Alfred Hitchcock Presents, S1E37, "Decoy"

I have a certain affection for unrealistic murder plans, the kind that require a massive time commitment and a suspicious number of accurate predictions on the part of the criminal; if they get a jaw drop and a smile out of me at any point, I’ll forgive the fact that, all too often, the fiendish cleverness comes with a number of plot holes.

“Decoy,” unfortunately, does not spark the necessary joy. From the moment the murder happens, I have trouble believing in it, and not because it’s so very cool. It feels like a reach, and that implausibility is never counterbalanced by a pleasing ambition.

Like most AHP episodes that fall somewhat flat, though, “Decoy” does still have something to work with even if the plot is lacking. In this case, that’s a specific milieu.

Gil Larkin (Robert Horton of Wagon Train, who will become one of our frequent flyers) is a piano player, a regular accompanist for sparkling but down-to-earth singer Mona Cameron (Cara Williams, who would soon earn an Academy Award nomination for The Defiant Ones). He adores her, and he’s happy to soak up whatever time she can offer him. It’s a chaste and chivalrous love on his part–with, as it turns out, an emphasis on the “chivalrous” part. When he finds a bruised Mona trying to make excuses for her husband, a talent agent, impassioned Gil pays hubby Ben a visit. But someone–Ben helpfully IDs him as “Ritchie”–comes in behind him, and Gil wakes up on the floor.

When he wakes up, Ben is dead, and Gil is probably the prime suspect. All he has to go on is the mention of Ritchie and a song he hears playing over the husband’s office phone. Maybe whoever was on the phone can serve as a witness, exonerating him. Or maybe they’re responsible somehow.

This is all an odd and slightly flimsy excuse to send Gil on a wild goose chase through Ben’s client list, dodging the police while he conducts his own unorthodox questioning of Ben’s appointments for that night. It’s my favorite part of the episode, even though it’s where the plot effectively stalls out (because, to spoil something you will have all guessed already, he really needs to look close to home), because it has an easygoing, laid-back energy and a good sense of what the lower rungs of the entertainment industry look like. It’s refreshing to see a reasonably well-handled Japanese client, for example–AHP continuing its streak of small-scale but non-cliche representation here–and I was delighted at the return of Jack Mullaney, my favorite supporting player from “Never Again,” even if his DJ is to some extent reprising his simultaneously loose and manic performance there, albeit in a more annoying than tragic mode this time out. If the whole episode were a rambling tour of jobbing show business performers in the ‘50s, I’d like it a lot more.

Inevitably, though, Gil must run into the police and run back into Mona, and that takes us into–

The Twist: Mona set Gil up, as he knows for sure once he hears the telltale music on her record player. She manipulated the situation so her real boyfriend, Ritchie, could kill Ben and leave Gil to take the blame. Once Gil knows the truth, she tries to have Ritchie take him out too, but she’s interrupted by the police.

The best part of the twist is actually what happens right after the police swoop in, and that’s when Mona makes a Hail Mary pass at saving the situation with a bald-faced lie … only to immediately realize that she’s not selling it at all. At this point, since the drama of the situation hasn’t worked, throwing in a decent joke is the only way out, and Williams’s “oh, nuts” face as she resigns herself to her fate is pretty good.

The downside, of course, is that that moment of rueful acceptance isn’t a patch on the version we had back in “The Long Shot,” and once I thought of that episode-to-episode comparison, it’s hard not to be more annoyed with this story’s particular weaknesses. The callback to the domestic violence angle, with Mona half-quipping to be careful with the handcuffs because she bruises easily, also leaves a sour taste in the mouth. At least it makes sense to go out the way we do, with Gil feeling it sink in that while he may have been saved from prison, his romantic dreams are dust.

All in all, a weaker, flatter piece, and we’ve had too many of those in the back half of this season. However, we’re about to get a standout in next week’s “The Creeper.”

Directed by: Arnold Laven

Written by: Richard George Pedicini (story) & Bernard C. Schoenfeld (teleplay)

Up Next: “The Creeper”