Having made the mistake of reading what online commentators have said about an episode of Tales from the Darkside called…Answer Me, I would offer a few brief comments, since the story that one sees watching the episode is not the story that is actually there. Or so I think. But perhaps a little free interpretation will coax that story to step forward into the light, as it were.

Although British actress…

…Jean Marsh played the only visible role, but by no means the only role, in the episode, Joan Matlin is not being played as an English woman. Her jet lag is not due to flying from England to New York. Her jetlag is due to flying from Los Angeles to New York, which is approximately a 5 hour flight. Joan Matlin flew to New York to get a part as a “commercial” actress, meaning she went all the way from Los Angeles to New York to get a part in a tv commercial…not a role on television, and definitely not in a movie. Uprooting oneself from Britain and going to New York, which is very expensive with just the cost of the flight alone being prohibitively expensive, especially if she flew from England to sell toothpaste in a tv ad…it simply doesn’t make sense, and this brilliant episode in an otherwise laughable tv series, clearly does make sense…in a nonsensical way. The belief that Joan is English is the result of failing to understand Joan’s statement to a person on the phone who she wrongly believes is Lucy, Joan’s friend and resident of the apartment that she has sublet to her. Joan says that she was auditioning for a part in a tv commercial stating…

They were looking for a limey with comic timing, not a limey who could play the part of a zombie with no make-up.

A few observations can be offered…first, someone from England would not refer to herself as a limey, in the same way that an American in England probably wouldn’t call herself a…yank. The term is an insult, derogatory at least, and limey is an insult as well. But limey is an old, somewhat derogatory term originating in American slang. In bygone days, sailors often suffered from a condition known as Scurvy, first defined in 1845, and my how terrible medical conditions get terrible sounding names! S-C-U-R-V-Y. I suppose, at this point, I should introduce my new step-daughter:

Perhaps I should explain. Her name is Scurvy, and she is really my artificial new step-daughter. It is not my fault that my girls found a way to animate dolls and turn them into living beings…of whatever sort. But animated she is, and she will make a great playmate for Darla and my own girls.

There are a host of symptoms with Scurvy, but readily apparent are bleeding from the gums, tooth-loss, not to mention open sores and wounds. Well, I mentioned it anyway. The condition results from a lack of vitamin C, so British sailors sought to prevent this disease by carrying limes on board their ships, which, of course, provided the vitamin C needed to fight-off Scurvy. I have tried throwing limes at my Scurvy, but they don’t seem to faze her. Nonetheless, she is now Vice President of Tektonikus and sukinotkeT Action Figures. Collect them all!

There is, in my opinion, only one way to understand this…Joan Matlin is a native New Yorker, who moved to Los Angeles to become an actress, failed to get any parts except as the third wife in Dracula’s Harem…which sounds like a terrible B-horror movie (is there such a thing as a C-horror movie?) or some weird porn movie set in gothic times. At the same time, I would take the view that seeking to be a real actress was not the only reason Joan left New York, and she appears to have been really good at being a bad actress.

It is, of course, strange that this episode dates to 1985, but so too does the film…

It seems as though there may have been a bit of a joke that many people would miss, but not me or Darla or Scurvy. Now it is the case that Answer Me was released on February 17, 1985…and Return to Oz was released on June 21, 1985, one must believe that there was enough overlap in timing, based on the following…

That is Joan Matlin playing the third wife of Dracula in…Dracula’s Harem. I assume that she played her zombie-ish role with plenty of make-up. In Return to Oz, she played…

…Mombi! Ah, yes…Mombi-Zombie and looking a bit like Dracula’s third wife, awkward in that the real Dracula…i.e. Vlad the Impaler…Vlad Tepes…had only two wives, and not at the same time, and he didn’t have a harem, which is, historically, often associated with concubines. In the 1904 book…The Marvelous Land of Oz, Mombi appears as a wicked witch…

At any rate, Joan Matlin’s pseudo-seminal role as the Great Impaler’s Zombie-esque Non-existent Third Wife was the main movie-actress role in her career. And that means that she was a…total wash-out. We watch as she stuffs envelopes with the picture of Mombi-Zombie, presumably to send to whomever to get a role in something…anything. It is therefore odd that she makes a strange claim, which she attributes to Elusive Lucy. Joan could have avoided New York by staying in Los Angeles, but instead lamented the unfortunate fact that she didn’t take a job performing at Summer Stock. Summer Stock is an outdoor performance production featuring stars of Broadway, film, and television…yes, real actresses. The third wife of Dracula does not give her any chance of entrance into Summer Stock. But a particular Summer Stock is alluded to…

…Lucy said the Mormons treat actors like royalty.

