User Reviews

Lucy and John were the new missionaries. John wanted to be there to help the natives, but Lucy hated the jungle and wanted to leave. Thomas hated his wife ,Mary, because she constantly reminded him that she was the doctor and he was the inept one. Between them, Lucy and Thomas hatched the plot to murder Mary. I understood Thomas' motive, but couldn't understand why Lucy wanted to kill Mary. Lucy commented on how good John was,"perhaps too good," was how Lucy put it, and couldn't bring herself to just leave him. That's why she agreed to murder Mary, but make John believe that it was she, Lucy, in the casket. She mutilated Mary's face unrecognizable. This freed Lucy to leave and also freed Thomas from the wife he hated. What do you guys think of my theory?

This is not a review, it's a question. Can someone explain the plot to me? I don't get it.

We see the older woman sneak into the younger woman's bedroom with the scalpel. Then we hear a scream, and see someone collapse behind the bed screens. The doctor sees this, but visibly does not participate in any way. But in the end, we find out that the young woman is NOT dead, she's masquerading as the older woman and running off with the doctor. This leaves a couple big questions unanswered: 1) HOW????? How on earth did the sleeping younger woman somehow kill the older woman, who was armed with the scalpel? Huh??? 2) When the young woman's husband digs up the grave and opens the coffin, how did he not *notice* that it wasn't his wife in the coffin, but in fact the older woman? I mean, come on, they didn't look anything alike, and surely he can recognize his *own wife* or not! 3) If the younger woman did somehow manage to kill the older woman, why is she secretly running away and all? She's innocent, it was legitimate self-defense.

In short, I don't get this episode. I've searched the net and cannot find a full plot summary that explains it. I was hoping to find one here, but no such luck. Anyone with answers, please post an explanatory review!

ADDENDUM: I thank patricw for the reply. I've since watched the episode again, and it still doesn't hang together for me. How could the young woman be prepared for the older woman's attack? How could she have known it was going to happen that night? Short of being armed with a gun (we don't hear any shot), how could she have been assured of safely defending herself against a scalpel?

The cut up face is an interesting idea for why the husband doesn't recognize the corpse as not being his wife. Not sure I fully buy it, but at least it's a good attempt at an explanation.

There are certainly a lot of contrasting opinions for this episode from the reviewers here. Having read them all, I almost don't know what to think. The idea that Brother Thomas Fitzgibbons (Ed Begley) was somewhat smitten with the lovely Lucy Sprague (Maggie Pierce) was apparent, but I don't think it translated into a desire to kill his wife (Jeanette Nolan). It would seem that Lucy was ready for anything that might come her way via Mary Fitzgibbons, including an attack during the middle of the night. But it doesn't make sense to me that she would leave the missionary camp with Thomas, what did that solve if they were simply going to turn around and come right back in a matter of days? It also doesn't seem probable that Thomas could have mangled his wife's corpse to such a degree that Brother John Sprague couldn't figure out who it was in the hand dug grave. And if he did know who it was, why fire at both Thomas and the woman returning in the boat if he knew it to be his wife? Revenge for running off with Thomas? You would think he'd like to at least find out about Lucy's motivation. Just too many imponderables in the story for it to make any kind of sense, which wasn't helped by Hitchcock hot-dogging it in his closing monolog.

The previous commenter stated that he/she didn't understand what happened. Here's my take on it - the young missionary and his wife arrive to help the older missionary in his duties. The older missionary is married to a bossy nag, and when he sees the young missionary wife, he is smitten. The young missionary wife is not happy with the lifestyle her husband has chosen and drops some hints to the older missionary. He praises her beauty and says he would treasure her. The older missionary knows his wife would be jealous of the attention he is paying the young wife, and basically sets her up to try and murder the young wife. I believe he fakes being asleep while the old missionary wife sneaks into the young wife's bedroom, and the young wife is ready for the attack, thus the the old naggy wife is killed instead. The old missionary and the young wife then bury the old wife; the old missionary tells his native assistant that the young wife died of cholera, and that he must get his wife away from the disease. The assistant doesn't know that the young wife is the one leaving, as she's wearing bug-proof clothing including covering her face. When the young missionary returns from a trip, he's told that his wife died, and that the old missionary and old wife have left. The young missionary presses the assistant to tell him where his wife's grave is, and when he finally finds it, and digs it up, I believe he sees that the body was stabbed, and probably the face was unrecognizable. So, he thinks the old missionary and/or his wife have killed the young wife, and he hurries to the boat dock to exact revenge. He shoots the old missionary, and what he thinks is the old wife, only to find he has shot and killed his own wife, after lifting her veil. He didn't know that his young wife faked her death and was running away with the old missionary. That's what I got out of it...

