Main cast: Lee Danner, Deborah Yates, Matt Caruso, and Rip Torn (Narrator)
Director: Joe Wiecha
Dr Paula Berns is a woo-woo therapist. She can absorb her patient’s nightmares and bad memories, and of course, she’s too nice to say no to her patients even when doing so will cause those terrifying dreams to bleed into her own life. This is exactly what Sleep No More is about: soon, our darling is seeing scary old women and menacing half-naked men. Her husband Steve is driven up the wall, and somehow, he’s the bad guy here for wanting her to seek psychiatric help.
This is a bizarre episode that seems almost like a satire on folks that refuse to seek medical help despite bleeding out on the floor. Paula is barely functional, yet, she actively and even violently rejects any efforts of Steve to help her get better—she seems far more concerned with getting Steve to think that she’s not crazy when she is screaming dead at night or getting frightened by things she only she can see. Instead, she tries to somehow siphon off people’s good memories to counter the ones tormenting her, and when that doesn’t work, she refuses to consider anything else. Sure, she insists that she’s not crazy, but she clearly is going out of her mind.
In the end, when she gets what is coming to her, the show clearly wants to make me feel for her, as if Paula is some kind of tragic heroine. Honestly, though, she’s a grown-ass woman and she knows what will happen when she does her woo-woo crap with her patients. Hence, call me heartless, but in the end, I’m just glad that silly twit is out of the picture. Maybe Steve can finally get a good night sleep and a new partner that knows when and how to prioritize her own needs and well-being.
This episode would have worked better, I believe, if they had taken time to show me why Paula is such a self-sacrificing nincompoop. No, the episode just jumps straight to her doing her woo-woo on a really horrible actor pretending to be her patient, and then it’s wah-wah time as she reels around shrieking throughout the rest of the episode. Paula’s entire mantra here is that she’s not crazy, she’s just… something, whatever that is. As if that really mattered in the end, really. She just needs to be sedated and carted off to the loony bin for her own good, and yet, this episode acts like that is the worst thing one can do to her.
In fact, this episode hammers home the fact that one is better off dead than seeking medical attention. While I have no illusions about the sanctity of the medical profession, this “It’s better to suffer and die, instead of considering something that may help even a little, when nothing else has worked!” message seems more like a rallying cry for the dumb dumb types, of which Paula clearly is one.
Oh, and the acting is as usual terrible. Some of these people are way over-dramatic like failed theater students desperately trying to get a final glory before surrendering to a life of flipping burgers, while others act like they are barely awake and have to read their lines off a cue card somewhere off the camera. I have no idea who plays what in this episode, and maybe that’s for the best.
