It's a favorite of mine, and I welcomed the chance to listen to it again.

As many people here already know, the original Henry Slesar short story (published in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1961) is best-known in its TWILIGHT ZONE incarnation, titled "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross." No one loves TWILIGHT ZONE more than myself, but "Salvadore Ross" is a lesser episode, and the RMT version is a marked improvement on it; the 3-act, 45-minute structure allows the story more room for development and for clearer establishment of motivations. (Ironically, the longer running time was generally a detriment to the program--anybody who has heard many episodes knows that RMT had a terrible tendency to pad for length. Here, though, it works just right.)

The only real problem with this otherwise wonderful show comes at the end--and its the same problem the original story and the TWILIGHT ZONE version had, too. We learn that the lady's father is Mr. Compassionate, and yet he knowingly takes advantage of Salvadore Ross, accepting a large amount of money from a young man he believes to be insane. Look at it this way: If someone you believed to be mentally ill offered you a huge amount of cash in exchange for your compassion, and you accepted the deal, wouldn't that pretty well prove that you lacked all compassion in the first place?

So, the ending is a bit forced. And yet this story is, for the most part, a great RMT.