Tim Burton rewatch! After his success with Pee-Wee, Burton went back to television for a while for one of the most Burton-y things you’ll ever see, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Jar.

Here’s what happens: A struggling artist is in poor financial shape, in danger of his friend losing her hole-in-the-wall gallery. Then he purchases a jar with a… thing inside of it. People are inexplicably mesmerized by the jar, and the gallery becomes an overnight success as folks line up to see it. But the question remains, what’s inside the jar?

Origin story: Ray Bradbury was allegedly inspired to write his short story The Jar after recalling a childhood memory of seeing a medical display featuring organs preserved in formaldehyde jars. The story has been adapted several times over the years, on various anthology TV series.

Speaking of which, the original Alfred Hitchcock Presents ran from 1955 to 1962, followed by The Alfred Hitchcock Hour from 1962 to 1965. It popularized Hitch’s “Good evening” and gave him his iconic theme music. Anthology TV had a big comeback in the 1980s, with Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories and the much-hyped Twilight Zone revival. NBC brought back Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1985 with colorized Hitch intros and new stories. These were mostly crime vignettes with twist endings rather than anything supernatural, at least not until Bradbury and Burton showed up with The Jar.   

Outsider theory: Our artist Noel is definitely the outsider, as the gallery is struggling and no one understands his art before the jar comes along. When someone asks him about what his art symbolizes, he responds, “It’s not supposed to be anything.”

Reality breaks through: What are we to make of the episode’s WWII-set prologue, where a woman uses the jar to distract a Nazi soldier pursuing her? Is it important for us to know that the jar is somehow immortal, or that it has a long history of violence and terror? I don’t get it.

Best bits: “Special? It looks like something you picked up in Tijuana! It looks like a lump of clay with a fight wig on it!”

Thoughts on this viewing: This is a terrific episode of television. Setting it in the art world allows Burton to run wild with funky lighting and set design. A bunch of cult actors, including Paul Bartel, Lorraine Newman, and Griffin Dunne, give big, broad performances, matching the visuals. Some fans say they’d like to see a feature-length version of this, but I’ll argue this has everything you want from a Burton movie in just 30 minutes.

Next: Tell me a story.

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