has found a new hobby and starts spending long periods in the basement, ordering her to keep out. She finds Jonas the bulldog standing motionless in the back yard and discovers, to her horror, that Jonas' new hobby is taxidermy. He has killed and stuffed ''every'' animal in the house, except for her favorite cat. As he prepares to start pouncing on it, she grabs a gold-plated hammer (given to Jonas as a retirement gift) and beats him to death with it.

Sometime later, the couple are sitting in their living room with the TV set on. As Anita gets up to start making lunch, Roy stops by to see how the two are doing - and is shocked to see Jonas sitting in his favorite chair, dead and stuffed with his face stitched back together.

* AscendedExtra: Roy. In the comic, he was just an unnamed neighbor who only appears in the final panel to check on Anita and Jonah (whom Anita had stuffed and mounted). In the show, his role was vastly expanded.
* AdaptationalNiceGuy: Jonas is a lot nicer than his counterpart in the comic, who was named Jonah. Jonah despised animals for no apparent reason, and gleefully rubbed his new hobby in his wife's face. Here, he doesn't start outright hating them until his wife starts treating him like one of them, and he keeps his hobby well hidden until the climax.
* AwfulWeddedLife: Jonas has been away from home so much because of his dedication to his work, and Anita has spent the last 47 years turning their house into a zoo. When the former is forced into mandatory retirement, the pair slowly, and sometimes awkwardly, discover that they can no longer stand living under the same roof.
* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: Downplayed with Jonas. He may be a grump, but he does have a valid right to be one with how his wife dotes more on animals than him, even treating him like a pet. He only goes on the warpath and kills/stuffs them all when he's pushed too far.

** At the start of the episode, Anita talks to guests for the party she planned for Jonas, but we later learn they're the pets (in party hats, no less).
** After Jonas resolves to try talking things out, the scene cuts to Anita conceding she was too wrapped up in her own problems to recognize someone else was in need. She promptly apologizes and says it's time for a fresh start. We then see she's talking to Mewmew.
* BerserkButton: When Jonas attempts to kill and stuff her last living pet, Mewmew the cat, Anita loses it and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard kills him with his new hammer]].
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Anita is certainly nice to animals of all kinds, but when her husband has killed and stuffed all but one of her pets, she decides he's taken it too far and kills him.
* BludgeonedToDeath: Anita kills Jonas by hitting him in the head with the gold-plated ballpeen hammer he was given as a retirement gift from the tool company.
* ChekhovsGun: The gold-plated hammer.
* CrazyCatLady: Anita is this as far as Jonas is concerned. Eventually, she even treats Jonas as if he were another one of her pet cats. She eventually becomes crazy for real, killing and stuffing her husband after he taxidermizes all of her pets.
* DeadpanSnarker: While talking to Roy, Jonas is using shears in the yard and getting increasingly aggressive with the work. By the end, he's reduced a hedge to practically a pole.

* DeathByIrony: In response to Jonas threatening Mewmew, Anita kills him with the gold-plated hammer (the symbol of his retirement). His corpse is then stuffed, just as he had subjected to all of Anita's pets.
* ElvisLives: A passing news report on the TV set mentions that Elvis' spirit may be alive inside an Iowa woman's Doberman Pinscher.

** Anita tends to a stray, hungry cat, unknowingly closing the door right in Jonas's face.
** Jonas grousing about being a ReluctantRetiree and yelling at the animals.
* {{Foil}}: Jonas' neighbor Roy is one to Jonas himself, being a happy-go-lucky guy that adjusted just fine to retirement. He does acknowledge how Anita's behavior is unusual, but he takes it in stride, gets along with her pets, and advocates simple solutions.
* FreudianExcuse: Anita is hinted to have doted on animals so much because Jonas' workaholic nature meant he never had any time for her.
* FriendToAllLivingThings: Anita, given the sheer number of pets and strays she has adopted. She also has birdhouses and feeders set up for the crows, several aquariums ''and'' a koi pond, and Roy even notes that she's been seen having squirrels rest on her head.
* GoryDiscretionShot: We don't see the hammer hit Jonas in the face, but the final scene suggests it was quite messy and required a lot of work to fix up.
* GrumpyOldMan: Jonas, who whines and gropes about being forced into retirement, and even more so when Anita begins treating him like a pet, and treating the actual pets with more dignity than him.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: The gold-plated hammer that Jonas receives as a retirement present ends up being the end of him when Anita uses it to kill him.
* HopeSpot: Roy almost talks Jonas into calming down and simply talking things out with Anita. Then Jonas sees her having a heart-to-heart with Mewmew and gets weirded out again. Before long, things spiral out of control when the cat knocks over the pitcher of lemonade.
* IAteWhat: Jonas has this reaction when Anita gives him a tuna sandwich made with cat food.
* InsistentTerminology: Anita insists the animals are her friends, and her children.
* JerkassHasAPoint: Jonas certainly went too far by killing Anita's pets, but he was justified to be aghast at Anita's behavior throughout the episode (including adopting every stray that comes by and feeding them very expensive food), as well as how she treated him more like an animal than a husband.
* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Jonas makes a lot of fair points about the situation, but then we get to his gleeful reveal of his new hobby.
** Anita was jumping off the slope from her very first appearance, with the huge array of pets she's gathered into the house. She becomes truly crazy when she discovers what Jonas does to her pets, and subjects him to the same fate.

