Episode no. Season 2
Episode 34a Episode number 2 Original air date 10 July 1987 | Directed by Shelley Levinson Director Shelley Levinson | |
Written by Alan Brennert, Parke Godwin | ||
"Time and Teresa Golowitz" is the first segment of the thirty-fourth episode (the tenth episode of the second season (1986–87) of the television series The Twilight Zone and is based on Parke Godwin's "Influencing the Hell Out of Time and Teresa Golowitz" which was published in The Twilight Zone Magazine (January 1982).
Plot
Bluestone is a Broadway composer who, in the middle of completing a musical, discovers via a mysterious visitor—implied to be the Devil—that he has suffered a fatal heart attack. After stewing over his own loss and his widow's proposed reaction to his death, Bluestone discovers that the visitor, Prince (of Darkness), is offering him a small gift for a return of letting the "ones down below decks" hear his music now and then. This gift is to have a time and place in the past, present, or future to do with as he pleases. Bluestone's impulsive wish is to "make it" with a Mary Ellen Cosgrove, his high school crush, back in October 1948.
Bluestone discovers himself at a party back at his youth (where he is called by his real name, Blaustein). He interacts with his old friends, then approaches a classmate, Laura (Gina Gershon), who is possessed by Prince, come to check up on him. Bluestone has a conversation with the Prince and then sees a girl, Teresa Golowitz, who he claims is one of "the plain girls" Mary Ellen invites to make her look better. Prince reminds Bluestone that Golowitz is the girl who committed suicide on that night because she wanted to escape as much as he did, but she didn't escape the way he did. He suddenly remembers that and how much of a scandal at school it was. She took the bus back to town and—reflecting on the grief and loneliness that haunted her for the past sixteen years, and how the future might be—stepped in front of the next bus.
After an attempt to help her, Bluestone gets Teresa to sing (at which she is extremely talented) while he plays a Broadway tune. The party appears to love their chemistry, but she still feels out of place. He attempts to explain how she could be a fantastic singer and change her life. She leaves and he ends up in Mary Ellen's bedroom, but he decides to leave. He finds Teresa outside and they arrange to meet the next day.
Bluestone returns to the present and discovers that "Terri" Teresa Golowitz has become an award winning singer with Bluestone composing for her. Unfortunately, it turns out that his creative playing around with history didn't go well for the "top side". So now Bluestone has to "lie low" for a couple of years before he can go "top side".