Uncle Simon

"**Uncle Simon**"
"Uncle Simon"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 5; Episode 8
Directed by	Don Siegel
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Stock
Production code	2604
Original air date	November 15, 1963
Guest appearances
	Cedric Hardwicke: Uncle Simon ; Constance Ford: Barbara Polk ; Ian Wolfe: Schwimmer ; Uncredited:; Robby the Robot: robotic Uncle Simon
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Old Man in the Cave"	Next →; "Probe 7, Over and Out"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 5)
	List of episodes

Last updated December 31, 2024

"Uncle Simon" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone . The episode explores people's willingness to wallow in misery and hate, through the example of a woman who submits herself to serving first her mean-spirited uncle, and later the robot he malevolently designed.

Opening narration

Dramatis personae: Mr. Simon Polk, a gentleman who has lived out his life in a gleeful rage; and the young lady who's just beat the hasty retreat is Mr. Polk's niece, Barbara. She has lived her life as if during each ensuing hour she had a dentist appointment. There is yet a third member of the company soon to be seen. He now resides in the laboratory and he is the kind of character to be found only in the Twilight Zone.

Plot

Barbara Polk has lived with her elderly, sadistic uncle Simon Polk for 25 years — even though she hates him — as she is the only heir to his fortune. Simon constantly harangues his niece, calling her various unflattering names and insulting her in creative ways. He uses a laboratory in the basement of his house to develop inventions, and has forbidden her from going down there to see his latest project, about which he drops malevolent hints. When she sneaks into the basement to peek at it, the two have a verbal altercation. Simon catches her and raises his cane to strike. Barbara blocks with her arm, causing him to fall down the stairs and break his back. Frustrated with his abuse, nagging, and constant demands for hot chocolate, Barbara declines to assist and purposefully lets him die.

Following Simon’s death, his lawyer Mr. Schwimmer reads the will to Barbara: to inherit his estate, she must live in the house and look after his last invention, a robot also named Simon. Although its behavior and speech are very mechanical at first, it engages in AI learning as time goes on. It eventually acts and sounds just like him — right down to the old man’s limp, which it develops as a result of damage from Barbara’s attempt to destroy it by pushing it over backward. The robot repeats insults that Uncle Simon had programmed, berating Barbara as a “bovine crab” and “peanut-headed sample of nature’s carelessness.” Since Mr. Schwimmer makes regular visits to ensure that Barbara is taking proper care of the robot, as per the stipulations of the will, she has no choice but to submit to its continuing verbal abuse and demands — including bringing it hot chocolate as she did for Simon — or risk being disinherited.

Closing narration

Dramatis personae, a metal man who'll go by the name of Simon, whose life as well as his body has been stamped out for him; and the woman who tends to him, the lady Barbara, who's discovered belatedly that all bad things don't come to an end, and that once a bed is made, it's quite necessary that you sleep in it. Tonight's uncomfortable little exercise in avarice and automatons, from the Twilight Zone.

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References

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0
Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)

External links

"Uncle Simon" at IMDb

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v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"