Episode Analysis - S2 E08 A Bridge Across Five Days

A Bridge Across Five Days (17 Nov. 1961)

Writer: Howard Rodman

Director: Richard Donner

Director of Photography: Irving Lippman

(Details from http://www.imdb.com - click on the episode title above for more cast and crew)

A Bridge Across Five days is another Route 66 episode that uses the flashback method of showing a scene near the end and then moving back to what provoked those events, but I think it works well in this episode. It’s also another episode that deals with the failures of parents – but in this case from the mother’s point of view, not the child’s. Lillian Aldrich has just been released from Spring Grove State Hospital, and this episode follows her first few days back in the community after 18 years as a mental patient. There’s some beautiful cinematography and a strong storyline. Nina Foch is an excellent actor for this part, and we’re also treated to a lot of highly attractive Tod and Buz too as they go about their jobs in the Baltimore marine repair shop. Buz learns that all women are crazy in varying degrees, and Tod learns that he’s quietly uncomfortable around mental illness.

Screencaps are from the Shout Factory dvd set.

We open with Buz narrating, and I think he does these narrations better than Tod (Sorry, Martin Milner. I just think that George Maharis is a better actor, and that’s not just sex clouding my judgement, because my husband thinks so too.)

The Corvette draws up to a railway crossing, and we see there are three people in the car – Tod, Buz, and a blonde woman. But we can tell from the mournful music that this isn’t the usual ménage a trois.

The blonde woman is Lillian Aldrich (beautifully played by Nina Foch.)

‘Sometimes everything gets sharper and takes on a meaning out of the day,’ Buz’s voice comes over the images. ‘Like, Paradise Street is ironic when you’re on your way back to Spring Grove State Hospital. Three going out, and only two coming back.’

I love this image of the railway line – the possibility for escape stretching out in a different direction to the car, the dog running down the line and barking.

‘I mean, maybe if you don’t live around here it might not mean anything to you, but Spring Grove is for people who are mentally ill,’ Buz tells us.

(Apparently the hospital ‘was founded in 1797 and is the second oldest continuously operating psychiatric hospital in the United States.’http://www.springgrove.com/ )

Buz is looking concerned and beautiful.

Lillian is looking resigned and rather if is she is focussing on something only in her own mind.

Tod is looking pensive and concerned too, and I have just taken seven screencaps within the first minute of the show. Damn.

You get the feeling that Buz is the most concerned, and Tod is warily sympathetic and possibly wants to drive away and find loose women and alcohol and shake off his discomfort that way.

Pretty screencap is pretty, and shows Buz’s reluctance to let go – his hand is still in the air from where he handed her the suitcase.

And so Lillian walks back to the hospital alone, her single suitcase in her hand, a tragically lonely and defeated figure in comparison to Tod and Buz and their physical and mental freedom.

‘Let’s go,’ Tod says, and Buz gets in – but as Tod starts to draw away Buz reaches over and pulls the keys from the ignition.

‘What’s it going to cost us?’ Buz asks (and he says ‘cost’ in a wonderfully New York way – ‘cowst.’) ‘We’ve got an extra half hour anyway.’

‘I don’t mind the half hour – but for what?’ Tod asks. He seems quite uneasy being around this place.

‘I don’t know,’ Buz says (and can I just mention that for some reason his voice is deeply attractive today.) ‘She’s going to be in there the rest of her life – it’s a half hour. If she’s coming out again, I’d like to be here to see it personally.’

So Tod puts on the handbrake and gets out a cigarette while Buz goes to sit under a tree and toss stones in his hand.

Meanwhile, Lillian is outside, looking out at the sunshine and outdoors that Tod and Buz can enjoy with such ease, and perhaps wondering when she will be able to do the same.

The narrative is continued by Tod’s voiceover now.

‘We never met Lillian Aldrich before five days ago. We’re not related to her. We’re not in love with her. We’re more nearly acquaintances than friends. The only thing we really have in common is membership in the same human race. That, and because we know her agony personally.’


