The Girl I Married

The Girl I Married is the second segment of the thirty-fifth episode and the twentieth episode of the second season (1986–87) of the television series The Twilight Zone.

Plot

Two middle-aged gentlemen enter a restaurant and are seated. As they look through their menus, one of the men, apparently very apprehensive, shows a picture of a young woman to the other. The other fellow, Ira, smiles knowingly. Marvin, the gentleman holding the photo, suddenly begins to wonder if Ira and his wife are having problems, because he has been seen mooning over this picture. Ira laughs it off, takes this picture home and shows it to his wife, Valerie; it turns out that the lady in the picture is Valerie, albeit taken many years ago. Although he finds it amusing and nostalgic, she finds it a terrible reminder of the lives they led at the time. She then shows him a picture of himself at the time, bearded and wearing blue jeans. As he ponders the past, Ira lays the pictures on the table and goes upstairs to bed. Unbeknownst to either Ira or Valerie, the image of Valerie in the picture suddenly disappears.

The next day, driving with Marvin, Ira sees the very young Valerie sitting in a park. He thinks it's the present day Valerie playing a joke. After spending the afternoon together in bed, the young Valerie explains that she is "the girl he married" and never wanted to change. He wanted her so badly, she became real. She reminds him of the ideals they believed in then and he laments about it. And when he starts to justify becoming a corporate sellout, she thinks he's become "a drag" and disappears.

After an uncomfortable moment with older Valerie that evening, Ira spends the next day with younger Valerie, attempting to rejuvenate the relationship they had. Later on, younger Valerie tries to convince Ira to choose her over her older self, when they come in on older Valerie with younger Ira. After an argument with their younger selves, Ira and Valerie realize they still love each other and they still have a lot of life to live yet, and not just trying to recapture their lost youth. The younger Ira and Valerie smile and disappear, while the older Ira and Valerie discuss starting a family ...

Closing narration

It has been said that the eighties are just the sixties, twenty years later. The costumes may change, but the cast remains: the arrogant, the radical, the naive, and the cynical; the misplaced and the spaced. Each, a stage in the growth of a generation as it treads the tail-end of the twentieth century on a long journey...through the Twilight Zone.

Production

Roughly half a year before the episode aired, J. M. DeMatteis commented "I have a feeling that the show that appears will not bear much relation to what I wrote. What I've found out is that this season - unlike last, where the script was pretty much regarded as sacrosanct - the network is really interfering a lot. [...] Regardless, I know I did a good job and it was a real satisfying experience."^[1]

References

External links

• TV.com - The Twilight Zone (1987) episode: The Girl I Married