Mr. Mulligan, a rather dour critic of his times, is shortly to discover the import of that old phrase, 'Out of the frying pan into the fire'—said fire burning brightly at all times—in The Twilight Zone.Woodrow Mulligan is a grumpy man in 1890, dissatisfied with what his world has come to: the nation's budget surplus is only 85 million dollars, prices are shockingly high to him, and his once-quiet town of Harmony, New York is bustling with livestock roaming the streets, which are full of horse-drawn carriages and penny-farthing bicycles moving at the speed limit of 8 mph.

Mulligan tries it on and it sends him to 1961; Harmony is now a busy city with streets full of cars, all sorts of urban noise, and astonishingly high prices.

To which it might be added, 'and, if possible, assist others to stay in theirs'—via, of course, The Twilight Zone.Buster Keaton was once one of the biggest stars of the silent era, and this episode featuring him was intended as an homage to that work.

[1] One sequence, occurring almost immediately after traveling to the episode's present day, is a near exact replication of a gag Keaton introduced some forty-one years earlier in a Fatty Arbuckle film titled The Garage.

[citation needed] The parts set in the 1890s are done in the style of a silent film with intertitles and feature only a soundtrack of a saloon piano (and Rod Serling's customary opening and closing narration).