Set in San Francisco in 1909, "A Bullet for Baldwin" brings us back to a time when men wore a hat and two separate coats to go to the office. There was also a time when I spent several semesters studying the work of the great Sir Alfred Hitchcock.

It’s with an appropriate amount of embarrassment that I admit to watching only a few scattered episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents despite having seen all but a few of his films. When I started thinking about Flashback Friday, I was really excited to see Alfred Hitchcock Presents on the iTunes TV store. An excuse to watch some great television? Sign me up!

[THE SERIES IN A NUTSHELL]

Hitchcock started this series more than 30 years after he started directing film, and while he only directed 17 of the 270 episodes, his stamp is all over the series. His sense of wonder and delight with the macabre, as well as his keen eye for a well-told story are at the heart of each episode.

Episode Quote
Walter King: We’ll just assume it never happened, right?

The premise in a Hitchcock story (for the nonce, I will call all the episodes Hitchcock’s because of his ever-present influence behind the scenes) is always deceptively simple. Here we have timid Mr. Stepp, file clerk at the office of Baldwin and King.

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Poor Mr. Stepp has just been fired for a filing mishap, and has no idea what to do with himself. So he does what any other (crazy man) would do: He pulls a revolver out of his desk drawer and instead of shooting himself, shoots Mr. Baldwin once, puts his two coats on, dons his hat, grabs him umbrella, and scoots out the door.

True to pattern, it is now when events become quite odd. Mr. Stepp spends the whole night out on a ferry while his housekeeper frets at home. Fretty Steppy heads to bed and sleeps through Sunday. His housekeeper’s shrill voice wakes him by calling him to the phone. Mr. Baldwin’s secretary is on the phone, and (dead?) Baldwin wants to know why he’s not in the office. Zoinks! What the heck is going on? As the audience, we know as much as Fretty Steppy, which isn’t very much. So Fretty heads back to the office.

I can’t give the rest away, but stay on your toes for this one. (Unless you do want to be spoiled, in which case, skip ahead to the next paragraph.) The story culminates in a circular fashion. (And I do mean fashion�check out that pocket watch chain on Fretty Steppy.) I’m a sucker for a wildly unsatisfying ending, which �A Bullet For Baldwin� happily provides. The 25 minute episode ends with more questions than answers...could the story go around again? What will happen to Mr. Stepp the next morning? Why won’t his housekeeper learn to modulate the tone of her voice? The next episode won’t provide the answers to these questions, but it will likely offer you even more questions.

Spoilers ahoy! Skip ahead to [SCATTERSHOT] if you want to watch the episode on your own. Turns out that Fretty Steppy did actually kill Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. King witnessed it. King then hired an actor (whom he met at a company party?!) to portray Baldwin for Stepp and some clients. King also made promises to Stepp, including a $5 raise and an assistant of his own, but only to manipulate Stepp in order to re-fire him. Since Stepp could not handle this deja that kept on vu-ing, he took the gun out of his desk again and shoots King. He ritualistically does his Two Coat Dance and scoots out the door.

Is the resolution the following Monday going to be that the actor who plays Baldwin is going to hire an actor to play King? Will Stepp eventually kill himself, but hire an actor to play him at work? And why do you leave a triggery happy guy with a gun in his desk?

Related Quote
Alfred Hitchcock: I’m not sure what "A Bullet for Baldwin" proved, but you may have your choice of morals I mentioned. One of them is bound to fit.

[SCATTERSHOT]

• Hitch makes his usual cameo in this episode, but in a subtle way. When Baldwin and King are talking in the office, his silhouette can be seen in a frame on the wall between the two men [see the screenshot below]. While he’s facing the opposite direction from his most famous silhouette image, Hitch manages to appear on screen during an important reveal.
• The gun quote at the beginning seemed the most obvious choice for a quote to start off this FF. I went in another direction. Made you look!

Hitch appears in almost every episode, in one way or another.
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[OTHER EPISODES TO DOWNLOAD]

• "Revenge" (first episode, directed by Hitch)
• "The Case of Mr. Pelham" (Emmy nominated)
• "Momentum" (with Joanne Woodward)

Have a suggestion for a show/episode that you’d like to appear on an upcoming Flashback Friday? Please leave your ideas in the forum and I’ll try and get to them!

Vern Seward is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He’s been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.