Ray Bradbury Theater - 2x03 - The Emissary

    A young boy with some chronic illness (although he never looks too sick) has a dog that runs around the neighborhood.  The dog brings things back to him, usually trivial; a flower, a piece of wood, and so forth.  He tags the dog with an invitation to come back and visit him.  This invitation brings a teacher that the boy would have if he were going to school.
    They build a relationship, reading books and such.  It's implied that the boy has a crush on her.  Then one day, she dies.  Then the dog goes out, disappearing for a few days as he digs her up to bring her back.
    And that's where the episode ends - an ambiguous note of what sort of thing comes through the door into his room.  A rotting corpse?  An angel?
    The truth is, it's hard to care.  I've never had much interest in stories of people trapped in bed, yearning for companionship.  (Now that I think of it, it's hard to come up with another example)  But I just don't care about the boy.  I don't find the teacher very interesting.  I would say that the centerpiece of the story is the dog, but I didn't even find the dog's behavior acceptable.  Early when we see it, it runs down a sidewalk, and across an intersection.  Even if I didn't care about leash laws, I don't feel like a dog that runs into intersections would live too long.  Then the dog also has a serious problem with barking.  While the implication is that he's trying to find a friend for his boy, the dog would be aware that barking at people isn't an effective way of getting them to like you.
    Meh.  Not much of an episode.

    And it appears that the DVD set of this show has the episodes in a different sequence.  I don't know if this is by production code or what, but I'm watching them in the order they appear on the disc.