If your local dairy delivery started doubling as a monkey’s paw for suburban housewives, you’d probably want to check the fine print on the carton. “The Milkman Cometh” takes a quaint, mid-century relic—the doorstep milk box—and turns it into an ominous portal for temptation, proving that middle-class malaise is a much more dangerous domestic hazard than any boogeyman lurking in the bushes.
Ruth Cooley (Shannon Wilcox) is drowning in the suffocating quiet of a conventional marriage to her square, oblivious illustrator husband Garry (Robert Forster, star power!). Enter the milkman, a smiling specter of domestic convenience who trades in more than just whole and two-percent. When Ruth starts leaving strange, secret written requests inside her milk box, she discovers that her wildest, most selfish whims are magically materialized by morning.
Garry uses the milkman to bet on horse racing, while his friend Howard (Seymour Cassel; this episode is strong on the casting) uses the milk box to improve his used-car business and get rid of his old wife, Edna (Barbara Sloane), for a new, much younger model. Yet no one ever sees this milkman. They just assume he is changing their lives. But you should never use magic to change your life—haven’t we learned to be careful what you wish for? When Garry and Ruth want a baby, well, they get one. Just not one anyone would wish for.
Director John Strysik worked on six episodes of this show and also directed a segment in the Dark Romances video anthologies, as well as writing Deathbed, which remade Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. Donald Wollner wrote this episode, based on a story by Charles L. Grant.
