Main cast: R Ward Duffy (Jack Singer), Emilie Jo Tisdale (Wendy Singer), Karen Zippler (Marianne), and Rip Torn (Narrator)
Director: Stuart Taylor
Jack Singer has had his past relationships destroyed by his paranoia and jealousy. When he marries Wendy, he is determined to avoid repeating his mistakes. This time, he will make things work with the love of his life! Only, trouble begins when they move back to her parents’ place for him to work in peace. He learns that Wendy’s ex, the gardener or all people, committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree in the garden. He then catches Wendy wandering out at night to caress the tree. Oh dear, is Wendy pulling an Evil Dead with a tree, or is his paranoia once again getting the better of him?
Green-Eyed Monster has the dubious distinction of being bland and dull despite having the concept of a tree making a cuckold out of a man. The acting is off, which by now is sadly par for the course for this series, with R Ward Duffy over acting while Emilie Jo Tisdale is doing the complete opposite (maybe she wants to be as wooden as can be to explain her character’s attraction to trees, who knows). Still, the two main cast are easy on the eyes, so there’s some distraction from the flat acting all over this episode.
It is the story that misses the mark completely, though. With such an absurd premise and with Mr Duffy doing his best to channel Nicolas Cage, this episode has enough ingredients to serve up a fun, campy time. Instead, it tries to play things straight, which only ends up making the premise even more of a hard sell. Worse, Wendy comes off as an unlikable character that is certainly cheating on Jack, even if it’s not in a physical sense, and she isn’t above trying to gaslight Jack into thinking that he is insane when he catches on to her. In the end, no matter what an unpleasant character he may be, Jack ends up the victim here, his entire life ruined by an uncaring, faithless wife and a freaking tree. Why does she marry him anyway in the first place? Just go play in the garden instead!
At any rate, the plot may be absurd, but the people behind the episode could have still pulled it off if they had approached the tone of the episode differently, and had Wendy be a more sympathetic creature to make Jack’s final fate more palatable. In its current form, this one is a poorly-acted, poorly-scripted waste of time.
