Alfred Hitchcock Presents, S1E3: "Triggers in Leash"

The series ducks into the Old West for an unusual kind of domestic suspense.

The choice of point of view and protagonist dramatically affects a story and its implicit morality, and “Triggers in Leash” is a good example of that. There are a lot of Westerns about gunfighters driven to kill over some small offense; there aren’t too many about little old ladies who, heartsick over all the bloodshed they’ve seen, try to stop it. But that’s what we get here, with Ellen Corby’s Maggie taking center stage.

We never see the slight that kicks off the feud between Del (Gene Barry) and Red (Darren McGavin). The narrative only meets them when they arrive at Maggie’s. But we do see Maggie’s day, or at least enough of it to get a sense of what it “should” be like.

It’s raining outside, but Maggie’s small restaurant is dry and cozy. Her hired hand, the gossipy and humorously tetchy Ben, scolds her for keeping the stove going: with the weather like it is, they won’t get many customers. But the stove keeps it warm, keeps it an oasis of domestic comfort. The set design suggests it’s a home as much as a restaurant, and even before the plot gets going, the camera draws our attention to a shelf with two key props: a cuckoo clock and a large crucifix. They’ll come up again later, but at the start of the episode, they’re important because they suggest the furnishing of an ordinary but cherished life. These are Maggie’s treasures.

Her relationship with Ben also feels lived-in, even quasi-familial. Maggie doesn’t order him to get his chores in town done; she offers the friendly bribe of a steak lunch (with hash brown potatoes and apple pie for dessert, no less). Even before Del and Red come crashing in, the episode establishes Maggie as a smart, good-natured woman who knows how to create—and keep—a sense of peace.

In comes the drenched, dazed Del, who won’t take off his gun belt—and who jumps (and draws) at every strange sound. He’s on the run from Red, who washes up only a few minutes later, still nursing his hurt pride after last night’s poker game went wrong. They’re ready to kill each other, as if this comfortable, cherished place is nothing but a flimsy false front, not Maggie’s home but the staging ground for their main event. Who’s going to scrub the blood out of the floorboards when they’re gone?

But Maggie’s desire to stop the shootout goes beyond the practical: she wants to save them, not  just order them to go kill each other outside. Her husband was a famous gunfighter, so she’s already too well-acquainted with death and the toll violence takes. Oh, yes, she says, her Charlie was wonderful at the work. He had seven notches on his gun: “But he had an even bigger score later on. He had twelve wreaths at his funeral.” Del is more even-keeled than the hotheaded Red, but neither of them can see past their bruised egos, and neither of them understand the brutal finality of death. Not all the way. So draw, they urge each other, and let’s finish this.

The episode turns not on Del vs. Red, but Del and Red vs. Maggie, and Ellen Corby—who only really hit her professional stride once she started playing older women—brings a superb, gritty soulfulness to Maggie’s fight. Best of all, for this kind of story, is the constant fire in her eyes. This is a woman whose mind is constantly working, who knows she’s burning through strategies fast and needs to come up with more now.

When she vows that whoever fires the first shot will wind up with a rope around his neck, she becomes a threat to the two men, not just an obstacle, and a different, darker AHP episode could run with that. Here, though, it’s crucial that Del and Red, despite their itchy trigger fingers, aren’t killers at heart; they just live in a place where grievances get settled at gunpoint, and they’re more afraid of losing face than they are of losing their lives. That doesn’t mean they want to eliminate a “witness” they know and like.

That complication leads, at least for a while, to a tense but unconventional standoff—and one that’s sometimes pretty funny, too. Corby is the clear star of the episode, both men do some great low-key physical comedy here, moving like stiff animatronics as they try to change positions while staying perpetually ready to draw … and try to eat their lunch without ever looking down at the table. Maggie has to cut their ham for them so they don’t give up their quick draw hands.

But two men this sensitive to their own pride won’t put up with being the butt of the joke for long, so—again, almost in cahoots with each other against Maggie—they decide they’ll draw at the same time, right as the cuckoo clock on the shelf calls the hour.

This is a fun, effective episode, and even if it isn’t as showy as some of AHP‘s real masterpieces, it runs—appropriately enough—like clockwork, with the narrative and formal choices all interlocking and supporting each other. It’s even satisfying as a kind of subtle bit of metafiction: a suspense story about preventing the action of a traditional Western. And older female protagonists are still a rarity in any genre, so it’s terrific to have Maggie front-and-center.

The Twist: Maggie knows the cuckoo clock wouldn’t run unless it’s set on the level, and the shelf won’t stay level without the weight of the crucifix on one end. She asks to hold the crucifix before the shootout, ostensibly to keep it out of the way of the gunfire—and so Del and Red, shaky and on edge, wait in vain for the hour to strike … only to see the clock hands aren’t moving anymore. The “miracle” forces them to reconcile. After all, God clearly doesn’t want this to happen!

As a final grace note, this doesn’t need a ton of discussion, but it’s satisfying, clever, and not too contrived. While it’s easy to see the overall nature of this reveal coming—Red and Del may need the sense of divine intervention to close the story to their satisfaction, but the episode needs to stay focused on Maggie’s ingenuity—it’s still a pleasure to see it play out. And again, the metafictional idea of the domestic suspense story being the secret behind the “official” Western is fun: I feel like as soon as Red and Del get back to town, they’re going to spread the word about how God’s own hand stopped the clock to save their lives, since it makes their aborted fight feel so epic. They’re so important God reached down to save them! Only Maggie, the audience, and (eventually) Ben get to know better: the unremarkable backdrop of the Western, the ordinary arrangement of one woman’s home according to her own desires and priorities, was life-or-death business all along.

Directed by: Don Medford

Written by: Allen Vaughn (story), Dick Carr (teleplay)

Up Next: “Don’t Come Back Alive”