There is, however, a particularly good reason why Joan Matlin would never become Queen of Utah…or even its third wife. She may be referring to the Summer Stock held annually in Cedar City, Utah. If so, the performances there gave rise to the alternative name…Utah Shakespeare Festival. Yes, the performances there are Shakespearean, and the wash-out from Los Angeles couldn’t possibly get a heady role in performances such as these…they wouldn’t even sell her a ticket. I would suggest that this is another example of Joan Matlin’s somewhat loose relationship with reality, as well as her notable mentally unstable behaviorisms. She also refers to herself as a young woman, which in terms of Hollywood, and indeed an otherwise completely unknown actress-wanna-be, is dead wrong. Jean Marsh was 51 years old in 1985, and although she was an attractive woman, she is in no way a young woman. The part in the commercial she didn’t get was that of an English woman, meaning that American Jean Marsh could sound like English Jean Marsh, which may have been the basis for her attempting to get the part…and although she pronounces vowels suggestive of an English woman, she very much sounds like a British actress playing the part of an American woman who could play the part of a British actress well enough to have a shot at landing a part as a limey in a TV ad selling vitamin C supplements. And although Joan Matlin is not English in the episode, there is a character in the episode that is, in fact, an English woman. Having the American role of the English actress Joan Matlin may have had an effect of a very strange conclusion on the part of some viewers, and pointed the “Englishness” present in the episode in the wrong direction.

Joan doesn’t get her advertising part selling limes because she didn’t get enough sleep. Her lack of sleep is due, in her mind, to the constant wringing of the telephone in the next apartment…12f…an otherworldly, nebulous place that would eventually consume Joan alive…maybe. It is not clear that the show opens with Joan’s first night, although that is possible. She does give a somewhat indication that this was not the first ringing of the annoying phone. Banging on the wall she shouts…

…will you answer the phone in there!

This would seem to suggest that although it is the first time we hear the phone ringing, it may not be Joan’s first time hearing the phone ring. However, we do know that Joan has been in the apartment for only two days. This is one of two occasions that Joan yells at the inhabitant, or inhabitants, in 12f to answer the phone, and in both instances, the phone stops ringing…giving Joan a fleeting moment of respite before the real Telephonic Nightmare is unleashed.

Chalk one up to the good guys!

As I will make clear in this essay, Joan is anything but a good guy…or gal.

It is worth noting a rather strange element here. Joan has not met the 12f-er, or so it would seem. And it is the same ungodly hour of the morning on both sides of the wall separating 12e and 12f, assuming that the eerie 12f is not in its own Twilight Zone-like Time Zone. So it is an odd thing that Joan believes someone is home on the other side of the wall, yet is content to let the phone ring endlessly until Joan starts yelling. Presumably, if someone were home in 12f, they would be as unable to sleep as Joan…although the identification of…limey…is at the heart of the real story. And this person is content to hang around the apartment letting the phone ring…suggesting that the resident does not want to speak with whoever is calling, then decides to go ahead and speak to this person because of Joan…twice? Anyone else would be tempted to conclude that the endless ringing of the phone indicates that no one is home, yet someone is trying to get a hold of the previous tenant, with no recourse other than to keep calling. Joan’s construct makes no sense except, as it seems to be…it does. But as far as what is on the surface of the episode…it does not. And although Joan is perfectly willing to yell passive-aggressively at someone she believes is home, it isn’t until later that she attempts to speak to 12f-er by actually knocking on the door.

Joan, ruminating out loud, makes a sarcastic comment that 12f is home to vampires, something Joan knows all about, who sleep all day and talk to their friends in Transylvania all night. Actually, Vlad III was associated with Wallachia…but only being his third wife, one can’t expect Joan to be as informed as his second wife. But! She has created another ludicrous context…vampires do sleep during the day and become active after nightfall. However, it seems somewhat absurd to maintain that Fully-Awake-Vampires are getting calls from Transylvania, Wallachia, or Utah, and then ignoring those calls, thereby nixing the idea that they talk to their Undead Friends at night. Chalk one up to the revenants. But Joan creates another equally nutty context. Why don’t they answer the phone? Why?

A party…they must be having a party.

She immediately dismisses this idea. No, someone would answer the phone, or so Joan says. True, but if it was a party, you’d hear the party-goers laughing and chatting…with, no doubt, music in the background. If it was a party, Joan could go over and have her favorite drink…Lager and Lime, which would at least help her fall asleep. This context is nonsense from beginning to end. One boring party, to be sure…a little music goes a long way. I’ve never been to a Vampire party, although Darla thinks the party hostess…

…looks sooper-dooper cool…and no, I don’t know her name. Perhaps she’s Vlad’s fourth wife. I’m sure there would be plenty of very thick red wine for the guests.