I came here looking for clarification after seeing "Triumph" and am relieved to see others are as confused as I am!

It would be one thing if the twist had been earned, but you folks are right: this comes out of nowhere. We are given the motive for the turnaround at the end in terms of old Brother Thomas, but what about the young wife? Is she really leaving her husband for the old man?

Presumably all this was done to conceal the murder of the old woman, Mary. But the unearthing of the casket would prove in an instant that this was NOT the young missionary's wife! (Even if her face had been gashed to such a degree as to make her unrecognizable...) If you really wanted to obscure the identity of the body, you'd fare better with some sort of Indian beetle that eats away the flesh...and actually SHOW this in the episode!

The other thing is...why didn't the young missionary's wife simply call out her husband's name when she heard him and saw him shooting Brother Thomas? That would stop him in his tracks and he would drop the gun. Catastrophe averted!

This said, Begley is decent in a role he may not have been perfect for. And Jeanette Nolan is excellent as she usually is in any role she took. I thought watching it, "Why wasn't she a big movie star?" Not even Bette Davis could have done better!

A nice tense atmosphere, and complex things happening in the script with the characters...but an ending that 'capsizes the boat'. Almost literally!

The acting, lighting, perspective, dialogue, and camera work are all absolutely top-notch in this episode. There's even a scene in which the moving shadows cast by a cloth fan are utilized to heighten the tension during a dinner conversation. Superb.

The themes were also explored rather well: youth vs. Weariness, justice vs. Vengeance, reputation vs. True fulfillment, etc.

The most overarching theme is the contrast between inherent human evil & inherent human goodness, through which an ironic switch occurs.

It "shows" rather than "tells." For example, the past struggles of the Fitzgibbons' inability to have children, and how that has led them to where they are now, is to be inferred from the dialogue and acting.

In addition, the physical "twist" is less important than what has been revealed about the people involved (particularly Dr. Sprague).

This is one of the most complex character studies I've ever seen come out of this series.

Had to watch this episode again, just to see Maggie Pierce as Lucy. She plays an optimistic missionary seconded to an older, bitter one. I saw this episode years ago, and thought I missed something in the confusing ending, but I didn't. It is still confusing, like someone didn't think it through. Lucy admits her husband is flawless, but shows a strange attraction for a browbeaten man twice her age, a missionary who is oddly flirtatious. Her clueless, altruistic husband returns to find his wife dead and immediately wants to kill the perpetrator. (To hell with the Indian legal system!) Sadly, he mistakenly kills his own wife. Watching it again didn't help sort this mess out.

The visual aspect and the atmosphere of this episode are mesmerizing.

But the writing sounded like an entry in the International Imitation Hemingway contest, in which entrants are asked to write "a really good page of really bad Hemingway."

Among the problems with the short, cryptic sentences, and the sense that everyone's statements are fraught with meaning when they're not, is that Lucy's interest in Brother Thomas is never really accounted for.

I'm not even that bothered by the age difference - there's just no chemistry between them, no common ground, no real reason for her to make the deal she does to help him out. The scenes of them working together, and the conversation in the boat, just fall flat.

I actually think the young missionary does see that it is Jeanette Nolan's character in the coffin. He doesn't look grief-stricken or horrified when he first looks in the coffin, like a man who is looking at his beloved wife, so mangled that he can't tell who it is.

He looks puzzled, at first. As it dawns on him what has happened, then he looks horrified and covers his face, then goes into a rage. From there until the end, he only makes reference to going after "them" - he never says a name.

When he turns Lucy over in the water and we see that it's her, he says her name with a disappointed expression (and I think it was to make sure that we notice it was her, in that dark scene) - he's not shocked or horrified that it's her.

We in the audience don't know it's Lucy until the end, nor does Ramna. But I think John knows he is going after his wife and Brother Thomas, to kill them both.

With better writing, that could have been a great twist ending.