I just watched "It all comes out in the wash" and i'm a little confused about some parts of the story:
1)When Larchmont calls Gropper asking him why he called Chow Ting, why did he sound like he was becoming sick? (theres no explination of why he died either)I'd guess it was a curse from Chow Ting, but again it's never explained.
2)When Chow Ting calls Gropper and tells him he won the lottery, he conludes the phone call with "sayonara!" even though he's chinese, not japanese. This made no sense to me. The only logical conclusion i could come to is that there was no "washing" of the sins, and Chow Ting just took money from Gropper and Larchmond and did nothing more than simply wash the clothes. When Chow Ting says he wins the lottery, i'm guessing he means he scammed enough money not to work again!
Maybe i'm reading too deep into this. let me know what you guys think and feel free to mention other episodes that fit into this category.
Sometimes stuff in the Darkside episides just kinda, are...well... there and the viewer is left to fill in the blanks any which way they want.
heres my ideas.
1: He was getting sick because Chow Ting stopped doing his laundry.
2: He may have said "sayonara!" as a joke, or to be sarcastic, or as a hint he wasnt Chinese. He doesnt sound surprised at Groppers offer of his soul. One guess is that he was some sort of eastern wizard who just enjoyed the game as it were for the magical services, as certainly his customers seem to be getting "something" from it more than clean clothes. He was interested in winning the lottery despite how much he was getting from who knows how many people. So perhaps for Chow Ting the winning of the lottery by sheer chance was a big thrill, a sign, etc.
Love Hungry was one of those odd episodes to me. Why was she selected? Why make the devices non-removable? (Aside from the idea of point blank forcing the user to lose weight.) Well aside from the fact its a Darkside ep and they didnt allways make sense in the normal... er, sense.
Yeah, I figured the viewers imagination was probably used to fill the blanks in. As easy as it is to point out plot holes, i still consider it one of my favorite shows.
I was Watching "Answer Me" Recently and also spotted a major plot hole:
The story is about an English actress that is terrorized by a phone in a neighboring apartment. Se finds out that the apartment with the constant ring belonged to an English girl who had committed suicide. At one point, She becomes fed up with the constant ringing and decides to enter the apartment to see who is calling all day and all night. When she picks up the phone, the dead English girl's spirit acts as an operator,police station etc. In distress she tells the spirit "I'd like to speak to the emergency telephone shutoff department please!"
My question is: Why couldn't she just unplug the phone cord or simply destroy the phone itself? I realize that my assumption is open to interpretation (a ghost doesn't need a phone cord to access the phone, or maybe the phone will repair itself after being destroyed.) I guess she didn't think of it? lol
As for "It All Comes Out in the Wash", I think that you nailed it. Chow Ting was nothing but a scam-artist (complete with the "Don't call us--We'll call you" line), and once he'd made a good killing out of it (which he refers to as "the lottery"), he got the hell outta Dodge before they caught on to him.
Think about it--Does anybody really need someone to remove the guilt for them?
No, you just do it yourself. Look at Hitler or Isis--Do you think that they have someone who gives them special laundry services? Anybody can rationalize out ANYTHING that they do in their own mind if they try hard enough.
Guilt is something that we put on ourselves because we want to be good people. If you don't want to deal with the guilt, simply shrug it off like a piece of lint.
Chow Ting really had these people believing that he was washing away their sins and guilt, when they were really doing it themselves the whole time.
And "Sayonara" in this context simply means "So long suckers!"
1. I recall that it was relatively clear that the sickness was due to being cut off from the service, thus afflicting him with an overwhelming guilt that he was incapable of living with.
2. I don't understand why him saying "sayonara" would make you think that it was all a scam. If he had said "i'm going to disney world" would that have led you to believe that he was a KGB agent disguised in America in order to control the world's supply of gold? I just don't understand your line of logic. He says "sayonara" because it's the only word that Americans recognize as meaning "i'm out of here for good" and the reason that he wins the lottery is because it's a literary device used to explain why he would simply stop performing his service without warning. He could have died, or gone into the insurance game, but the TFTD writers decided he should win the lottery. And that's nice because he needed some time to relax.