We end up back at the most likely construct being that the people in 12f are simply not home, something that never seems to occur to Joan. But we must rule this out because the phone does stop ringing after Joan yells at 12f-er. First yelling at the wall, and then sticking her head out the window and yelling at the “insomniacs” in 12f. Insomniacs would answer the phone, seeing how the endless ringing of the phone could be the cause of their insomnia…or maybe just a really boring party set in Gothic times. I seriously doubt that many vampires suffer from insomnia anyway. If 12f is home to a coven of vampires, and a group of zombie-like insomniacs, there would be trouble indeed.

But that’s when the situation becomes all the more worse…whoever is in that apartment is banging, or throwing something heavy, against the wall. However, it is easy to miss the fact that Joan started the wall-banging…

Apparently, she doesn’t get as well as she gives. When the banging from the other side of the wall begins, Joan falls back on her Crazy Vampire Theory…now the vampires are trying to break through the wall. Wouldn’t it be easier to go over and knock on the door, Joan? Fortunately, we will hear nothing more about Joan’s vampire obsession. And the banging on the wall joins the ringing telephone that drives an already crazy lady…crazier still. But it is certainly true that the banging on the wall escalates the situation. So the story begins in a most confusing way. The phone rings and rings, suggesting that no one is home. But Joan’s fussing does result in the temporary cessation of the phone ringing on two occasions, suggesting that someone is home. So there is an odd paradox that marks the beginning of the episode.

Joan’s construct quickly devolves into other-worldliness when she gets a call from a person whom she believes is her friend Lucy…

…from whom Joan sublets the apartment. During this call, we learn that Lucy has been gone for two days. Joan learns that 12f is empty. Strangely, not only is Joan not stunned by the fact that the apartment is empty, but it would also appear that Pseudo-Lucy isn’t puzzled by the noise coming from the apartment next-door, not to the mention the fact that someone must be where they aren’t supposed to be…how else does the phone stop ringing on Joan’s orders? The solution Lucy gives to Joan is to contact the building superintendent if it continues. And that is strange. The most ready context would be that someone has gained access to the apartment, representing a serious risk to Joan and possibly other residents. Nor does it make sense that said person is lurking on the other side of the wall with a continually ringing phone, ignoring it, then answering it when Joan bellows. If 12f is empty, then one could expect both Joan and Lucy to be very concerned. Yet neither are.

The one thing that did come out of Joan’s unbelievable conversation with someone that she thinks is Lucy was to let the building superintendent know if it continues. Joan follows this plan of action when the phone ringing and wall-banging begins again. Although we only hear Joan’s side of the conversation, it becomes clear that Joan isn’t speaking to the building super. Lucy said that the super is Mr. Rodriguez. During Joan’s conversation with someone she thought was Mr. Rodriguez, several strange things are said.

First, Joan states that she is subletting the apartment from Lucy, to which statement Mr. Rodriguez says…I know Lucy! That is odd given the fact that Lucy is a resident in the building…indeed, 12e…oh! I know Lucy! Then he tells her that 12f is empty, putting Mr. Rodriguez and Lucy on the same bizarre wavelength. Joan asks when the person in 12f moved out. He states that she didn’t move out…the English girl who lived in 12f committed suicide. Joan asks…a pill? Or a razor? There are, unfortunately, other ways to commit suicide. The response to her question is as equally unbelievable as the other parts of this construct…the former resident of 12f committed suicide by strangling herself. It is strange that this bit of information was not mentioned by Lucy. Joan rightly wonders…

…how you can strangle yourself, given the fact that you really can’t. You can hang yourself, but strangling yourself would be nigh impossible.  It is clear that Joan is talking to someone masquerading as Mr. Rodriquez, and that person isn’t the building super. And as she talks on the phone, the phone in 12f starts ringing. She attempts to prove to Mr. Rodriquez that the phone is, in fact, ringing. She holds…

See? Ahhh!

Of course! The phone stopped ringing when she held the receiver out so that Mr. Rodriquez could hear the ringing. It’s like the time that Darla took my car to have the transmission fixed, but when she got to the shop, it worked just fine. The most absurd part of this conversation is the apparent statement that he has no intention of checking out apartment 12f, and based on Joan’s next move, he actually tells her to break into 12f to confirm that an apartment that clearly isn’t empty is, in fact, empty. There isn’t a building super alive who would hear about noise in an apartment that was supposed to be empty and not only show no interest, actually tell the person in the next apartment to break into the other apartment to prove that someone who is banging on the wall is, in fact, not banging on the wall. Any building super would immediately head to 12f to see if someone has broken in, without telling the hapless resident in 12e to go break into the apartment herself. Sending Joan into 12f would represent a terrible risk, and a certain lawsuit if Joan ends up like the English girl and former resident who died in 12f. In reality, Joan’s claims would prompt the building super to get out of bed and investigate the situation.