I feel like Tod’s position in the car and Buz’s out under the tree show fundamental differences in attitude. It is Buz who wants to stay and find out what happened. It was, we find out later, Buz’s actions that caused this breakdown. Is Buz motivated to stay by guilt, or does he feel a deeper empathy with the woman? Tod seems far more uncomfortable at the situation than he does.

The flashback is indicated by a shimmering fade to Lillian’s face five days ago, in the same institution that she has returned to.

‘Am I well?’ she asks. ‘Really? I think so… But am I?’

‘Yes,’ the nurse tells her. ‘You’ve been well for some time.’

So Lillian lays an awkward looking rag doll down on her bed, the only personal touch in an overwhelmingly impersonal room, and walks out into the corridor. The doll, perhaps, represents the daughter that we will hear about later.

More lovely filming as she puts her hand up to the mesh about the reception area. This seems more a symbolic reminder of her mental captivity. The place is not replete with bars and doesn’t seem prisonlike, just institutional, and cages like this are relatively common around reception areas.

In then seeing this the other way round we suddenly get a greater sense of what Lillian is facing. She is not barred from the outside world – the outside world is barred from her. She had to overcome those barricades herself. We learn, in fact, that she has left the place before for short periods. The nurse is warm and friendly and gives her gentle advice on what to do when she leaves. Here she is cared for and surrounded by familiar faces. Outside will be nothing but strangers and her own mind.

The other women gather round to wish her goodbye, and one of them gives her perfume. She is leaving her family, strange family as it is.

Once the others leave she takes on a look of abject terror.

‘Are you nervous for me?’ she asks the nurse.

‘Yes, a little,’ she admits.

‘I’ll be all right,’ Lillian says, hugging the nurse as a child might hug a mother, laying her head on her breast despite having to bend to do so. The nurse is probably younger than she is.

‘I think I have to do it alone now,’ she says, and hesitantly she walks out into the sunshine. The door slams behind her (this slam must be deliberate – it makes her jump. It foreshadows her daughter slamming the door later in the episode) and she is all alone.

I love this ponderous focus on her feet and legs as she walks away. Those tiny stiletto heels and pointed toes make her look as if she is walking on a knife edge.

In the windows the other women are watching her leave with a variety of expressions, as nervous as she is. There’s a subtle sense of immorality going on with them now and later on in the episode. They look like women in a brothel. I can’t believe this is meant this way – more that they do not have the disciplines that Lillian has developed and will need to make her way in the world.

She picks up a handful of autumn leaves and breathes in the scent. Another show might have her tossing them in the air, but that would not fit with her psychology. She presses them to herself like something precious, then walks on into the new world, picking up her pace, walking on the grass rather than on the unyielding path.

The outside world is a clattering, unregulated place, and she stands as if she is hiding behind a brick pillar as she waits for her tram. The world will only get louder.

Once on the tram she is buoyant and alive, exhilarated at experiencing this motion and the wind on her face.

She seems to be experiencing the fresh joy of a child, internally sounding the rhythm of car. The camera focuses tightly on the trams wheels and the noise is emphasised as it rolls along, and you really feel like you’re in her new world with her.

The camera repeatedly focuses on the wheels in an echo of the focus on Lillian’s feet as she left the hospital. Now she is really moving, and the world is a clamour of sound and a blur of motion, and her mind is capturing every little bit.

She has gone straight to her job at the ‘Balto. Marine Repair Shop, Inc.’ where the world is even louder. What a wonderful shot as she stands amazed and terrified at the noise, the ship horn blowing, the noise of men working and metal clanging.

This seems the right place to put in a link to the Ohio 66 site and their entry for A Bridge Across Five Days, which has modern pictures of both the Spring Grove State Hospital, which is now greatly reduced in size, and of the Marine Repair Shop, which seems to have completely disappeared. This is a wonderful site to browse, full of information and articles and photographs.

She continues to stand transfixed as the men knock off work – for lunch perhaps? – and surge past her like the tide coming in around a rock.

And this is where our gorgeous heroes find her. Buz walks on, and it is Tod that makes the connection and asks her if she needs help. He directs her to the personnel office.