I kinda get that the episode was about scamming gullible sinners but one episode I dont get is "Dream Girl". The story is bizarre but the ending is off the map. If anybody unlocked what went on in the final scene please post here.
Hi Montecarloman! I just saw the episode a while ago :) (bought the whole series and getting near done) . It's actually a good episode once you watch the whole thing! Haha. But my guess is that The main woman dreamt the bad guy into the world. But she noticed the main guy was sleeping so my guess is that he dreamt the main woman into the fantasy world? So now they are all stuck in the world together with nobody to actually wake up???? My best guess at least.
Oh man. I'm with you. Dream girl was a nightmare. Nothing in that episode made any sense. Up to and including why it was even made. That's gotta be the worst episode of tales from the Darkside ever, and it ranks up there as one the worst episodes of anything, ever.
Ok one that bugged me is "I Can't help saying goodbye"
The little girl envisions her mom dying. So she doesn't try to warn her or anything. She just says "Goodbye..". She never warns anyone or tries to explain. Even at the end where she sees she is going to die. She just says goodbye to herself. She doesn't try to run or anything. Every death could be preventable.
She literally couldnt help saying goodbye, even with her own destruction at hand (it's implied her sister is going to murder her for all the tragedy that has suddenly been brought into their lives).
none of the deaths were preventable. that's the point. she wasn't reading them their fortunes. that was Death calling out its shots; through a little girl (imo).
I was looking down and missed the ending. Does the main character decide to commit suicide? And in this show doesn't the main character suddenly die right at the conclusion quite often?
I have to admit that the first few times I saw this episode, I didn't get it either. One of the issues with many Tales from the Darkside episodes is that the short run time does not allow for enough detail. However, I am a huge fan of James Hong, so I watched it a lot for that reason. And although it took a while, I finally came to an understanding.
What Chow Ting does is remove sins and guilt. Gropper went to Chow Ting because he wanted to be able to do his job without guilt. Chow Ting gave Gropper the prices and Gropper had a small amount of laundry which was the right amount of sins to be washed away by the money. Chow Ting makes a very strong point of not being contacted and was not happy that Larchmont told Gropper.
Most of what happens in the plot is revealed in the next scene. Rather than continue to perform his job and live his life the way he did with a moderate amount of sin and guilt, the fact that Chow Ting's laundry service DID work convinced Gropper that he could commit more and more sins and profit from them without guilt.
Larmont calls Gropper and he is distressed when he finds out that Chow Ting knows that he told Gropper about the special service. Keep in mind that Larchmont goes crazy before Gropper. The assumption is that Chow Ting cut Larchmont off right away for breaking the rules.
Gropper's secretary announces that his 10 year old son Marvin has called him collect, to which Gropper appears proud. He takes the call and tells his secretary to come in and update the charts.
While taking the call from his son, the effects of being guilt free begin to show. Marvin is upset that his friend Billy told him that Gropper's company kills baby seals to make coats. Gropper assures his son that fur looks better on people than on a seal. He tells his son to act like his son and stop sniffling. He says To his secretary's surprise, Gropper tells his son to bring home a piece of Billy's nose and he will double his allowance.
Gropper is realizing he can do whatever he wants to do without consequence of guilt. There is an old saying that to kill without remorse is to feel like a god. The problem is that without guilt, Gropper continues to do more and more horrid things.
His secretary tells Gropper that Chow Ting has doubled his prices again due to extra labor charges. Chow Ting is not ripping Gropper off. Gropper is just committing so many sins now and Chow Ting has to wash them out that Gropper needs to pay more and more.
Gropper has his son's friend's dad murdered because of the baby seal comment. As soon as he orders the murder, he sends flowers to the man's wife. Chow Ting has not stopped picking up the laundry. Gropper just does not realize how many sins he is committing because he is guilt free.