So a particular, and wholly unbelievable scenario is created by the conversation with Not-Lucy and her conversation with the person she thinks is the building super. The two conversations build upon one another to produce a certain outcome. Lucy knows the apartment is empty, but doesn’t know that it was empty because the English Girl supposedly committed suicide, and doesn’t seem to see anything really dangerous or worthy of note in what Joan has told her. Her main intention is to get Joan to call Mr. Rodriguez, who has a totally impossible conversation with her. What Lucy’s call does do is refer Joan to Mr. Rodriguez, who is not the building super. The net effect of this is that Joan never speaks with the actual building super, who would have investigated the situation. But by thinking she spoke to the building super, she will have no one in the apartment building to help her with the problem. And that is vital to the development of the story. It also has the effect of forcing Joan to do the one thing that the inhabitant of 12f is desperately trying to get her to do…enter the apartment.

When Joan does finally enter the apartment, she quickly locates the phone…in a closet. However, she only discovers the phone there because the open door inexplicably closes. Joan also thinks this is odd, and initially suggests that the wind blew the door shut. She then dismisses this idea by noting the fact that window is shut.

Finding the phone, she speaks with the most important character in the episode…the Operator. This is preceded by Joan’s bombastic declaration:

Hello, Hello…this is Joan Matlin…the occupant of 12e speaking. I should like to inform all interested parties that the occupant of 12f is dead. She strangled herself and she is no longer accepting calls.

Operator…may I help you? May I help you please? Hello?

Still, Joan doesn’t show the slightest bit of interest in the fact that she found no one in the apartment, thereby failing to explain how the phone had stopped ringing on two occasions. But she had also been unfazed by…

…the fact that having knocked on the door, someone knocked back. Well, one knock, which is better than no knocks. And initially finding the door locked, moments later…

…she finds the door open. And yet Joan’s contextualization does not take into account that these things can only be explained by the presence of someone in the apartment, and yet, she glides effortlessly into her conversation with the operator. Initially, the conversation makes sense. They argue over the fact that Joan can’t have someone else’s phone disconnected. But then Joan states that the former occupant was dead, prompting the operator to ask…

How did she die?
She committed suicide; probably because she was trying to deal with the phone company.

 So much for Alexander Graham Bell. Joan tells her that the occupant committed suicide, prompting another query from the operator…pills…or a razor? This is somewhat odd, given the fact Joan has already declared that the previous tenant strangled herself. But it does indicate that the Operator knows the conversation Joan had with Mr. Rodriguez. This connects the Operator with Mr. Rodriguez, with the Operator asking the exact same question that Joan posed to the Not-Super. It is at this point that the Operator tells us something important when she asks the question…

…or did she strangle herself, with the telephone cord?

 Joan abruptly hangs up. So now we know the means of the English girl’s strangling demise. That said, you can’t really strangle yourself with a telephone cord…we all know that they stretch very easily as you walk around an empty apartment having a bizarre conversation with an Other Worldly Operator, who may, or may not, be a Vampire as well.

Joan then wracks her hectic brain trying to remember who she knows in the city. That person was named Beth, who had been Joan’s best friend. And we are specifically told Beth’s phone number…

 …1168. And so Joan dials only 4 numbers. She should have dialed 7 numbers. This is another critical element of the story.

Although I do believe that Beth had been Joan’s best friend, thereby lending credence to the view that Joan originally lived in New York, yet I believe “until I stopped calling her” is an artificial construct that exists only in her mind, resulting in a self-protective amnesia, which is not the same as insomnia. So Joan dials 1168, and guess who answers. Lucy? No. Mr. Rodriguez? No. Vlad the Impaler? No. The Operator.

Beth can’t come to the telephone, Joan.
Who’s this?
Beth had an accident.
How do you know my name? What kind of accident?
It wasn’t a pill, it wasn’t a razor.
You’re the operator. I just spoke to you.
She strangled herself.

Then Joan dials for 4-1-1; after all, what could be plainer? But this is a rather strange thing to do. The only person she knew to call was Beth, and she knew Beth’s number…1168. So why call directory assistance? And we can guess who answered. Joan asks for the phone number of the Office of Emergency Telephone Disconnections, something that obviously doesn’t exist, and the Operator tells her this. And Joan is prepared, after all that has happened, to bicker with her. Since she can’t reach Beth, and her momentary use of 4-1-1 having failed miserably, Joan demands to be connected with the police. Joan’s request to speak with the police is also strange. What would she tell them? The Operator is really just doing her job, with a slight twist. Would the cops really care about a telephone wringing in a neighboring apartment? An empty apartment, as Joan apparently has found out. Joan has not been threatened, and so there really isn’t any reason to talk to the police. It’s New York and they’re probably busy dealing with…oh, I don’t know…maybe crime, not telephones, or even creepy operators.

