Let’s face it, party crashers are rats, but what happens when your party crashers really are ratus ratus, and what can Barty do about it?

Simon and Eugene discuss the episode, During Barty’s Party.

Synopsis:

We open on a romantic scene.  An open-top two-seat sports car, parked on a country road, music playing on the radio and the screams of the amorous couple.

Angie, who lives nearby, is asleep, but their screams invade her dreams and deeply upset her.  When he husband, Roger, comes home from the city he finds her at home, blasting rock and roll music and, apparently, drinking bit heavily.   She’s nervous and feeling alone.  She’d tried calling him, but he’d already left the office.  She’d tried to visit their neighbors, the Gibsons, but they’re not home today.

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There’s a rat under the floorboards making noises and it’s really bothering her.  She set the dog, Buster, on him earlier but he ran off out the door and hasn’t come back.  Roger brings a typically manly perspective to the situation, basically, “buck up, woman, you’re getting hysterical over nothing.  It’s just a rat.”  He stomps the floor and the rat is gone.

Angie points out the sports car to Roger.  It’s been there since I woke up from my nightmare sleep, door wide open.  Don’t you think that’s odd?

“Not really, no.”

While Roger attends to some unfinished business on the phone, Angie turns on the radio, listening to the program, Barty’s Party, a light mixture of inane banter and popular music.  On it, Barty notes a few people have been calling in from the country with reports of flocks of rats swarming.  Isn’t that funny.

And then the rat is back.  Or perhaps I should say, rats, for there are now more than one.

Roger refuses to leave and go out for dinner, as Angie asks, because he will not be ratted out of his home.  He calls the police to see if there’s anything to the whole rats story on the radio, but they’ve heard nothing and suggest ringing the council in the morning.

There are more rats.  And they are following them through the house.

Roger decides to whip up some chlorine gas to kills the rats, but when he tries to get water the line is clogged.  “It was the rats,” posits Angie.

“Nonsense,” counters Roger.

Angie calls Barty’s Party and tells them what’s going on, and it actually concerns Barty enough to try to send help, but before Angie can give their address, the phone line goes dead.  Then the electricity.  Roger loses it.  First trying to rip up the floorboards to pour in his chlorine mixture, and then finally succumbing to hysterical panic.

Angie formulates an escape plan using their fencing gear to help them get to the car.

Just when they are about to start, the Gibson’s return and they are overjoyed.  Shouting from the window across the way, “  We’re coming over, OK?”

And the rats are gone.  But soon they know why, as the Gibson’s are ripped to shreds by the rats in front of Roger and Angie’s eyes.

And the rats are back, and the doors are giving way to their relentless chewing.  As Angie helps the panic paralyzed Roger upstairs, on the radio, Barty is trying to reach Angie, thinking it might be a hoax, but he certainly hopes she really is a real person.”

We fade to black.

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