As Gropper gets worse, he makes the fatal mistake of calling Chow Ting. He broke the arrangement. Because his clothes are piling up, you get the impression that a lot of time has passed, but it hasn't. Gropper is now starting to lose his mind because he hasn't been washed free of his sins.
Chow Ting did not win the lottery and he did not move to Florida. All he did was cut off the relationship with Gropper because he broke the rules. In the same call, he mentions Larchmont killed himself because Gropper is aware that Larchmont broke the rules. If Gropper paid more attention to Larchmont's mistake, he would not have done it too. That's why Chow Ting says he hopes that Gropper handles the news of Chow Ting's retirement better than Larchmont. You broke the rules like he did and will end up like he did.
As far as "sayoonara" goes, I am not really sure. My theory is that it is a statement made to the viewer of the episode that in real life there is nothing than erase sin and guilt and whatever you believe is doing it is a lie.
Gropper realizes what he has done. He realizes he can't be free of sins and guilt and kills himself. If you can, watch the episode again and pay close attention to everything Gropper does in his office. I am actually writing a Tales from the Darkside wiki right now and I watched this episode several times in order to correctly talk about the plot and dialogue. It was through that I noticed that there is so much more happening in this episode than any other episode in the series.
I am curious, so please don't take this as confrontational because I am really just curious. I don't recall using sayoonara as an insult in the 80s. We used it really only for it's meaning as the Japanese word for goodbye. I am curious how it could be an insult.
i think the hangup is that the guy is asian. you're focusing on him being chinese instead of japanese. but he could have said "aloha" or "vaya con dios" and it would not have changed the scene. he was telling a jerky businessman that he was no longer cleaning up after him.
i think the hangup is that the guy is asian. you're focusing on him being chinese instead of japanese. but he could have said "aloha" or "vaya con dios" and it would not have changed the scene. he was telling a jerky businessman that he was no longer cleaning up after him.
When Chow Ting says sayoonara, Gropper immediately remarks "He wasn't even Chinese." The reason I am "focusing" on him being Chinese instead of Japanese is because he IS Chinese and he said a Japanese word for goodbye. If Chow Ting has said "aloha," I would be talking about him being Chinese instead of Hawaiian. If he had said "vaya con dios," I would be talking about him Chinese instead of Spanish.
I completely understand that Chow Ting was telling Gropper that he wasn't cleaning up after him anymore. However, I doubt the screen writer would have put the saying by Gropper in there distinctly making the point about Chow Ting not really being Chinese unless it was significant in some way.
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Insult may not be the right word, but I'm hard pressed to find a better one. It was rarely used with any affection by Americans in the 80's. "Sayonara, suckers!" was a common usage of it. In my mind, it always conjures up images of a gangster standing over some victim, and it's what he says right before pulling the trigger. But I think it matters where you lived, and what your social circle was like, in the 80's. Californians were more likely to have exposure to Japanese culture, whereas white-bread middle America (where I lived)... not so much.
Nice sypnosis JakeFlair. I struggled with this episode after missing a lot of the opening dialogue so this cleared a lot of things up. I did understand one certain aspect of Gropper's personality however.
As far as the Sayoonara part goes I think it's there to show Gropper's casual racism and naivety that he show towards Chow Ting throughout. In his prejudice world how dare this Chinese guy speak another language other than his own. The part where he refers to the laundry as The Orient Express being another particular highlight.
Thanks :) I actually had to watch it a few times to make sense out of it. But after quite a few viewings it made sense to me.
As far as the Sayoonara part goes I think it's there to show Gropper's casual racism and naivety that he show towards Chow Ting throughout. In his prejudice world how dare this Chinese guy speak another language other than his own. The part where he refers to the laundry as The Orient Express being another particular highlight.
That is a really good way of looking at it :)
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"Tales From the Darkside" is too dreamlike (nightmarish even) to have plotholes. Experiencing the episodes is akin to experiencing a really bad dream. None of it truly makes sense, and gravity doesn't exist within it's spaces. That's why I LOVE this show.