We hear some very interesting counter-questions…

…canine operations?
Of course not!
…equine division? Anti-terrorist Tactical Force? FBI Liaison? Recovered Property?

I find it interesting that canine operations was mentioned. I just recently had to tell…

…my daughter that dogs are not one of the Four Food Groups. Joan hangs up and runs out of the apartment. And the fact that she did this provides one-half of the real story.

And while “strangling” was part of the conversation with Mr. Rodriguez, the means…the telephone cord…first appears with the Operator. This is important in several ways, but the reference to the telephone cord heads off the explanation that an Operator had simply listened in on Joan’s conservation with the Not-super…she knows exactly what Mr. Rodriguez knew, but something he didn’t, making the Operator the most complete source of information about what befell the occupant of 12f…and Beth.

So why does the operator, when Joan asked to speak to the police, rattle off various police agencies that are totally irrelevant? I think the answer is this…Joan has already been diverted from speaking with the real building super. The operator is putting Joan off from talking to the police…the real police…and no horses or dogs. This leaves the two sources who could have intervened and frustrated 12fer’s plans for Joan, out of the picture. Joan will have to deal with her problematic situation all by herself.

It is important that she is told by someone claiming to be a Mr. Rodriguez that the former occupant who committed suicide was an English girl. Earlier, I noted that the actress playing Joan is English. I also took the position that she is playing the part of an American woman. If one pays close attention to the Operator, particularly the way she pronounces vowels, she is English. An English girl. The deceased English girl was found in 12f, and the Operator is only encountered in 12f. Two English girls both connected to 12f, with at least one knowing the full story of what befell Beth, would be an unbearable coincidence. However, there is a subtle indication that it is not so unbearable.

But what about the phone number? Beth’s phone number? There is a second phone number in the story…the number Lucy gives Joan, claiming it is for the building super. We get a close-up of the phone number.

The number itself isn’t significant…it’s the number of numbers that are. The number provided is to an outside line, as opposed to an extension within the apartment building…many supers live onsite. Contrast this with the phone number of Joan’s former friend Beth, whom she dials from the phone in 12f, which is comprised of only four numbers. One might see here that the building supervisor should have an internal extension, but Beth should have an external number. When Joan asks the operator to disconnect the phone line in 12f, the Operator asks her the phone number from which she is calling. She says she doesn’t know the number because it isn’t on the phone. We get a momentary close-up of the shield on the phone and see that this is the case. Joan dials an internal phone number to call Beth, and an outside number to speak Pseudo-Mr- Rodriguez. Yes, a building super may not live on site. Yet, we have been given a close-up shot of the phone number, which must be significant. So in fact, the phone numbers are the opposite of what we might expect them to be. We now know that Beth used to live in the same apartment building as Joan. And Joan did stop calling Beth…for a very a good reason.

There is one objection, which ultimately comes to nothing, about the identity of the person known as Mr. Rodriquez. It is during Joan’s brief discussion with him that she asks the means of the suicide…pills, or a razor? As said earlier, the Operator asks Joan the exact same question during Joan’s first foray into the apartment on the other side of the wall. A similar situation exists with Joan’s first conversation with the Operator in 12f. The two briefly argue over who has the right to have the phone in 12f disconnected. Joan thinks she does…the Operator responds by stating that the phone can only be disconnected…at the request of the person. Joan is totally wrong…the Operator is more accurate, but the simple fact of the matter is that this phone is sitting in an apartment…in an apartment building. The phone number is owned by the building…and the inevitable beginning for this would have to come from the building super. And although the claim that 12fer died by suicide, we only learn about the phone cord when the Operator, having raised the exact same question as Joan a little while ago, i.e. pills or a razor, it is the Operator who knows how 12fer died…not just by strangulation…but the exact means. One could suggest that the Operator simply overheard Joan’s conversation with Mr. Rodriguez. But this is not a convincing argument. Perhaps a similar explanation may exist that when Joan picks up the phone and mocks the situation, the Operator suddenly comes on the line. It can be said that to get the operator, you dial zero. Joan did not dial the operator, the latter just suddenly appeared on the other end of the line. And it simply makes no sense that any operator was monitoring the phone conversations in 12e and 12f. 

It shouldn’t have to be said, but at the same time commentators have seem to have missed the fact that it would be exceedingly difficult to strangle yourself to death, and in particular, with a telephone cord. That said, a telephone cord would make a great means of killing someone else by strangulation. This would imply that the occupant of 12f did not commit suicide…the English Girl was murdered by someone who entered her apartment, and strangled her with the telephone cord because of the constant ringing of the phone; a situation that must have existed in the past as well.

