Night Gallery episode review — 3.5 — You Can Come Up Now, Mrs. Millikan/Smile, Please

Original air date: November 12, 1972

You Can Come Up Now, Mrs. Millikan

Director: John Badham
Writer: Rod Serling

So at least for this episode, we’re abandoning the single story thing, but we’re still on the 30-minute time slot, which means one of these is almost certainly going to be brief and pointless.

Mr. Millikan (Ozzie Nelson) is kind of a fraudulent scientist who tries to conduct an experiment before some of his peers. It goes poorly, resulting in a small explosion, and his peers refuse to ever work with him again, leaving him alone with his wife (Harriet Nelson).

He asks her to clean up his failure while he goes to work on something else. We see that they have a strange relationship, and we’re not really sure what’s going on.

He gives her something to drink, and she’s apparently seeing a doctor. Millikan’s nephew, George (Roger Davis), a doctor, informs him that his wife is dying, and he doesn’t take it seriously.

George accuses Mr. Millikan of attempted murder, but Mrs. Millikan explains that Henry is planning on bringing her back to life. After she dies, Millikan and George have an offscreen agreement that he has to wait a few hours before reporting the death. George says that he lied and had called the police, but his uncle insists that she’ll be alive in just a few minutes.

When it apparently doesn’t work, George thinks Mr. Millikan has a case for temporary insanity. When the police arrive, George finds that his uncle has committed suicide out of grief. And then, after the police leave, unsurprisingly, Mrs. Millikan emerges, alive.

It’s a predictable, not too great segment, but I do like the sincerity of Ozzie Nelson’s performance. He’s very convincing in his confidence.

Smile, Please

Director: Jack Laird
Writer: Jack Laird

A man and a woman enter some kind of crypt, with the woman excited to be the first person ever to take a photograph of a vampire. But the coffin is empty. It turns out the man she’s with is the vampire. Big deal. A waste of time.
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Rating: 5/10