When a “meteor” passes over Maple Street one afternoon, Steve (Claude Akins, also in The Little People from Season 3) and Charlie (Jack Weston of Dirty Dancing fame) are prompt to dismiss it, almost as easily as Ms. Barnes discusses alternates planes of existence in Mirror Image.
Unfortunately, we aren’t always willing to let things go, and when they find out that the power is out, the phones are out, and even portable radios and cars don’t work, the panic begins to set in. It just gets worse when the neighbor boy explains how this is how the aliens start their takeover, by shutting down everything, and only the alien-planted families can do anything, so then everyone tries to figure out who has that ability.
When the neighbor’s car starts and stops by itself, they think they’ve found the plant, and when another neighbor, who went to the next block to check on their power, returns, he gets shot dead by Charlie before they figure out that he is not indeed the monster. Naturally, this makes everyone else think that it is Charlie who is hiding something, and he in turn points his finger to Tommy, the kid with the comic book theory.
At the end, we see the true aliens, who are controlling the lights from afar, and they manipulate the power, to start turning things on and off, and that sets the street off, with everyone against everyone, and that is their true plan – to set us agaist one another, so that they don’t have to fire a shot. A truly classic episode, well worth watching.
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