The question of the continually-ring-phone has a good explanation in two regards, and Joan fails to understand the first point…12f is essentially the same size as 12e…there probably being a basic size to all the apartments in the building…and if the person in 12f was home, she couldn’t sleep with her phone constantly ringing. Before Joan speaks with Pseudo-Lucy and learns that 12f is vacant, Joan shows a break with reality…believing someone lived in 12f and simply ignored the ringing of the phone. Someone with a better relationship with realty would conclude from the outset that, believing 12f is occupied, the occupant doing the occupying couldn’t possibly be home. The ringing is loud in 12e, but even more so in 12f. As noted earlier, Joan throws out a ridiculous possibility…there is a party going on in 12f. She then dismisses this with the comment that if a party were going on, someone would answer the phone. And that conclusion is a good sign that Joan is mentally unstable…the walls are thin…you wouldn’t hear the music?

Would you Insomniac Vampires turn down the music! Oh, and answer the damn phone!

It is important to recognize that there is something wrong with Joan. She is constantly talking to herself, and refers to herself by name.

Joan Matlin, you will fall back to sleep and wake up in the morning fresh. You will forget all the bumps and ringing that happened in the night. You will…you will!

 It is also true that Joan resorts to violent threats. First, when she decides to finally speak to the occupant of 12f who apparently can sleep through a constantly ringing phone, she knocks on the door to 12f and says…

Good evening, sir or madam, unplug your telephone or die.

Joan resorts to a death-threat before even speaking with whoever is in the apartment. You might be angry, but very few people would threaten to kill the occupant because of the phone. At least, not at first contact.

What common household object could I use to beat someone to death with? Beat SOMETHING to death with? I’ll use my bare hands.

I guess Joan is a hands-on kinda gal…when it comes to killing.

That’s it! No more! Time for violence!

Joan also knows a handy trick to enter the apartment so she can kill…who? She knows the apartment is empty. What trick?

Two years as an apprentice housebreaker are about to pay off.

We’ve all seen this done in the movies and on tv, but you can’t simply whip out your Visa or Master Card, much less your Metro Bank Cash Card, and do it. This would take time and practice to master the trick. Joan seems to have practiced a skill that only individuals intending to break into houses or apartments would bother to learn, much less master. What these scenes do is give us an insight into Joan’s dark character.

The problem with the phone and the previous occupant of 12f is easily explained, albeit with an odd twist. Strangely, Joan touched on it without elaborating on it…we know that the former, now deceased, resident of 12f was an English girl. The difference in time between New York and England is five hours. The time difference between New York and Transylvania is seven hours, so Vlad is awake and probably on an impaling spree, or looking for Mombi, his third wife. Sticking with England, a phone call made at 8:00 am London-time would cause the phone to ring at 3:00 am in 12f, with the ringing being heard by the occupant of 12e as well. If family and friends were calling 12f, the phone could be ringing at various times during the night and in the wee hours of the morning. But! If the occupant in 12f was home, she would answer the phone. This would suggest something else. If the phone calls were coming in and the occupant wasn’t answering, it would seem that the occupant of 12f had a job that did not feature a set time, or shift. Otherwise, she could have told family and friends what hours she worked, and thus when she would be home. That way, if Aunt Mabel called from London at 8:00 am her time, the call, at 3:00 am New York time, would have been answered promptly. If the Telephone Cord Lady had a job that required her to work different shifts at different times, then calls from England would come in and not be answered, after allowing the phone to ring a number of times. With a call at 9:00 am Aunt-Mabel-Time, the phone starts ringing again, now 4:00 am Joan-Matlin-Time. In such a scenario, the phone in 12f could be ringing constantly, and during hours that could drive the crazy occupant of 12e even more crazy than she already is. If the occupant of 12f had been a telephone operator who worked different shifts at different times, she couldn’t let friends and family in England know when to call, especially if they didn’t let the occupant of 12f know they would be calling, thus inadvertently creating the situation that the occupant would herself be in…constant calls coming in at awful times that would have made sleeping in 12e next to impossible.

The most perplexing part of the story is that of Joan’s two visits to 12f, particularly the second visit. There is what I will call a…hard-break, between the two apartment visits.

Here Joan has left 12f after her eerie encounter with the Operator. The phone has been constantly ringing, and heavy objects are being thrown against the wall. Yet, she has confirmed that no one is there. This would be more than enough to leave apartment 12e altogether. In fact, Joan’s bizarre attempt to reach Beth would seem to indicate that she was, in fact, ready to leave apartment 12e. But this doesn’t happen. Something quite different happens…

Despite her conversation with the Operator, despite her stated belief that someone had been trying to break through the wall to get at her, and despite her realization that the best thing to do was to get away from the apartment, she simply goes back to Lucy’s apartment, gets dressed for bed, and reads The Call of the Wild. Don’t get me wrong…it’s a great book, but how Joan could so completely reset in a few minutes beggars the imagination. It’s as if she simply walked back into 12e and unexperienced everything that so upset her minutes ago, including an Operator who could not simply be a belligerent and snoopy phone operator.

