Main cast: Ed Lauter (Malcolm), Carole Shelley (Lorna), and Farley Granger (The Doctor)
Director: Tom Noonan

Malcolm is another comedy, but this one works in a bittersweet way. In fact, it’s a better Heartbreaking Story than a comedy. Monsters tends to do things only to give unexpected and even bizarre results, but this one works in most unexpected ways. So in this case, that’s a good thing.

Lorna wants “Mickey” back—the clarinet-playing fun husband that she married, not the serious work-focused man that Malcolm is now. So one evening, she digs out her husband’s old clarinet and plays their favorite songs, hoping to surprise him for a fun evening, only to end up with him having a painful seizure and a strange, bulging tumor in his abdomen that… makes clarinet music?

Yes, really. What is going on here?

Farley Granger nearly steals the show as a doctor obsessed with making money—one of the realest aspects of this episode, heh—but in the end, this is Ed Lauter’s show as he plays the tragic Malcolm that does what he thought was the right thing all his life, only to be confronted by the horrifying realization that he is very unhappy, that he’d wasted the best of his years in this state. The biggest tragedy here is that he couldn’t accept his realization; he just snaps.

There is no villain or hero here, just a very real and often heartbreaking story of a couple where one of them makes small, little compromises for the sake of making the other person happy, only to have these compromises eventually snowball to a very unhealthy degree. Lorna has no idea what Malcolm is going through, and sadly, in the end she is still making everything about her. She had Malcolm quit playing the clarinet because she didn’t want him playing with the band, and when he drowns himself in work as a result, she complains that he is not paying attention to her.

Even to the bitter end, Lorna still comes off bewildered as to why things didn’t turn out the way she wants, the way she insists they do.

It’s easy to say that she is the villain here, but I’ve known many real life couples that are like this. They believe that love and marriage are all about their own personal wants and desires, that love means the other person must dote on and cater to their whims, and many of them just stay in this state of silent malcontent that eventually mess up their heads as well as their kids’.

Are they the bad person because of their sense of entitlement, though? I’d argue that both parties are at fault—one for demanding, one for enabling—and instead of pointing fingers at which one is to be blamed, I’d argue that they should hash it out, perhaps with a marriage counselor, and either find a middle ground or just go separate ways.

Back to this episode. I have to dock one oogie from the final rating because Carole Shelley’s acting is pretty bad here. Her facial expressions, or lack of most of the time, vocal intonation, and body language are off most of the time in her scenes, and it’s hard to figure out what this character is thinking or feeling because everything about her is off-kilter.

Still, this is a relatable and even hard-hitting fantastical episode on what happens when one half of a couple assumes that a relationship is all about them, and the tragic consequences that follow. I like this one, and I have to admit: I didn’t know Monsters is capable of giving me something like this, and I’m glad to be proven wrong!

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