John McIver is the president of a model boat company who is a nuisance to his wife and employees. Having been raised in a household in which no noise was permitted, he now demands action and noise from his environment. Most of it is nautically tinged, due to his having been at sea, for reasons that remain obscure. That is, if you want noise, you don't necessarily look for a berth aboard a Navy ship; you try to find a job in a boiler factory.
The guy plays records of sea battles and Navy songs and when he speaks, he shouts. His employees throw darts at a board with his uniformed image on it. (He's wearing the two white stripes of a Seaman Apprentice; he looks about forty and his grade is E-2.) Eventually he drives his wife, Penny Singleton, away.
But then one night he's awakened by a dripping faucet in another room. He finds that every sound is amplified. A drop of water from the shower head sounds like a bullet's ricochet. The doc can find nothing wrong with his ears, so he's sent to a psychiatrist, who cures him.
Oh, happy day. Except that after a brief spell of normality, he discovers that he's practically deaf.
This is season five. If the story hadn't been preceded by so many excellent episodes earlier, it would seem better than it does. Serling always dictated his dialog and he must have been running out of steam because he falls back on patterns of speech that were by this time overused. Something along the lines of: "I've had you up to here! I've had you up to there! I've had you up to my neck! In short, I've HAD you!" And there's a good deal of pseudo-elegance. "Shall" replaces "will" -- sometimes, not always.
It's not a bad episode, not dull in any way. It just seems a little tired. As a child, I used to watch Penny Singleton play "Blondie" in a series of B comedies. I thought she was the most beautiful creature that ever walked the earth -- and a big movie star to boot.
The guy plays records of sea battles and Navy songs and when he speaks, he shouts. His employees throw darts at a board with his uniformed image on it. (He's wearing the two white stripes of a Seaman Apprentice; he looks about forty and his grade is E-2.) Eventually he drives his wife, Penny Singleton, away.
But then one night he's awakened by a dripping faucet in another room. He finds that every sound is amplified. A drop of water from the shower head sounds like a bullet's ricochet. The doc can find nothing wrong with his ears, so he's sent to a psychiatrist, who cures him.
Oh, happy day. Except that after a brief spell of normality, he discovers that he's practically deaf.
This is season five. If the story hadn't been preceded by so many excellent episodes earlier, it would seem better than it does. Serling always dictated his dialog and he must have been running out of steam because he falls back on patterns of speech that were by this time overused. Something along the lines of: "I've had you up to here! I've had you up to there! I've had you up to my neck! In short, I've HAD you!" And there's a good deal of pseudo-elegance. "Shall" replaces "will" -- sometimes, not always.
It's not a bad episode, not dull in any way. It just seems a little tired. As a child, I used to watch Penny Singleton play "Blondie" in a series of B comedies. I thought she was the most beautiful creature that ever walked the earth -- and a big movie star to boot.