What the hell am I doing? Do I really want to know what’s going on in there? Is all of this really worth my sanity?

That’s an interesting question, seeing how Joan Matlin is bonkers. But her other question is far more crazy…if Joan had already been in 12f, then she asks a bewildering question…she already knows what’s going on…an unknown entity throwing things against the wall, and, of course, finding no one there, an Operator who is clearly not an operator. If Joan has already been in 12f that evening, then she has no reason whatsoever to think anything else would be happening than what she already knows has been happening. It’s as if she forgot everything that’s happened and is actually resetting…starting the events all over again in her own head…and not even Call of the Wild could cause that! Perhaps the same would be true of Wild Calls From 12f, a book that Darla and Scurvy are planning to write. She will then make an even more bewildering statement, but one that also points to the real, underlying subject of the episode.

What common household object could I use to beat someone to death with…beat SOMETHING to death with?

And it is at this point that the episode starts to come together and make sense. Joan wants to beat the person in 12f to death. But then she corrects herself…not someone, but rather…something. And if the problem were actually…something…and not…someone, then violence would be pointless…another indicator of Joan’s disturbed mind. Then like her previous visit, though now completely forgotten, to 12f, she is prepared to open the door with her trusty check card, although she strangely begs that the door is locked…door, please, don’t open. Bizarre, indeed. She’s so intent on killing whatever is in 12f that she gets ready to break in, she wants the door to be locked. Actually, just moments earlier, Joan was given a very clear proof that the apartment was occupied.

Joan bangs on the door three times, and something inside the apartment also bangs on the door three times. Clearly someone, or something, is in 12f. Joan is about to break into the apartment using her handy-dandy Cash Card, but, as had happened previously, the door is unlocked. Entering the apartment…

…intrepid Joan checks the bathroom just as she had before, apparently forgetting what she had already learned. But moments earlier, she found this…

Just as it was when I left it. Good. Good. Ahh! This wasn’t here before.

It wasn’t. But I don’t think that Joan is talking about what seemed like the previous visit. Something damaged the door for a very good reason.

The closet door slams shut. Then…

…the front door slams shut. Then the phone starts ringing. Joan pulls it from the wall, but it keeps ringing. The damage to the door has made it impossible for Joan to open the door enough to escape the apartment…

She manages to get it open slightly…

However, as the phone moves along the floor toward Joan, the door is pushed shut. Joan tries desperately to open the door, but then the doorknob…

…comes off, and Joan is trapped in the apartment.

Unable to escape, the telephone cord, which we know was the means of the deaths of Beth and the English Girl who lived in 12f, is wrapped around Joan’s neck. Now it is Joan who commits suicide by strangling herself with the telephone cord? No, she is murdered…

…and lies dead on the floor, with the telephone cord wrapped tightly around her throat.

This exercise in the art of free interpretation is complex. But, taking into account the various elements, a strange interpretation is possible. The story is a ghost story. The English Operator is Beth, who lived in 12f, and was Joan’s best friend. Beth worked different shifts as an operator. As a result, the phone in her apartment rang constantly as people in England called, not knowing whether she was home. No one answered, call again a little later. The constant ringing of the phone, and the throwing of things against the wall, were intended by Beth, now a ghost haunting apartment 12f, to get her former best friend to enter the apartment. The two visits to 12f by Joan are actually two different, alternate endings. Who killed Beth? Joan. We’re given this momentary close-up of…

…Joan holding the cord. Beth wanted to kill Joan in an act of vengeance, so it was important that she killed Joan in the same way Joan killed her…the telephone cord. And I would offer a reminder…The Tektonikus Rule About Close-ups…they are almost always important, providing a clue vital to the overall story.

There is an objection that could be raised at this point…

Just as it was when I left it. Good. Good. Ahh! This wasn’t here before.

Before? Here we seem to have a scene that joins the first visit to the apartment, which did confirm that…

…Vlad Tepesh, Voivode of Wallachia, and a coven of insomniac vampires were not living there. I’m not really sure how Darla got him to autograph this picture of himself. But I will say that the scene with the damaged door does not join the two “endings” together. What she is referring to when she says… Just as it was when I left it. Good. Good. Ahh! This wasn’t here before…is the time in the past when she quietly broke into apartment 12f, and killed Beth, not the first visit to the apartment in the episode.

One might ask a question at this point…how did Beth know that Joan was in 12e? That’s simple…she heard her voice. But she also made sure..

