Main cast: MJ Karmi (Nicole Osborne), Larry Small (Walter Osborne), Mark Fish (Cliff), and Rip Torn (Narrator)
Director: Jeffrey Fine
Erased introduces Nicole Osborne, a glamorous editor of the beauty magazine Dazzle and a real piece of work. She’s cheating on her husband Walter and bails on him even as he is laboring on their wedding anniversary party over the last six months, with him wanting it to be perfect. She would love to ditch him, but magnanimously decides against it because doing so will only break his heart. Nicole is also obsessed with the notion of reversing her ageing appearance, and in fact she is cheating on Walter with her plastic surgeon Cliff.
It’s karmic justice, therefore, when she starts becoming paranoid that Walter is cheating on her. Worse, she starts seeing apparitions of some woman around their house. Is Walter cheating on her with some weird ghost woman?
As amusing as I find Nicole’s predicament to be, it doesn’t change the fact that this episode is about a woman whining about wanting to be young again. It’s not the most interesting plot line, plus it also serves as a predictable lecture on how women shouldn’t be so concerned about their physical appearance. Yes, because this show will cast a fat, ugly woman as the lead.
The biggest issue about this episode, though, is the “twist” with regards to the woman showing up around Nicole. One, I can easily and correctly guess the identity of that woman right away. Two, Nicole’s numerous plastic surgeries must have somehow warped her brain if she couldn’t tell whom that woman is. Seriously, when the twist is revealed, I can only wonder: why does Nicole not know so much sooner? Also, that twist introduces an abrupt ass-pull paranormal element that doesn’t jive well with the rest of the episode, which had all been, up until that point, all about science and medicine.
There’s always been rumor that the episodes of this show are made from scripts scavenged from the reject bins of other spooky anthology shows—gee, I wonder who made up that rumor. Anyway, this episode only drives home how likely true that rumor may be.
