| Series: | The Twilight Zone |
| Season: | 2 |
| Episode: | 4 |
| Production: | 173-3645 |
| Director: | David Orrick McDearmon |
| Guests: |
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| Season Article: | The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 2) |
| Episode List: | List of The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes |
| Prev: | Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room |
| Next: | The Howling Man |
"A Thing About Machines" is episode 40 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on October 28, 1960, on CBS.
Lonely, ill-tempered gourmet magazine critic and misanthrope Bartlett Finchley berates a repairman after the latter fixes his television and tells him to stop abusing his appliances over mild inconveniences. Believing the machines are conspiring against him, however, Finchley continues to do so. Fed up with his paranoid behavior, his secretary quits. Following this, his typewriter types out the message "GET OUT OF HERE FINCHLEY" repeatedly on its own and the TV displays a program with a woman saying the same message. While trying to shave, his electric shaver rises and lunges at him before his telephone repeats the typewriter and TV's message despite Finchley ripping the telephone out of the wall earlier.
Finchley hears a siren outside and goes to investigate, finding that his car rolled down the driveway and nearly hit a child. After rudely dismissing the attending police officer and neighbors, Finchley returns to his house, drinks, and passes out. When he awakens, the machines repeatedly tell him to leave while his razor slithers downstairs after him. He runs outside, only to be chased by his car until he ends up drowning in the pool and sinking to the bottom. After the police pull him out, neither they nor the ambulance personnel can explain how he sank without being weighted, and theorize he may have had a heart attack.[1] [2] [3]