‘You wanna see a frightened lady? There she goes?’ Buz says. ‘Frightened of men, frightened of life, frightened of – ’

I’d like to have Buz in my corner to recognise when I’m frightened.

But Tod cuts across him. ‘Let’s go. I’m hungry.’

‘You’re hungry?’ Buz exclaims. ‘Who hung us up in the first place? I was on my way to put something in my stomach and I turn around and you’re giving directions.’

‘You wanna eat or do you wanna discuss?’ Tod asks, knowing that the route to putting off a discussion is through Buz’s stomach.

‘We’ll eat first, discuss later,’ Buz says. This little scene also proves that Tod has rather more masculine hand gestures than does Buz.

Look at that. Isn’t that just gorgeous?

The camera pulls back from the previous image, past the mechanical, masculine clatter and clamour of the shipyard, through the window and into to feminine chattering clamour of the office. One of the girls is showing Lillian how to do something and reassuring her how easy it is when you’re used to it.

And then the office boss (he is male of course – Paul Guin played by James Patterson), comes in and she, and the viewer, wonder if he is going to be critical – but he is very friendly too. He asks her to check the social security numbers on the employee forms, and when she goes to take them from him the whole lot falls to the floor…

The watching eyes of the other women. Everything is set up to suggest a threat where there isn’t really one. Guin reassures Lillianthat on his first day in his first job he pulled over a whole filing cabinet.

More staring.

Lillian can feel their eyes on her. ‘Please don’t keep looking at me,’ she says in a low voice. ‘I know. Because I’m new. I know everybody’s curious about me. But I’m nervous today. Please.’

And she gets what she wanted – friendly smiles and people turning back to their work.

Outside, Tod is doing manly welding work when someone asks him where Buz is. People must know they travel as a pair.

Buz is also doing manly stuff than involves throwing a rope with a weight on it over something. Whatever it is, he seems very pleased with it.

He taps Tod on the helmet with his own helmet (shh, I’m saying nothing) and signs to him that he’s going somewhere – because like I said, they travel as a pair, and Tod needs to know where his buddy is at all times.

Buz continues to show us his carefree dexterity and gaiety by tossing his helmet in his hand as he walks up to the office.

But he shows himself to be masculine and unmannerly by rapping on the desk for attention when he gets up instead of waiting.

‘Hello again,’ he says to Lillian, and when she doesn’t look up he tells her, ‘You can look at me. I don’t bite people for looking at me.’

This affords them both a rather awkward but welcome laugh.

She tells him that his social security number is wrong and he seems rather nonplussed

‘Oh, well it should be 100 - 20 0853,’ he says. He says ‘oh’ instead of ‘zero.’ This pleases me.

She tells him that on his application for employment it’s wrong, but when he asks to see the paper she won’t let him have it. He ends up snatching it from her, which is the last thing she needs.

‘Does he have the right to take that out of my hands like that?’ she asks the others indignantly. ‘Does he have the right to take it like that and pull it out of my hand?’

This leads to other women to a show of solidarity, insisting that he give it back. In an episode that has already shown a definite divide between the world of men and the world of women, Buz has suddenly had war declared on him.

Buz seems amazed and perhaps a little wary of this sudden explosion, and tells them not to get hysterical, because he only wants to look at his social security number.

But Lillian snatches the paper back from him, and it tears.

‘Well, now you’ve done it,’ he tells her, and then offers her the torn corner as if in a kind of truce. ‘Well, if it’s that important to you.’

Poor Buz.

‘You’re a monster,’ she shouts at him. ‘You’re a mean, rude, impolite, uncaring, unthinking, unfeeling human being.’

‘Well then don’t fall in love with me,’ he returns. Buz must get that trouble a lot.

‘Don’t you know you can’t have everything?’ she shouts. ‘Don’t you know that people have to live together? They have to listen to each other and share each other’s problems and listen as if they were their own.’

