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Title

The Plastic Man

Plot

A reprobate philanderer gets entangled with a married woman. He is unfortunately ignorant about the fact that her husband is a talented parapsychologist with immense telekinetic destructive powers.

Episode

0286

Air Dates

  • First Run - June 5, 1975
  • Repeat - October 3, 1975

Actors

Writer

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Rating

116
100     16


21 Responses to Episode 0286

When you're a selfish, thoughtless user of other people, then eventually, you're going to regret it. The lowdown: A man whose a swinging single has an appetite for women and uses them, gets their hopes up of something serious, and then just tosses 'em aside like a toy (no consideration for their feelings). In spite of his brothers advice to stop, he continues, one day he meets a married woman (herself a user who married a man for his money) and they strike up a flame. Inevidibly, her husband finds out and exacts revenge on both of them. However, the husband's revenge is not the usual method of getting even.

Jane M;

A shallow playboy gets hooked up with a married woman. Her husband is a parapsychologist able to inflict pain and revenge from afar.

June A.

We open up with George Hartford callously dumping (and dumping on) his former fiancee. He's an owner of a southern California auto dealership, doesn't think much of old fashioned values like marriage and fidelity...he's a swinger who says if it feels natural to you, it's right, and all sorts of similar platitudes. Both the woman George is dumping and his psychiatrist about-to-be-married brother warn him separately that his lifestyle and (lack of) values are going to catch up with him, and that someday he's going to run into a "buzzsaw" because of it. That "buzzsaw" is in the form of Laura Prentiss, whom he meets at a resort on the pacific coast. She's beautiful, mysterious and strangely alternates between being seductive and remorseful. She also has a vintage Mercedes in "british racing green"...George can't decide whether he's more captivated by her or the car. The car is a gift from her rich husband, who's also a parapsychologist who's into some heavy, er, doo doo...clairvoyance, mental telepathy, ESP. She seems nervous thinking about him, but gives into her (and George's) lustful intentions. Later, when George returns to his own (locked) cabin, he finds a mysterious, small man who identifies himself as Mr. Prentiss, and warns George to stay away from his wife. George obliges, and is somewhat uneasy. Returning to his auto dealership in Los Angeles, one week later who should stop by but Laura Prentiss. And who should foolishly decide to join her for another fling but George. And while they're driving off, who should happen to ring chimes in their heads and say "Now you'll both suffer the consequences" but the voice of Mr. Prentiss, even though he's overseas in India meditating....

Anne Soberano Alcain

Don Scardino plays a hip swinging bachelor committed to never committing. He uses and discards women like a cheap video rental. His psychiatrist brother warns him of the direction his life will take him and that a woman will come along someday that will prove too much for him. When he takes up with a woman with a fast car and a rich husband who is a doctor of parapsychology... It's fun to listen to the swinging hip lingo in this episode - like far out baby.

Clyde Norkis

A "swinging" male gets his just desserts. Heh heh, nice. Hey man, like, dig the groovy 70's hip lingo. If Casey Kasem would have done the male voice over, it would have sounded like Shaggy! Heh heh heh.

Jillby

I was 15 in 1975 and NO ONE I knew, met or saw on TV talked like the characters in this episode. The lingo sounds more mid-to-late '60's than mid-1975 to me.

REB

Wow, man, that was like a heavy scene. The negativity was way too much for my karma, but I hung around 'till like the story was over...the cliff. Is there any decade funnier than the 70's?

Pete

Yes, at times the "groovy" lingo was almost too much. I thought for a moment that I was listening to "The Brady Bunch". If one can overlook that bit of nonsense, I thought the theme of the show was actually pretty good. It had some of those classic RMT elements; someone not considering the consequences of their actions, and then finding out the hard way that there are consequences. Some supernatural/psych elements for people that like those things.

Cassie R.

Yeah, like dig man . . . your review was real hip man. You know? Like, far out man . . .

Calvin Digswell

Even the title screams the 70's. I'm glad RMT didn't try to "modernize" the series into the 70's fad. The majority of the show has aged very well, but this one is painfully dated. The story was actually okay, but it seemed like the writer was trying too hard to integrate the lingo into the story; for me it sounded incongruous. I did however, enjoy the segments where the husband showed up and threatened the "Plastic Man" and would have enjoyed a little more dialogue between the two.

Mr. Creed

Farm out man. Seemed a little drastic, as far as the punishment fitting the crime. I don't know if this is the right website to post this, but I have a car I'd like to sell. It's a 50s Mercedes in fine shape, just slightly smelly since I used to store bones in it, but really good mpg and very easy to park anywhere; chauffeur included.

Lucky Manzano

Don Scardino is not one of my favorites by I thought he did rather well in this one. I didn't think the dialogue was that "dated". Actually I thought it was a little daring for radio with all the "fooling" around. Maybe it was my dirty mind filling in the blanks. Good episode.

Craig

Don Scardino always has an unnerving tone to his voice - fits well with the story here. 70's lingo is pretty far out as well, man.

Mike in Grand Rapids

With the exception of the dated lingo of the times (which seemed strained at times) this was a fairly good story. One has to wonder about the husband and why he didn't choose a more non-lethal action, but because he did there really isn't a question of why his wife wanted out.

Alec

This was a story that really got to me. I just couldn't comb it out, man. It was pretty wide out, but I guess it's just my karma, man, because, well, if you dig me, I'm here writing about it, ya know? How could anyone not love this insane 70s dialogue? (but "wide out"? I don't remember *that* one and I'm old!). Silliness abounds in other ways aside from the groovy lingo, if ya get me, Big Mamma. For ex., the husband's off in India, the wife fools around while knowing it doesn't make any difference at all with regard to her psychic husband's knowing about it all -- but she does it anyway with an expressed attitude that her husband's lack of proximity makes it all safe, only to later talk as if she'd known all along there was no escaping his all-seeing eye. But the silliness is what makes this a fun and really memorable one. This is one I listen to periodically so I can hate-love listening to the way The Plastic Man and his British-green-eyed lover talk to each other. Cracks me up!

Tracy

The best thing about this episode? The reviews.

Christine

Despite the exhortations of his brother to find the right woman, get married and settle down, George Hartford, a breaker of the hearts of many women, can’t resist lithesome Laura Prentiss whom he meets on a beach in Mexico. He also falls for the car she drives — a racing green Mercedes. The only trouble is he doesn’t know she’s married to a rich and powerful man whose powers of ESP keep him informed of her every move.

Adam

This is a great episode. It is a modernized copy of "End of the Road" written for Suspense by, Irving Moore and Robert L. Richards. Maybe Ian Martin wrote the original?

Rick

Isn't it interesting that cold womanizer George Hartford didn't take the advice of his clearly loving brother, the (normal) psychiatrist, and in so doing ended up being dealt with in the most severe of ways by the PARApsychologist (both of the latter characters played by the wonderful Russel Horton)?

Kurt Wayne

By the way, google has a listing for a 1955 gullwing Mercedes coupe in british racing green (just one year older than the doomed Laura Prentiss' car) in mint condition. Asking price: $1 million.

Kurt Wayne

I did NOT like this because of the plot. Who/what drove her to commit suicide? If there was a “para” force wouldn’t have been more interesting if the characters who had “sinned” found a way to disempower it? Confession, change of life, a good deed, or some other expression of atonement. And how about the evilness of her husband. Have him being punished and not able to make any atonement because he is too far down the path of evil? Two people make a mistake just like millions of people do every day,they didn’t deserve to be murdered.

J Nicolosi


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