Profound or selfish?
One must decide through their own instincts whether or not grandmother Lili Darvas is being vindictive or just lonely when she dies on her beloved grandson Billy Mumy's fifth birthday. For his birthday, she presents him with a toy telephone and after she quietly passes away after declaring that he is her son, Mumy begins to claim that he's talking to her on the phone every time he is left alone with it. Parents Philip Abbott (her only surviving child) and Patricia Smith (the daughter-in-law she is kind to but claim stole her son from her on her deathbed) are concerned when Mumy is nearly killed running out into the street. An accident with the phone later leaves Billy fighting for his life and Abbott must put aside his feelings of reality and confront the toy phone that seems to have a life of his own.
This is a complex episode in many ways, touching because it shows the love between a little boy and his grandmother which is genuine. When Mumy declares that he wants to join his grandmother, you can almost believe that he is begging to die to be with her. Parents obviously see things in a different sense than children do, and it takes the surviving son to reach back to his memories of his mother having lost two children to understand why she would want her grandson to join her on the other side. Darvas is not presented as nasty in anyway, completely loving but obviously feeling that she lost a part of herself when her son chose a wife.
This has the potential of Gothic melodrama although presented in the current time of when this was made. It is one of a handful of videotaped episodes from season two, appropriate with its themes, and one that any viewer who has a profound memory of a lost grandparent from their childhood can relate to.
One must decide through their own instincts whether or not grandmother Lili Darvas is being vindictive or just lonely when she dies on her beloved grandson Billy Mumy's fifth birthday. For his birthday, she presents him with a toy telephone and after she quietly passes away after declaring that he is her son, Mumy begins to claim that he's talking to her on the phone every time he is left alone with it. Parents Philip Abbott (her only surviving child) and Patricia Smith (the daughter-in-law she is kind to but claim stole her son from her on her deathbed) are concerned when Mumy is nearly killed running out into the street. An accident with the phone later leaves Billy fighting for his life and Abbott must put aside his feelings of reality and confront the toy phone that seems to have a life of his own.
This is a complex episode in many ways, touching because it shows the love between a little boy and his grandmother which is genuine. When Mumy declares that he wants to join his grandmother, you can almost believe that he is begging to die to be with her. Parents obviously see things in a different sense than children do, and it takes the surviving son to reach back to his memories of his mother having lost two children to understand why she would want her grandson to join her on the other side. Darvas is not presented as nasty in anyway, completely loving but obviously feeling that she lost a part of herself when her son chose a wife.
This has the potential of Gothic melodrama although presented in the current time of when this was made. It is one of a handful of videotaped episodes from season two, appropriate with its themes, and one that any viewer who has a profound memory of a lost grandparent from their childhood can relate to.