‘Look, I don’t need the kindergarten lecture,’ Buz responds. ‘Forget it. Now, if I ripped the paper, I’m sorry, but if it means that much to you, just give me some mending tape and I’ll put it together again.’

And then office girl number one comes up and slaps him and tells him, ‘I hate a wise guy.’ Poor bewildered Buz.

When they all start shouting at him to get out of there he announces, ‘You’re all hysterical,’ and leaves. I don’t blame him.

I do like this, though, for showing the schism between the world of men and the world of women. They are ganging up against Buz almost purely because he is a man and he has intruded into their sanctum and appears to be attacking one of their group. They see him as an insensitive man and Buz sees them as over-emotional women.

It’s all too much for Lillian.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says quietly, beginning to sob. ‘Please forgive me. I’m not ready. I thought I was ready but I’m not ready. I’m not ready. I’m sorry.’

And clutching her bag like a life preserver she runs from the office.

Buz is getting some coffee to try to soothe over his befuddlement, when he sees Lillian run by.

So he goes to ask her what’s wrong, ever the knight in shining armour – but she just says desperately, ‘You’ve done enough. You just keep away from me! You’ve done enough!’

‘You’re crazy – the bunch of you up there. You’re crazy,’ he rants.

And thus Buz’s faith in women was all undone in a few short minutes.

In the ‘United States Employment Office’ (like you’d expect it to be the Mexico or Canada Employment Office if it didn’t say United States), Lillian meets Beatrice Ware (Jean Muir) who works there. She tells Lillian that the shipyard had told her what happened, but she needs to sit and wait until Mrs Ware has time to talk to her.

And so she sits, all day, until the chairs are up on the desks and a guy is cleaning the floor. Waiting is part of her life.

Lillian says how she doesn’t want to go back. She wants another job, but Mrs Ware tells her she can’t have special privilege because she’s well now. This is probably the best thing for her, but I can understand why with every fibre she wants to run away.

She’s looking out again, looking from the window of an institution at the outside world. Mrs Ware tells her that Mr Guin said how the other girls like her. What Lillian perceives is not what everyone else perceives.

‘What do you see out there?’ Mrs Ware asks Lillian, looking out of the window.

‘The world,’ Lillian says. ‘Somebody else’s world. I wanna be part of it again. I wanna belong to it again. But can I? May I?’

‘You see it’s getting dark,’ Mrs Ware tells her. ‘In a little while it’s going to be night and then you can sleep, and when you wake up you can say to yourself a whole day has passed. A whole day in everybody else’s world has passed. That’s all you can do, Lillian. One day added to another. And then, in the course of time, by the magic of God, you’ll discover, even if you haven’t thought about it for a long time, that this is your world too.’

‘I feel as if I were five years old,’ Lillan says. ‘Every thought is a question.’

And Mrs Ware sounds like a mother putting her child to bed. We learn that Lillian was in the hospital for eighteen years.

‘They shelter you there,’ Lillian says.

‘Do you pay such an awful price for shelter?’ Mrs Ware asks. She asks if Lillian wants her to come home with her.

‘I don’t know how far I can go, Mrs Ware,’ she says, but then she adds determinedly, ‘Whatever I do I must do it myself.’

Tod and Buz are sleeping. I do love to see Tod and Buz sleeping in their lovely twin beds. Tod looks to be a neat sleeper, but one who curls the pillow over the top of his head for protection. Buz seems to be a restless sleeper. His coverings are everywhere. He is also a pillow hugger.

And then the telephone rings. (Forgive me if I take a lot of screencaps of this scene. This whole episode, not that it isn’t a cracking episode, because it is, is worth it just for this scene.)

It’s quarter past two and Buz is so sleepy he can barely work out how to use the phone, which is a beautiful old fashioned type. I love the vintage clock, too. Of course, the clock isn’t vintage to them.

Sleepy Buz trying to talk on the phone with his lovely long eyelashes. I don’t think the time on his watch is the same as on the clock, but maybe he forgot to wind it up.

And the phone goes dead. Disgusted, Buz puts it back on the bedside table.

