Horace Ford is a toy designer.\u00a0 He\u2019s thirty-eight years old but acts like he\u2019s ten.\u00a0 At the office he\u2019s preoccupied with a cap gun that he shoots at his office mates.\u00a0 When his friend Leonard tries to talk to him about a problem with one of his designs, he gets off on a tangent about the games he used to play as a kid.\u00a0 His boss Mr. Judson tells him that a toy he designed is much too expensive but when Judson tells Horace to remove the lights on the eyes, he pitches a tantrum like a kid.<\/p>\n
When Horace goes home, he continues his childish conversations with his wife Laura and mother.\u00a0 They try to get him to grow up and see reality but he goes into a childish rage.\u00a0 While talking about his childhood on Randolph Street he gets the idea to go back there and see it today.\u00a0 But when he goes there, he seems to have gone back in time to the 1930s where a hot dog is three cents and clothes are very old fashioned.\u00a0 And when some kids rush past him and knock his watch out of his hands, he sees that they are the kids he played with when he was ten.\u00a0 They haven\u2019t grown old at all.<\/p>\n
Late he goes home and tells Laura about it and she doubts his sanity and asks him to see a psychiatrist.\u00a0 Later, one of the boys shows up at her door and returns Horace\u2019s watch to her.\u00a0 Horace goes back to Randolph street several times more and each time he relives the exact same sequence of events including the loss of his watch.\u00a0 And each night he comes home more agitated and confused.<\/p>\n
Finally, his boss tells him to take a leave of absence and get psychiatric help.\u00a0 When Horace angrily refuses Judson fires him.\u00a0 Horace goes home and tells his family that he\u2019s been fired and when his wife asks him to get help, he storms out.\u00a0 After he leaves all of the people who were arriving for Horace\u2019s surprise birthday party show up at the apartment and Laura becomes desperate.\u00a0 She goes out looking for him.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Horace goes back to Randolph Street and relives the same scene but this time when he follows the boys, he becomes his ten-year-old self and relives the terrible beating that his \u201cfriends\u201d gave him for not inviting them to his birthday party.<\/p>\n
When Laura shows up on Randolph Street, she finds the ten-year-old Horace unconscious on the street and turns away and sobs.\u00a0 But when she turns around again Horace is his normal age again and she helps him come to and get up.\u00a0 Now Horace tells her that he finally realizes that his childhood wasn\u2019t a shiny dream world but actually contained much unhappiness.\u00a0 Laura tells him that everyone tries to remember the good and forget the bad.\u00a0 The show ends with us assuming that Horace will be sadder but wiser and won\u2019t have as much trouble fitting into the adult world.<\/p>\n
This was a slightly disturbing episode.\u00a0 The character Horace Ford was more than a little unhinged.\u00a0 Today I think he would be described as on the spectrum.\u00a0 But the saving grace of the episode (for me) was the fact that he mentioned one of my favorite childhood games ringalevio.\u00a0 Basically, it was a tag game with two teams, each with a jail.\u00a0 It was a game that we probably spent more waking hours playing than anything else when we were ten.\u00a0 For reminding me of ringalevio I\u2019ll have to forgive the off-putting behavior of Horace and give the show a B.<\/p>\n
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