By Geno McGahee
The 1980s knew how to drive a point home. Richard (Bruce Davison) has a lousy life, but they really wanted to show you how bad it was. In the TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE Episode “The Word Processor of the Gods,” Richard is given a gift from his nephew that died in a car wreck. It’s a homemade word processor.
Delivering the processor is Tom (William Cain), an old guy that knew Jonathan (Jon Matthews), the nephew that made the processor. He carries the boxes into the house and we get a good look at the unkempt home. There are open bags of junk food everywhere and Richard’s overweight wife, wearing a moo-moo, Lina (Karen Shallo), sits there and watches on with a sneer on her face. She is quick to point out that her brother-in-law that died in the same car wreck that took out Jonathan and Belinda (Miranda Beeson), Jonathan’s mother, was a drunk. She then complained about the amount of money that they had to pay for a triple funeral while drinking a 3 liter bottle of soda. I never read the Stephen King short story that this is based on, so I don’t know if he portrayed the woman in such a negative light. He probably did.
On top of a fat miserable wife, Richard has a shithead son, Seth (Patrick Piccininni). His son is also fat and lazy and refuses to get off the sofa. On top of all that, Richard deals with abuse from his wife, as she constantly notes that he makes no money from his writing, but she makes money from her Bingo. I wonder if she was this fat and miserable when he nailed to her to make Seth. Maybe he liked fat chicks. Some guys do.
The processor is set up and it has powers. It’d have to have something going on for it to be a TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE episode. It would suck if it was just 25 minutes of Richard typing. It’d be even worse if it was 25 hours of him twerking. That would probably be on a show called “TALES FROM THE BACKSIDE.” I wonder if there’s a porn by that name. I’ll have to do research.
Whatever Richard types comes true. He starts by making random things disappear and appear and then gets some gold out of it. He then decides to end his son that he calls “a creep.” Now, isn’t “creep” usually used when describing a sexual deviant? “Stay away from Uncle Jimmy. He’s a creep.” So, was Seth into weird sexual shit? This predated the internet. So I’m guessing that Richard found weird porn in Seth’s room.
With his son now deleted, he gets verbally berated by his wife, saying that Richard wanted to marry Belinda, his deceased brother’s wife, but never had the balls to ask her out. Stephen King may be trying to tell us something here. Hey Stephen King’s brother, keep an eye on your wife. Stephen may be trying to show her “IT” if you know what I mean.
(SPOILERS)
Richard decides to get rid of his wife and bring back his brother’s wife and Jonathan and claim them as his own. As for his brother, he can drop dead…or stay dead, I should say. The processor catches on fire and the two dead people are back and are now his new family. THE END.
THE WORD PROCESSOR OF THE GODS is a rather fucked episode. Richard has every right to hate his life. He should have dumped his wife and kicked his son’s fat ass out of his house. I’ll give him that. I just can’t see Richard as a very nice guy if he has elected to remove them from existence all together. He then gets to win at the end and gets his brother’s wife. Shame on you Stephen King for thinking these thoughts. Sicko.
Another thing that I wanted to mention was Tom, the old guy. He called Richard to ask about the processor, but he implied that he knew how it worked. Did he use it prior to bringing it over? If so, what did he wish for? He could have wished to be young again or could wish to have Stephen King’s brother’s wife, if he wanted to. Whatever the case, he knew it made shit happen. If I was Tom, I would have held onto that shit and used it all the time. Fuck work. I would just stay home and delete shit. I would start with some of my neighbors and their fucking dogs that shit on my front lawn.
I do recommend this episode. It was entertaining and interesting enough, but weird when you think about how it all turns out. Shame on you King. Sicko.