* LampshadeHanging: When talking about Anita's animal obsession, Roy says it's been going on for some time and expresses surprise that Jonas (the guy who lives with her) completely missed it.
* MummiesAtTheDinnerTable: The episode ends with Anita having a conversation with the taxidermized corpse of her husband, which she has seated in a armchair so he can watch television.
* OhCrap: Roy in the final scene, and for good reason.
* PragmaticVillainy: Jonas says he prefers using chloroform on his "projects" because it keeps the muscles from tensing up and thus makes the work easier.

* RageBreakingPoint: Jonas' sanity goes down the toilet when he tries to take a shower, only to find the bathtub full of fish from Anita's koi pond.
* ReluctantRetiree: Jonas bemoans being put out to pasture because of his age, and feels his hard work for almost half a century went completely unappreciated.

** Jonas gets increasingly unhinged throughout the episode before he snaps and takes up a certain hobby.
** While much is made of Anita's obsession with animals, seeing what Jonas did to her pets drives her off the deep end in such a way that she'll do anything to protect Mewmew.
* SarcasmBlind: Roy the first time he and Jonas are talking in the basement.
* ShearMenace: When Jonas starts to snap, one of his first acts is to chase Mewmew around the garden with an enormous pair of hedge clippers.

** To ''Film/TheElephantMan'': "I am not an animal! I am a human being!"

* SparedByTheAdaptation: Mewmew doesn't make it in the original comic. It's possible she gets to live here because in the comic, he was her only pet and the rest of the animals were strays Jonas trapped.
* StatingTheSimpleSolution: After Jonas vents about Anita hiding medicine in his food, Roy suggests he simply talk to her about it instead of grouse in the basement. This appears to work, but it's revealed that Anita is having a heart-to-heart with Mewmew.
* TaxidermyIsCreepy: Jonas's new "hobby", once he snaps, is to kill and stuff Anita's pets. At the end of the episode, ''he'' is on the receiving end of this trope, courtesy of Anita.
* TraumaButton: Anita makes an innocent comment about the pets providing her with company, which Jonas takes as an insult for him focusing on his work for 47 years. He proceeds to go on an angry tirade before she mollifies him.
* UngratefulBastard: In Jonas' eyes, Suntime Hand Tools, the company he used to work for, put him out to pasture at 65, even though he's been their regional sales leader for 17 years in a row.
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Roy telling Jonas about Anita's habits and suggesting he adopt a hobby to calm his nerves.
* WeNamedTheMonkeyJack: Jonas is totally nonplussed when he discovers that Anita has named a stray bulldog after him. The canine Jonas becomes the first animal that the human Jonas kills and stuffs.
* WhamShot: How we learn what's become of Jonas in the end.
* {{Workaholic}}: Jonas is the ultimate workaholic, boasting about how he's worked 6 days a week all year round for his entire tenure of 47 years. He can't stand his mandatory retirement (even though the first day of said retirement is the first free weekday he's had since he was 17), denounces such things as sleeping in or taking up a hobby to be complete wastes of time, and has been out of the house so much that he's unable to live in the same place as his wife, even missing how Anita's behavior is nothing new. Even Roy remarks that the idea of Jonas being retired is tantamount to DidntSeeThatComing.
* WouldHitAGirl: While Anita pleads with him to hand over Mewmew, Jonas shoves her into a table.
* YourTelevisionHatesYou: Jonas tries to watch TV to get his mind off of Anita's obsession with animals. He ends up tuning into a news report about a possessed dog, a different news report about cougars, and an episode of ''Series/{{Lassie}}'', before he decides to shut the set off.

->'''Crypt Keeper:''' ''(peering around a corner)'' I guess Jonas learned that a hobby can be very ''self''-ful''filling''... as long as you're not too ''stuffy'' about it. ''(cackles)'' So, until next time, I want all of you to sit, stay, '''play dead.''' ''(cackles)'' Good boy!