The episode explores people's willingness to wallow in misery and hate, through the example of a woman who submits herself to serving first her mean-spirited uncle, and later the robot he malevolently designed.
Frustrated with his abuse, nagging, and constant demands for hot chocolate, Barbara declines to assist and purposefully lets him die.
It eventually acts and sounds just like him — right down to the old man’s limp, which it develops as a result of damage from Barbara’s attempt to destroy it by pushing it over backward.
The robot repeats insults that Uncle Simon had programmed, berating Barbara as a “bovine crab” and “peanut-headed sample of nature’s carelessness.” Since Mr. Schwimmer makes regular visits to ensure that Barbara is taking proper care of the robot, as per the stipulations of the will, she has no choice but to submit to its continuing verbal abuse and demands — including bringing it hot chocolate as she did for Simon — or risk being disinherited.
Dramatis personae, a metal man who'll go by the name of Simon, whose life as well as his body has been stamped out for him; and the woman who tends to him, the lady Barbara, who's discovered belatedly that all bad things don't come to an end, and that once a bed is made, it's quite necessary that you sleep in it.