Every once in a while, I like to write about Twilight Zone episodes because they are short (except for season 4) and fairly easy to explain. This particular one ranks among the most iconic and recognizable in the whole series, so there is actually a lot to say about it. I feel like everybody has seen it at least once. The episode itself is an excellent showcase of how the Twilight Zone was not really a campy kid's show with no disturbing endings like many seem to think. It centers around a young girl named Christie and her frustrated stepfather Erich (Telly Savalas). Erich's wife Annabelle (Mary LaRoche) comes home with an excited Christie one afternoon, who has just purchased a brand new doll called "Talky Tina" who is capable of speech. At first, Erich just sees the doll as an annoyance, knowing that its speech capabilities are only due to the inclusion of a device inside the doll. Eventually though, the doll actually deviates from its prerecorded, normal responses and tells Erich it hates him. After calling in his wife to show her why he thinks the doll has such a "colorful vocabulary", Tina only speaks her normal, upbeat responses, so obviously his wife thinks he's out of his mind. Later, Erich receives a threatening phone call with the doll's voice on the other end, saying how it's going to kill him. He lets his wife know, and insists he cannot tell a lie. Erich eventually takes the doll away from his sleeping daughter and tries to decapitate it with a circular saw, but it just sends sparks flying everywhere. Even lighting it with a blowtorch does absolutely nothing. After Annabelle tells Erich she wants a divorce because of his apparent insanity, he makes a compromise and returns the doll to Christie. That night, Erich leaves his bed after hearing a strange mechanical noise that sounds like a wind-up toy operating, and upon making it to the stairwell, he trips over the doll and falls to his death. Annabelle finds him laying lifelessly at the foot of the steps, rushes down there, and the doll tells her she better be nice from now on. Despite it appearing in the often maligned and weak final season, Living Doll is a thoroughly disturbing episode that is so well made that I'm surprised it wasn't shown earlier in the series. By season 5, Twilight Zone was admittedly looking long in the tooth. The show would find itself ensnared in its own rehashed plot twists, and many episodes from the final season are just repeats of older episodes with some slight changes made. Living Doll isn't like this at all. An original and creepy idea with a well known actor playing the main part, not to mention June Foray's voice acting for the doll. Over 50 years later, this episode is still one of the best the show has to offer, and will be remembered as one of the creepiest things ever aired on the Twilight Zone.
Review of Living Doll
