Tales From the Darkside
Season 4, Episode 19
"Barter"
O-okay. You're going to have to grit your teeth with me through this one. We finally hit up another Season 4 episode, and it has to, I mean HAS to be the worst I've witnessed yet, by far. It plays out like a terrible Goosebumps reject, with everything about it oozing terribleness. It starts with a bad stereotype of a 1950's family (complete with the style of refrigerator and pastel walls) and the mother complaining about their little boy playing the drums upstairs. They literally act like some kind of satire, it's so over the top. The husband, after letting off a few sexist remarks (in true '50s style) and the little boy leave to go do whatever the plot wants them to. While the woman wallows in how terrible the episode she's in is, an older guy in a hat screaming about ammonia shows up. She, like an overly trusting child, invites this stranger in where he blabbers more. He offers, in a fucking rhyming scheme no less, to make a barter. He gives her whatever he has stored in his briefcase in exchange for ammonia to drink. She agrees, and wants something to get her son to stop going apeshit on the drums. He gives her a little device that freezes the boy in place like the red light green light game, but of course, it breaks. The father shows up, and together they buy all the ammonia they can find to get the man to come back. He does, and decides another barter for the most unsettling, pedophelic thing he could possibly want. Their. Fucking. Son. They dont want to give him up, so while the guy sleeps they switch his ammonia with bleach.
He drinks it, goes banana sandwich, and disappears. They get their new remote the plot conveniently left behind, and make their kid move again...but he shifts into maximum overdrive, unable to stop drumming his goddamn heart out like some little Lars Ulrich. The old man returns, ready to take their son. So, y'know, they agree. The old man leaves with both the ammonia and their son, and ladies and gentlemen, THATS the worst thing I've seen by far.
Good- Ummm....it's entertaining?
Bad-Do I really need to go into more detail?
Grade: Imagine a world in which everything you know is wrong, where hope doesn't exist, and The Room is the Number 1 movie of all time. That universe is where this episode came from.
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