Tod is sleepy too, with his hairy freckly arms and his hand slipping out from under the pillow and his mouth all squashed and his hair in disarray. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the Tod-lovers.

‘Who was it?’ he asks, not even opening his eyes.

‘If a man answers, hang up,’ Buz replies, just as slurred by sleep as Tod.

Ten to three this time, and the phone rings again…

And again Buz is wakened. Poor Buz. It’s rather true to character that Tod is not nearly as easily wakened by this as Buz.

This time we get pleasing flashes of chest as he sorts himself out to answer the phone.

‘Hello?’ he asks in an extremely sleepy voice. (Oh, those eyelashes… Oh, that hand…)

On the other end, as we expected, it is Lillian.

‘This is the person that called about a half an hour ago,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry I woke you.’

‘Who is this?’ Buz asks, still looking beautifully sleepy.

‘Lillian,’ she says.

‘Lillian who?’ he asks, probably going through a mental check of his mental little black book.

‘Mrs Lillian Aldrich,’ she says. ‘We had a fight today. That’s how you know me.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Buz says. ‘Are you the one that – er – that – er – cried or the one who slapped me?’

‘The one who cried,’ she tells him.

He asks if she wants him to apologise, but she says she didn’t call for that.

Buz asks where she got his number from, and in a way that could be slightly stalkery she tells him she got it from his employment application, and couldn’t forget his social security number, his address, and his telephone number. 100 20 0853. 3456 Greer Mill Street. AU9 2322. She tries to tell him that she’s not the kind of person that her saw her like today, and when he calls her Mrs Aldrich she explains that she has no right to call herself that because she was divorced twelve years ago. Buz is completely bemused.

‘Is it an emergency? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’ Buz asks.

‘I’m trying to build a bridge,’ she says. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you.’

And then she puts the phone down like a frightened rabbit.

If Buz thought women were crazy before, now he really thinks they’re crazy.

He gets out of bed and starts to toy with a packet of cigarettes. That’s how sleepy he is. He actually thinks that he smokes.

Tod turns the light on, looking more sleepy than Buz, if that is even possible.

Tod sees the cigarettes and gets needy (because smoking in bed when you’re really sleepy is so safe). He clicks his fingers for one and Buz obligingly throws one over.
‘In case you’re curious, it was a call from a – from a lady bridge builder,’ Buz tells him.

Poor Buz is bewildered and concerned. He toys with a cigarette but never lights it. Tod suggests he call the woman back.

This is just too gorgeous for words.

This screencap is rather like the last one, but I wasn’t going to sully that one with a description. Buz calls information and asks for the number of a Mrs Lillian Aldrich. There’s a nice moment where he says sleepily, ‘No, no, I don’t know the phone number – I mean, I don’t know the address,’ and you can’t tell whether he’s messed up the lines or it was written that way. Either way, it works because it ties in with his sleepiness. But she isn’t listed, so they can’t help. Tod suggests it may be a gag, but Buz doesn’t think so.

Tod settles back down into bed, but you get the feeling it’s not going to be so easy for Buz. He lies there for a moment, then asks, ‘If you needed help, who would you call for?’

Have some squished Tod. I haven’t capped him enough in this scene.

‘A friend,’ Tod answers.

‘Imagine how alone that woman must be,’ Buz says. ‘She has to call a friend for help and I’m the only name she can think of.’

The next morning, and Tod and Buz are driving in to work. (This place apparently doesn’t exist any more, like so many places associated with the maritime industry.)

Buz arrives up the steps of the office, holding his hardhat above him like a white flag and proclaiming, ‘Peace.’

What do you want?’ office girl number one asks ungraciously.

‘I come in peace, Chief Sitting Bull,’ Buz announces. ‘Come to bring back your arrows,’ and he proceeds to take imaginary arrows out of his back. ‘I know they were in my back, but they really belong to you,’ he says. ‘Besides, I don’t like to sleep on my stomach.’

She’s almost wooed by his efforts, but she asks him, ‘I asked you, what do you want?’

