The Unshakeables: The Last Temptation of Darrin Stevens

 

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

 

What if you could have anything you wanted? Any house, any mate, any car; would it make you happy? Would it satisfy every desire? Would you still be the same person after all those wishes were fulfilled?

 

The premise of Bewitched is simple, but one with layers of complexity beneath the surface: young advertising executive Darrin Stevens marries a witch, but is adamant she live as a typical American housewife – or, as he puts it, “No hocus pocus.” He views her powers as something unnatural, and refuses to accept the benefits they could provide to his career and his lifestyle. He appreciates the value in work, and of struggle when it results in rewards that have been fairly earned. But those beliefs are tested in “A is For Aardvark,” the 17^th episode of the series’ first season.

 

After spraining his ankle, Darrin recuperates in the master bedroom, and runs poor Sam ragged asking for food, magazines and other creature comforts. 

 

After 27 trips up and down the stairs, Samantha suggests putting a spell on their house so it will respond to his requests. At first he protests (“I don’t want any part of that nonsense”) but after acknowledging the strain he had placed on his wife, he reluctantly agrees.

 

Endora, never far away, recognizes what is about to happen – “You’ve given him a taste of power,” she tells her daughter. “It’s Adam and the apple all over again.” 

 

Sure enough, Darrin quickly begins to not only use but to abuse his new abilities. Instead of a holding a book he has it float in front of him. He could light his own cigarette but has the house do it instead. 

 

 

And that triggers an epiphany – one that upends his entire worldview – why shouldn’t he take advantage of having anything he wants just a nose-twitch away? He tells Sam to use her powers however and wherever she wishes. He quits his job. He calls a realtor to sell their home so they can travel and live the good life from now on. “Well, why not, Sam?” he asks.

 

Then a package arrives – something Darrin had ordered before his world changed. A dozen roses and a simple wristwatch, anniversary gifts for his wife. He seems embarrassed now by the banality of the gesture, but Sam is moved to tears, and insists she loves them more than any fur coat or palatial estate she could conjure up on request. 

 

 

That begins to awaken Darrin’s better angels, as he perceives the pitfalls of the life he was about to embrace. And then, in the episode’s most remarkable moment, he acknowledges his own weakness. Having succumbed to temptation once, he honestly cannot assure Sam that he’ll be able to resist a second time. So he asks her to twitch their lives back to before she hexed the house, so he would have no memory of what that power feels like. In the final scene Darrin is back in bed, ringing a bell to let Sam know he needs something. And this time she happily climbs the stairs to respond.

 

I have many questions. Why was Darrin never tempted by what Samantha’s witchcraft could provide, but instantly ready to abandon his principles as soon as he tasted a fragment of that power? And was he right or wrong when he confessed it was ego that propelled his edict that Samantha forsake her magic?

 

But the one that resonates most in this story is the one I already asked – what if you could have anything you wanted? As with so many of the moral and ethical quandaries posed by classic television, it is as relevant today as it was 60 years ago.

 

We all think that if we won the lottery and suddenly had $150 million in the bank, the clout that money brings would not change us. Heck, we’d probably still drive the car we have now and keep our Timex watch, because it works as well as a Rolex. Instead, we’d immediately start building affordable housing in low-income communities, and putting underprivileged kids through college.

 

Some billionaires actually do that. But most do not.

 

We are surrounded by examples of what happens when the world moves within the grasp of those who once lived paycheck to paycheck. It’s the megachurch pastors who fly private jets to arenas and then preach how “a man's life consisteth  not in the abundance  of the things which he possesseth.” It’s the lottery winners that die penniless. It’s the leaders of organizations that guilt gullible corporations into sending them millions to make some lives matter more than they apparently do now, and then buy mansions for themselves instead.

 

What would have happened had Darrin not come to his senses? Could he have ended up like Rocky Valentine, the career criminal in the Twilight Zone episode “A Nice Place to Visit?” Shot and killed after robbing a pawnshop, Rocky awakens in a world where he can have it all, but can’t figure out how he earned his way into this heaven of booze, casinos and showgirls. He didn’t, of course, because he wasn’t in heaven at all.

 

“A scared and angry little man who never got a break. Now he has everything he’s ever wanted. And he’s going to have to live with it for eternity…in the Twilight Zone.”

 

My friend and fellow classic TV blogger Mitchell Hadley has been posting a series of pieces called “Descent Into Hell,” in which he selects classic TV episodes that showed where our culture could be headed (and now, arguably, has arrived). While it still fits comfortably into the lighter diversions of a typical Bewitched episode, ”A Is For Aardvark” is also a cautionary tale that illuminates one of the wider pathways to that same destination.