User Reviews

A victim of domestic abuse, Louise (Melanie Mayron), whose husband, Jack (Kenneth Welsh, he's a real nasty piece of work) goes out of his way to find reasons to smack her around, receives a china dog for her birthday. After a beating for burning the eggs, Louise craves from the very depths of her heart for a real Great Dane to attack Jack, holding the china dog by her face, one appears, barking with a hostile intent. Through the Twilight Zone, Louise may be able to secure the power needed to no longer tolerate being a victim, the dog her protector, Jack learning a lesson. Melanie Mayron (probably most known for her work in Thirtysomething) reflects a small, timid, weak, frail abuse victim, not strong enough physically, or, for a while, psychologically tough to challenge her volatile husband, Jack, who has her asking to open a gift sent to her in the mail. She asks him when he will be back from fishing, and he shrugs her off, saying, "When I feel like it." Like the stereotypical woman-beater, Kenneth Welsh conveys a quick-tempered, cold-feeling husband who demands perfection, and when she doesn't adhere to his preposterous expectations (which are set up merely so he can find any excuse to slap her around) snaps. Thankfully, television at this time wasn't so keen to show spousal abuse, but all we need to know is laid out for us with the wreckage of broken dishes scattered across the kitchen floor, a bruise on Mayron's face, tears flowing, Welsh addressing her after the fact as if he were consoling a misbehaving child who deserved the scolding daddy gave her. That's the whole point, to present this horrible man we want to see punished, the dog a fierce presence that threatens to rip him limb from limb. Eventually, Mayron will be empowered with enough courage to not only leave but stand up to him, the Twilight Zone just the right place for her to do so.

As many of my prior reviews suggest, I am a fan of the thematic concept upon which Rod Serling based the original Twilight Zone series: tales in which the characters learn a lesson (often with a social message), the good are rewarded and the evil punished or, if not, at least the message is delivered with a tragic irony. And, as you also can probably tell, I tend to prefer episodes from the 1980s version that follow the same concept, especially when they're done well. "Acts of Terror" succeeds on both scores.

The story focuses on a subject the original series would never have addressed directly in the 1960s: spousal abuse. Young housewife Louise (Melanie Mayron) lives under the dominant and abusive thumb of her violent husband (Kenneth Welsh). Her sister (Kate Lynch) gives her a small porcelain statue of a doberman pinscher, which becomes a channel for her repressed rage, manifesting itself as a real doberman to defend her when threatened by her husband. From this point, a lesser scriptwriter would have turned the story into a pedestrian revenge tale. Instead, J. Michael Straczynski makes this a more meaningful story, choosing to focus on Louise's recovering her self-esteem, allowing her to discover for herself that she does not need to be a victim. In doing so, Straczynski properly focuses the story on Louise, rather than taking the more facile route of killing off the husband or trying to delve into the rationale that others might use to explain (or worse, excuse) her husband's abuse.

Mayron's performance is critical here, providing us with a nuanced and believable transformation from a cowed and self-doubting victim to a self-respecting woman. Lynch is also quite good as the sister who has seen what her brother-in-law is capable of, and gives us unspoken clues that she knows what her sister needs to help regain her self-respect and stand up for herself. Given what I've written above, the part of the husband is almost necessarily underwritten, but Kenneth Welsh does a fine job of showing us not only the violent brute, but also the sometimes charming and manipulative behavior by which he can keep control over his wife. While perhaps not the cathartically violent spectacle with which others might have concluded the story, the ending is both effective and proportionate: the abused spouse will no longer let herself be a victim, and the abuser has lost the thing he most wanted in the relationship -- control.

Which brings me back to my opening point. Of all the writers for the third season of the 1980s incarnation of the Twilight Zone, Straczynski was probably the one who most closely fit the thematic concept set by Serling (for prior seasons, Alan Brennert was probably the best fit). His sympathy for and understanding of Louise and her situation allow the story to do what the original series did at its best: not doling out revenge, but dispensing justice,