‘Can’t you see I’m trying to apologise?’ he asks. ‘I want to say I’m sorry to Mrs Aldrich.’

‘She’s not here,’ the girl says, so Buz steals a piece of doughnut from her and goes to leave. This office work… All coffee and doughnuts and PMT.

When Mr Guin comes in Buz hangs around, presumably wondering if he can get some useful information out of a member of his own sex. He overhears Guin’s phone conversation with Mrs Ware about Lillian and about how he is puzzled over the situation of her not coming in to work. He’s very tolerant – he will put up with it for a few days, but it is a business, so she needs to sort herself out.

Buz explains what happened yesterday and asks for Lillian’s phone number or address, but Guin tells him they don’t give out that kind of information. Buz tells him sincerely that it’s important for him to apologise, so Guin asks if he knows anything about her background.

‘Important to whom, your apology?’ Guin asks.

‘Well, I think it’s important to her,’ Buz says, and that seems to win Guin over. (I do wish that Guin’s first name were Pen.)

So Tod and Buz turn up at the house where she’s staying, looking rather like door to door salesmen. Despite Tod’s scary jacket the owner, Mr Mexia (James Dunn, who also acted with Nina Foch in the Route 66 episode Across Walnuts and Wine) lets them in.

‘What’s the matter?’ Tod asks.

‘Is she sick or in trouble or something?’ Buz asks.

Mr Mexia explains that his own son is a manic depressive, and that everyone in the boarding house has been in a mental hospital at one time or another. ‘Mrs Aldrich got out yesterday,’ he says.

Tod and Buz look sobered by this news. The mental health taboo has struck. Mexia tells them she is not sick, but she has been cut off from society for eighteen years.

‘She wasn’t old enough to vote when she came in.’

Mr Mexia explains that when she went into the hospital she had a husband and an infant daughter, but the daughter has never contacted her and possibly thinks she is dead.

‘What I’m trying to tell you is, well, the woman’s out now,’ he says. ‘And nobody to knock on her door, nobody to ring the telephone, and trouble her first day on the job. Right now Mrs Aldrich is bewildered, troubled, frightened, and a difficult person. Now, nobody has the right to ask you to take on that difficulty. If you want to be friends, well, that’ll have to come out of yourself.’

The man goes to fetch Lillian, leaving Buz and Tod to wonder about her.

‘Eighteen years,’ Buz muses. ‘Wow.’

You get the feeling that it’s taken some time to persuade her to come, because Buz is looking out of the curtains and Tod looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here when she comes in.

She sticks to social rules, saying ‘How do you do?’ and asking them to sit down and telling them that Mr Mexia will bring cookies and lemonade.

‘You see, you don’t see many outside people in a mental hospital so you forget how to act,’ she explains. ‘So we used to practice for how it was when we’d come out, in the day room. We’d practice, we’d take turns being host and visitor. The host would say, How do you do? and the visitor would say, How do you do? and the host would say, Would you like some cookies and some lemonade? – and after that the whole thing’s gone clear out of my head.’

Tod is put at his ease, finally, and so is Buz, and because of that, so is Lillian.

‘Isn’t it a nice day today?’ she asks, and you feel that she means it.

It’s apparently a few days later, and Tod and Buz are knocking off work, discussing where to go for dinner (so romantic). Buz suggests an Italian place, but Tod tells him they just had Italian, so they should ‘just get in the car and go out along the bay until we find someplace nice and quiet.’

‘Why don’t we let her decide, ok?’ Buz suggests. Ah… So they’re taking Lillian.

So Buz pops his head up above the stairs and calls in his lovely fake-English accent, ‘Hello, girls. Is Mrs Aldrich around?’

So office girl number one comes over to tell Buz that Lillian went home a little early today because she was upset. (I think the office girl number one has got over her antipathy towards Buz and possibly wants to tie him up with the headscarf she’s toying flirtatiously with and do naughty things to him.)

‘Well, is she all right?’ Buz asks in concern.

‘Well, she was crying a little bit,’ office girl number one says, affecting concern for Lillian while really she’s undressing Buz with her eyes.