It’s not the best picture, but it’s the best one I could screen-shoot, if that’s a word. This episode is only 20 minutes and 22 seconds long. If one were to write it in such a way that there is a hidden story, or stories, lurking behind what you appear to be seeing, there is no time to waste. This would suggest that this scene is more than it seems. It occurs at the very beginning of the episode. What is the point of showing Joan getting out of bed to answer what she thinks is Lucy’s ringing phone and steps on the alarm clock? I can see only one possibility…Beth, having heard Joan’s voice, has entered 12e to make sure it’s her, and knocked the alarm clock off the night-stand. Otherwise, the scene would have no meaning, and be a waste of time in an episode that has only 20 minutes to complete the real story. Why not kill Joan in 12e? No, Joan must be killed in 12f, where Joan killed Beth, and with the weaponized telephone cord, the very one used in the murder.

So previously, Joan lived in 12e and Beth lived in 12f. Beth, having immigrated from England, was a telephone operator who worked different shifts at different times. This resulted in a continually ringing phone as people from England called Beth and let the phone ring. Unstable Joan eventually lost it, and using her Cash Card, broke into the apartment and strangled Beth with the telephone cord. She then moved to Los Angeles, and her friend Lucy moved into the apartment. Joan was unable to get work as an actress in Tinsel Town, and with Lucy leaving for an unspecified amount of time, Joan sublet 12e as she was trying to get a job making a commercial. This being a ghost story is all but said by Joan in the first ending…

What common household object could I use to beat someone to death with…beat SOMETHING to death with?

Joan knows that there is no someone causing the all the trouble in 12f…a something is doing it. This indicates that what otherwise would be a ridiculous and story-blowing hard break as Joan, presumably, following the first visit to the apartment, simply returned to 12e, apparently forgot everything that had happened a short while ago, actually marks the end of the first ending. That said, I would suggest that Joan is suffering from a mental condition known as Psychotic Amnesia, also called Psychogenic Amnesia, where a catastrophic event or traumatic event is, well, forgotten. A way cooler and sooper-dooper description is…sudden retrograde episodic memory loss. Wow! However, memory is just beneath the surface, and briefly showed itself when Joan instinctively corrected herself, substituting…something, for…someone.

So what do these 2 endings mean?

Come on, people! It’s not hard!

Darla’s right. In the first ending, Joan is able to flee the apartment. But in the second ending, she’s not able to exit the apartment, and Beth, using the telephone cord, killed Joan. In other words, in ending one…Joan wins. In ending two…Beth wins.

Now I have read that the end of the episode is silly and stupid. That is the conclusion of silly and stupid people, who have little imagination, and should probably avoid creative interpretation. At the very end of the episode, Joan lies dead in 12f, a fitting place for vengeance, seeing how that is where Joan killed Beth…in other words, in her apartment. But then…

The phone in Lucy’s apartment is constantly ringing. This is the exact opposite, pretty much at any rate, of Lucy’s phone actually ringing only once earlier in the episode…when Joan thought she was speaking with Lucy, but was really speaking with Beth-The-Operator. But at the same time, as Lucy’s phone rings and rings, so too does the phone in 12f. That is weird. If Beth was making the phone in 12f constantly in order to get Joan into the apartment to kill her, is Beth intending the same fate for Lucy? Now for the twist…

Don’t be silly and stupid! You don’t know nothing! It’s…

Ok, Sweetie, I’ll take it from here. The phone is ringing constantly in Lucy’s apartment as Lucy attempts to get in touch with Joan, who can’t come to the phone since she is very…dead. But Lucy doesn’t know this; she only knows that she can’t get in touch with Joan. Worried, she keeps calling. But the phone is ringing in 12f too, as it has been since the beginning of the episode. Beth? No…Beth has moved on. It is now Joan’s ghost that is stuck in 12f. So she takes a play from Beth’s play-book, and makes the phone constantly ring hoping to get Lucy to enter the apartment. Killing Lucy would, or so Joan thinks, allow her to escape that strange, odd, bizarre netherworld…a virtual Hades and Trapper of Souls…apartment 12f.

I must say that many might view this rambling interpretation to be, for lack of a better term, wrong. Have I read too much into this story? Probably; it is simply an exercise in the fine art of interpretation. Whether it be a movie or song or, in this case, a TV episode, one must interpret what one sees and hears. I said at the beginning that Tales From The Darkside is a hoaky TV series. It’s nothing at all like The Exorcist or Halloween, both of which are covered in essays found on this website. That said, Answer Me is an exception to the Hoaky-TV-Series statement I just made. Free interpretation is not concerned with what the writer intended…it is what the viewer sees…contextualizes. That is far more interesting then what lies within the script. Answer Me is an example of a story that comes alive; a story that slowly lures you into the bizarre spirit-world of apartment 12f. If you live in 12g, I would suggest that you just let the phone ring.