The Unshakeables: The Last Temptation of Darrin Stevens

[TMC]

http://comforttv.blogspot.com/2022/0...tation-of.html

After spraining his ankle, Darrin recuperates in the master bedroom, and runs poor Sam ragged asking for food, magazines and other creature comforts.



After 27 trips up and down the stairs, Samantha suggests putting a spell on their house so it will respond to his requests. At first he protests (“I don’t want any part of that nonsense”) but after acknowledging the strain he had placed on his wife, he reluctantly agrees.

Endora, never far away, recognizes what is about to happen – “You’ve given him a taste of power,” she tells her daughter. “It’s Adam and the apple all over again.”

Sure enough, Darrin quickly begins to not only use but to abuse his new abilities. Instead of a holding a book he has it float in front of him. He could light his own cigarette but has the house do it instead.



And that triggers an epiphany – one that upends his entire worldview – why shouldn’t he take advantage of having anything he wants just a nose-twitch away? He tells Sam to use her powers however and wherever she wishes. He quits his job. He calls a realtor to sell their home so they can travel and live the good life from now on. “Well, why not, Sam?” he asks.

Then a package arrives – something Darrin had ordered before his world changed. A dozen roses and a simple wristwatch, anniversary gifts for his wife. He seems embarrassed now by the banality of the gesture, but Sam is moved to tears, and insists she loves them more than any fur coat or palatial estate she could conjure up on request.



That begins to awaken Darrin’s better angels, as he perceives the pitfalls of the life he was about to embrace. And then, in the episode’s most remarkable moment, he acknowledges his own weakness. Having succumbed to temptation once, he honestly cannot assure Sam that he’ll be able to resist a second time. So he asks her to twitch their lives back to before she hexed the house, so he would have no memory of what that power feels like. In the final scene Darrin is back in bed, ringing a bell to let Sam know he needs something. And this time she happily climbs the stairs to respond.

[Willbo]

I like that episode. The first two seasons were excellent.

[Arfies]

Excellent write-up (there's more in the link!)