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What You Need (The Twilight Zone)

"What You Need"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 12
Directed by Alvin Ganzer
Story by Lewis Padgett
Teleplay by Rod Serling
Featured music Original score by Nathan Van Cleave
Production code 173-3622
Original air date December 25, 1959
Guest appearance(s)
Episode chronology
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The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 1)
List of The Twilight Zone episodes

"What You Need" is episode 12 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It is based on the short story of the same name by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore).

Pedott is a peddler who has the curious ability to give people exactly what they need before they need it. The old man enters a cafe where he first gives a woman a vial of cleaner. Then, he gives a down-on-his-luck ex-baseball player a bus ticket to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Moments later the ball player receives a phone call at the cafe with a job offer in Scranton. The ball player then notices a spot on his jacket, for which the woman just happens to have cleaner.

Fred Renard, a small-time thug, asks Pedott to give him what he needs, and the peddler gives him a pair of scissors which save Renard's life when his scarf later gets caught in an elevator's doors. Renard shows up at Pedott's apartment, asking for another thing he "needs", and the peddler comes up with a leaky fountain pen that predicts a winning racehorse when a drop of ink lands on a newspaper racing column.

Renard continues menacing Pedott for more and then helps himself to a pair of new shoes from Pedott's peddler case. When a car suddenly heads toward Renard, he tries to run, but the new leather soles are so slippery he cannot escape on the wet pavement. He is therefore consequently struck and killed. The shoes, Pedott explains to Renard's corpse, were what Pedott needed, because he foresaw that Renard would eventually kill him. At the end of the episode the peddler gives a couple a comb, which they use to groom themselves just before they are photographed as witnesses for a newspaper story covering the "hit and run" accident that killed Fred Renard.

The original story featured a machine that could foretell an individual's probable future. Serling replaced this science-fiction element with a street peddler who could magically perform the same function. In the original story the man owns a shop where he has such a machine, and then gives people what they need to provide the best possible outcomes. Also, the Renard character is killed not by a car, but by falling off a subway platform while a train is coming into the station.


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