Fear Itself: Episode 3 Family Man

Family Man is probably the best known episode of this series, and for good reason. While the ending is predictable, it's still shocking. This is probably the single best use of a body-switching story I've ever seen.

Crediting in stories of this kind always seems somewhat confusing to me. The convention seems to be crediting the actors for their body's original character, even if the situation is reversed for the majority of the story. So, to be clear: Colin Ferguson plays the body of Dennis Mahoney, a responsible family man possessed by a serial killer named Richard Brautigan. Clifton Collins Jr. plays the body of Richard Brautigan, a serial killer possessed by a responsible family man named Dennis Mahoney.

The switch happens when both of them are brought into the hospital near death. Dennis was in a car wreck, while Brautigan was shot by the police. They have an out-of-body experience in which Brautigan shows Dennis his body, and then they wake up in the wrong bodies. Whether this was intentional on the part of Brautigan, or a pure accident, is never made entirely clear. Brautigan certainly seems to adapt to the situation much more easily.

There seems to be an implication here that the personality transfer was incomplete. Dennis is suddenly able to endure a cop beating with little reaction, and even return it in kind. Brautigan, a man who slaughtered his entire family when he was 12, says that he now wants to take care of Dennis' family, at least at first. In an effort to better adapt, Brautigan begins visiting Dennis in prison, trying to share information about how they can better fit into their roles.

The relationship between the two is fascinating. Brautigan seems to sincerely feel that he and Dennis are friends. Dennis, while obvious hating Brautigan, also recognizes the killer as the only way he can keep up to date on his family's welfare, especially after Dennis makes a number of calls to the family, who have the obvious reaction, and Brautigan has the number changed.

The other performances are all good as well. The weakest point is probably Brent Stait and Michael St. John Smith as cops brutalizing a man they believe is a serial killer, but how much can you really do with that? They're not really “bad,” just simple.

Stephen Lobo steals the show as a public defender, convinced that Brautigan is trolling him. Josie Davis, Gig Morton, and Nicole Leduc are all effective as Dennis' family. There's never any attempt at having a single person who believes Dennis, everyone is either convinced that he's crazy, or in the case of the lawyer that he's working with the “real” Dennis. It's basically the reaction you'd get in the real world.

Eventually, Dennis is able to engineer an escape and return to his house, and the inevitable happens. He and Brautigan fight, and the cops arrive just in time to kill Brautigan's body, transferring Dennis back. However, his wife and son have just been slaughtered, and his daughter is alive, pointing to Dennis as the killer. The episode closes to his scream.

The ending of this episode is legitimately terrifying to me. I can handle blood and gore, but a man going to prison for the rest of his life for crimes a serial killer committed against his own family, with his stolen body? That gets me. Even if a person wasn't interested in this series as a whole, this is an episode I'd recommend independently.