Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room

"Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 3
Directed by	Douglas Heyes
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Original score by Jerry Goldsmith
Production code	173-3641
Original air date	October 14, 1960
Guest appearance(s)
Joe Mantell as Jackie "John" Rhoades William D. Gordon as George
Episode chronology

"Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" is episode 39 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on October 14, 1960, on CBS.

According to the book The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic by Martin Grams, Serling wrote the teleplay in response to a request from CBS to write scripts using as few actors as possible for budgetary purposes. This episode was produced $5,000 under budget.

Plot

An insecure, unsuccessful gangster named Jackie Rhoades (Joe Mantell) waits in a cheap, dirty hotel room for a phone call from his boss, George. When he finally calls, George says something that clearly leaves Jackie distraught. Jackie frets and paces until George shows up in person.

Once he arrives, George gives Jackie a gun and orders him to shoot a barkeeper to send a message to other shop owners. George then leaves. Terrified, Jackie starts talking to his reflection in the mirror, trying to justify committing murder. He puts a cigarette in his lips but finds no match.

A puff of smoke comes out from the other side of the mirror, and he sees a different version of himself in the reflection: a strong, self-assured, confident Jackie Rhoades. Jackie looks into the mirror and asks, "Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me?" Jackie and his reflection enter a lengthy argument about how badly his life has turned out as a result of his listening to others and never himself. Jackie tries to flee, but he sees more mirrors in the hallway, the closet, and the bathroom, and his reflection continues to argue with him out of each one. Jackie passes out, but when he recovers, the double is still there. They continue to argue about Jackie's choices; the double points out all the choices that Jackie made in his past that led him down the wrong path, times when Jackie had a choice to do the right thing and did not.

Jackie keeps crying out to the double, "What do you want from me?" Finally, the double tells Jackie he wants to take over, that it is his turn to run their life and that he deserves to live. If Jackie does the job for George, they will both die. Jackie refuses.

George telephones and Jackie nervously assures George that he is on the way to do the job. The double reappears and urgently tries to persuade Jackie to let him out. Angry, Jackie spins the mirror on the chest of drawers. As the mirror spins, Jackie backs away in terror, spooky music plays, and the screen goes dark.

George returns, furious that Jackie has not done his job. He finds Jackie with his head in his hands and berates him for not killing the bartender.

"Whattaya gotta say for yourself, crumb?" he sneers.

Jackie lifts his head confidently and responds, "I resign! You can have your gun back, plus the following." He then kicks and punches a surprised George, throwing him out of the room, along with his gun. Ringing the room clerk to check out, he refers to himself as "Jackie—'JOHN' Rhoades."

He then sees the nervous Jackie, who is now the one on the other side of the mirror and who asks, "What's to do now?" The newly confident Jackie responds by saying, "Now we go look for a job. Now maybe we get married. Now maybe we stop biting our nails." The nervous, mirror Jackie stops biting his nails and looks at his fingers; clearly he is already changing. The confident Jackie then walks out of the room, looks back at the mirror, and sees only his own confident reflection.

Closing narration: "Exit Mr. John Rhoades, formerly a reflection in a mirror, a fragment of someone else's conscience, a wishful thinker made out of glass, but now made out of flesh, and on his way to join the company of men. Mr. John Rhoades, with one foot through the door and one foot out of the Twilight Zone."

References in other media

Most people know these line, "You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?" from the films Taxi Driver and Dirty Harry, but it first appeared in this episode:
You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Oh yeah. Yeah, sure you are. Now me and the mirror we're havin' a talk. I've had it huh? All my marbles are gone. This is how it happens.
— Jackie Rhoades

The Fox sitcom Married... with Children paid homage to this story in the season-eight episode, "Proud to Be Your Bud?" (1993) where Bud Bundy (David Faustino) builds a portal in his basement room and a clone of himself appears, who tells him that he is a loser and fights with him.
The title of the song "Paranoia Man in Cheap Shit Room" by the band The Fall, from the album The Infotainment Scan (1993), echoes that of this episode.^[1]
In the CBS comedy series Two and a Half Men (season eight's "Three Hookers and a Philly Cheesesteak" [2011]), the character of Alan is confronted by a more confident and decisive version of himself in a mirror. As the episode ends, Alan and his alter ego have changed places, the latter heading out into the world.
In the Nostalgia Critic special, "The Review Must Go On" (2013), Doug Walker has a conversation with his character Nostalgia Critic, tempting him to return to the series, which begins on a computer screen, and continues as his reflection in a mirror.

References

↑ http://annotatedfall.doomby.com/pages/the-annotated-lyrics/paranoia-man-in-cheap-sh-t-room.html#n1

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes

Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"

Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "The Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"

Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"

Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"

Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"

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Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room

Plot

References in other media

See also

References

External links