"I'm funny about snow, I guess. Yeah, I get sentimental about it, I get- I get silly about it the way some people get about pussywillows and forsythia in the springtime or the way you get about kids or dogs or siamese cats, y'know. I was looking at the Post the other day and there were some pictures about the fighting in the Bulge- when was it, four years ago Christmas time? Soldiers wearing white sheets over 'em, tanks painted white, snow sifting down on them, the little pine trees piled thick with it. I thought, how awful, fellas having to fight and kill each other at Christmas time, in the snow. Blood on the snow. There oughtn't to be blood on the snow. Snow's kinda... sacred. I always thought ever since I was a kid I hope it's snowing when I die. You ever feel that way?"
As the above quote demonstrates, "Meet John Smith, John" is a very melancholy episode. Our protagonist - John Smith - meets an older man also named John Smith whose life has been one of hard luck. The younger John Smith soon finds his own life falling apart and in the same ways the elder Smith's life had done. Somehow the two men's destinies are linked by their names.
What's so unnerving about this episode is that the link between the two John Smiths is inexplicable; they are not the same person, their lives are not identical - and yet the pattern between them only seems to grow stronger as time passes.
"Meet John Smith, John" was originally broadcast October 3, 1948. You can listen to the episode at Quiet, Please.org.
Image created using Firefly.
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