The New Man by Barbara Owns [Tales from the Darkside - Season 1, Episode 1] - Review

Alan Coombs steps off the bus from downtown and out into a cold winter’s night awash with stinging flurries of snow. Waiting for him amongst the others at the stop is a young boy, maybe twelve, with sandy hair, a slight frame, and a narrow freckled face.

“Hi, Dad.” The boy says to Alan. “I came to meet you. Surprised?”

Without realizing he is doing so, Alan takes a slow step back. He does not know, or even recognize, the boy. After telling him that he is mistaken, Alan turns to leave and the young boy, who has said his name is Jerry, reaches out and touches Alan’s arm.

Even though the fabric of his coat, Alan finds Jerry’s touch repugnant.

And so Barbara Owens’ unsettling short story The New Man begins. First published in the March 1982 issue of Twilight Zone Magazine, The New Man was also adapted for the direct-to-syndication anthology series Tales from the Darkside.

Alan returns home to find his wife, Sharon, and his son, his real son, Pete, just as he knows and remembers them. Until the kid who calls himself Jerry rings the doorbell and Sharon lets him in and then chastises Alan for locking the boy outside. “Look at him - he’s freezing. What made you do such a cruel thing, Alan?”

Sharon and Pete know Jerry and treat him as if he were a part of the family. But Alan knows the kid is not part of the family. He never has been and he never will be. Sharon and Pete both suspect that Alan has started drinking again…

But Alan knows he is sober. Has been sober. FOR A YEAR. He also knows that they DO NOT HAVE A CHILD NAMED JERRY!

So why is Alan's den now Jerry’s bedroom?

Determined to seek out the truth, Alan starts spiraling. He gets angrier, more distant, more abusive, and all the while Jerry watches, eye gleaming, and smiles. And smiles and smiles and smiles.

The story is told in the first person, by Alan, so one must take everything he tells us and claims to experience with certain wariness. As he could be, and is, an unreliable narrator. As much as he claims to be a New Man, he is fast to slip into the aggressive and accusatory behavior of a practicing alcoholic. Too fast, it seems.

The episode, which stars Vic Tayback, as Alan, and Chris Herbert, as Jerry, hews pretty darn close to its source material. A lot of dialogue is verbatim from the story, but there are still some major differences.

Unlike the story, all locations are interior, taking place either at Alan’s workplace or in the Coombs home. A scene where Alan visits his ailing and dementia suffering mother is excised and, truth be told, not really necessary for the episode.

What Jerry is, or what he is supposed to represent, in both versions, is left up to the reader or viewer to interpret. Is he the implacable embodiment of addiction, or the unaddressed, or unresolved, scars of psychological or emotional trauma.

Because the short story is entirely from Alan’s point of view, the ending, and its meaning, varies greatly from the episode. Alan is the observer and narrator until the end of the story, seeing what happens after his own story is resolved. Which is not the case with the episode. As the ending is restructured into a kind of circular bookending. With the beginning of the episode being recreated with another 'New Man". A changes that adds another potential layer to the story. Was Alan in some kind of purgatory? Was Jerry a spiritual test for Alan, before he would be consigned to either Heaven or Hell, depending on his actions and decisions?

I have no idea. What I can tell you is that my own life experience living with an alcoholic who drank herself to death, both the short story and its episode adaptation made my heart ache, even as the slightest of chills ran up my spine.

So, a recommendation from me and, until next time, try to enjoy the daylight….