‘You know,’ office girl number two says helpfully. You know, like women do. She’s probably having her period, or is starting the menopause. Women are crazy. You know.

 (IMDB lists ‘Jo’ played by Davey Davison and ‘Geraldine’ played by Judith Robinson. I’m inclined to think that office girl number one is Jo.)

Office girl number one takes the opportunity to lean in a little closer to Buz, who is more of a Renaissance man than she had ever expected. She tells him that ‘Georgiana’s sister had a baby last night,’ (more women things,) ‘and so we just made a little party about it and – then Lillian began to cry.’

‘I think Lillian felt a little lonely,’ office girl number two (Georgiana) says perceptively. She too is undressing Buz with her eyes, but she’s more of a reserved soul, and would probably do even more depraved things to him if she managed to capture him. ‘You know, knowing my sister has a little baby, and she has this lonely life, and well, you know,’ she finishes.

(Note. Never apply to Georgiana for a confidence boost. She’ll tell you how sad your life is and then say, ‘you know…’)

‘Listen, please don’t worry about it too much,’ office girl number one says, taking the opportunity to grasp at Buz’s arm and fondle his sleeve a little. He’s only one step away from being seduced on the office floor at this point. She’s so distracted by this that she almost forgets what she’s saying. ‘Every girl feels a little bit blue sometimes.’

‘You know,’ Georgiana says, ever the purveyor of wisdom.

Office girl number one gets a small reward – a pat on the cheek from Buz. She wants to scream at him, Take me! Take me now! but she’ll have to make do with the touch of his fingers on her skin. Georgiana gets nothing, because, you know… Probably at some point they will have an enormous cat fight over him, but he will have left for new pastures that morning.

Lillian is out walking along a suburban street, looking for an address she has written on a piece of paper in her hand…

She is a lonely and small figure at this big, imposing doorway.

A girl answers, separated from Lillian by the veil of the screen door. (She looks a little bit like Elizabeth Montgomery, but I don’t think she is.)

‘Yes?’ she asks, and then when Lillian doesn’t answer, ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m your mother,’ Lillian tells her. Unsurprisingly this doesn’t go down well. The girl tells her that her mother is dead.

‘I want to be friends with you,’ Lillian tells her. Eighteen years of institutionalisation have left her hopelessly naïve. A child will never love its mother in the same way as its mother loves it.

‘But you’re dead,’ the girl insists, and Lillian doesn’t know what to do.

‘Why?’ she asks pathetically.

‘I went to my father and I said to him, They’re gonna ask ‘where’s your mother?’ and I said, Daddy, I’m going to say to them, ‘My mother’s dead.’ That was on my tenth birthday.

‘I need you,’ Lillian says in a low, strong voice, still through the veil.

‘You’d better go back to the hospital,’ her daughter tells her, and runs away, slamming the door behind her.

As Lillian leaves she drops the slip of paper as if it has no more use for her.

Tod and Buz are at the boarding house, wondering where Lillian is.

The phone rings, and it’s Lillian, asking if they’re there and if they can come and pick her up and take her back to the hospital.

She’s been waiting near her daughter’s house. Tod tells her that they don’t want to take her back to the hospital.

‘She shouldn’t have closed that door on me,’ she says in a dangerous voice. Her life is all doors closing – the door of the hospital slamming behind her when she left, and now the door to her daughter’s life slamming in her face.

‘Look, you’ve got to remember she’s got a life of her own too,’ Buz says sensibly. ‘Right?’

‘You know why they put me in that hospital?’ Lillian asks. ‘I tried to kill her. Another time, another place. Another me. I was eighteen. I’d been married since I was sixteen. The world was pressing in on me. My husband was the same age I was. He had parents. I was an orphan. We’d fight and fight. He’d slam the door and go out. I’d stay inside and the little girl would cry – sometimes. Sometimes not. He went away. I was in prison with that little girl.’

Buz and Tod look like they’re not sure what to make of this. They’re products of their generation. Mothers should be nurturing and never fail.

‘First thing I remember at the hospital, they gave me this little mop that had a heavy weight on it. That felt good. Something heavy to hang on to. I pushed it and I pushed it. The whole world was grey. One day the colour came back. I asked what day it was – they said I’d been there eleven years. Well, five years ago I came into town by myself and stayed one whole day. Three years ago I stayed five days one week, in the same boarding house I’m in now. I want to go back to the hospital, please. Please.’

Tod doesn’t seem to know what to say, but Buz shakes his head. ‘You’ve got no right to go back.’

‘What do you know about pain?’ she asks him bitterly.

‘I don’t care about pain,’ Buz responds. (We’re about to get a Buz philosophy class. Buz has known pain. He’s an orphan too. Sit still and listen.) ‘It doesn’t count now. You think it’s going to be any better back there? Do you think you’re going to forget what happened when you – when you rang your daughter’s doorbell?’

‘I’ll blot it out,’ she says defiantly. When Buz shakes his head she responds, ‘Yes, I will.’

This time Tod tries.

‘Lillian, I’ve seen a lot of people try not remembering things a lot of different ways. It doesn’t really work. What happened happened and what’s real is real. Maybe you belong back in the hospital – that’s not for me to say – but if you’re going back there because that girl slammed the door in your face I want you to remember something. For eighteen years she didn’t see you and she doesn’t know you. You and that girl are strangers. Now, maybe you feel a need for her and that gives you the right to go knocking at her door after eighteen years, but she’s got the right to say, I don’t want any part of it. I don’t care how cruel that seems, I don’t care how mean that seems. That’s the way it is and you’re not going to change it by running away and hiding out anywhere in the world. You can’t change it. If you give it a chance you’ll find there are other doors where you’ll knock and there’ll be opened, and the person opening it’ll smile when they see you. But that’s still in the future. That’s still something you’ve got to make, and I don’t see you making it by running back to the hospital.’

‘It hurts,’ she says pathetically, in response to this impassioned speech. ‘I hurt.’

So, they get into the car to drive back to the hospital, where people try to fix hurt people.

So, we’re taken back to where the episode started, with Buz’s voiceover, but now we know the story behind it all.

Lillian is sitting on her old bed, clutching the rag doll.

‘The room’s smaller,’ she says.

‘I guess if you grow, the room seems smaller,’ the nurse tells her.

And Lillian puts the doll down on the bed without a backward glance, and walks out of the room.

In leaving the doll behind so easily has she also let go of her daughter, or is she letting go of the memory of what she almost did to her daughter? Or is the doll perhaps that small, vulnerable part of herself, the almost-child that she was when she first came to the hospital?

Route 66 aficionado Diana pointed out this – “The doll is left a different way than earlier in the episode. (The bed was crisply made and the doll laid like a reverent icon). Now the bedspread is messy and the doll looks tossed.” And she’s right.

She walks easily into the day room to find the women there lounging and bickering.

She seems amazed by what she sees. Everything has changed. This is not the haven she expected it to be because, as Buz told her, she has no right to go back.

‘I don’t belong here any more,’ she announces.

‘I’ve been waiting for you to find that out,’ the nurse tells her. (I like this woman, played by Isa Davison.)

And Lillian runs out of the hospital toward Tod and Buz, who are delighted.

‘How do you do!’ she greets them. ‘If you come inside we’d be glad to serve you cookies and lemonade.’

‘Well, we were sort of waiting for you to come out,’ Buz replies.

‘Right after the lemonade,’ she tells him.

Tod is happy too. He’s no longer in the company of a madwoman. This makes him feel much more at ease.

‘There’s no mistake,’ he says. (He just has to be sure.)

‘There’s no mistake,’ she assures him.





‘It’s a nice day, isn’t it?’ she says, and you know that this time she really, really means it.

And off they go for their cookies and lemonade.

Right at the end they break into a little run. It’s lovely. I want to go in through that door with them and share their lemonade. But not the cookies. I’d need tea to go with them. The screen goes dark just as Buz puts his hand on the handle. I wonder if they really went through the door?