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Popular Culture Review
except for one significant difference—^they have no emotions, thus they are all
essentially alike.
“It’s like the invasion of the body snatchers,” he explains. “I am being
replaced by some insidious replicant, a Joel Fleischman look-a-like ^\ilo talks
crop rotation and carburetors. I’ve got to stop this thing before it’s too late. I feel
like I’ve lost a part of myself”
The crises for the three characters in this episode are resolved when
each finds a way to restore the sense of difference on which their personal
identities are founded.
The difference between Chris and Bernard is restored unwittingly by
Shelly. She tells Chris the story of two hockey players, identical twins named
Jacques and Jiels, who were so much alike they could trade women without, as
Shelly says, being able to tell “which was slipping you the puck.” Not only did
they look exactly alike, but they played hockey exactly alike. There was one
referee, says Shelly, who hated Jiels for some reason and constantly called him
on penalties. For one game the brothers traded jerseys in an effort to trip up the
referee, but he was not fooled. He continued to call penalties against Jiels
despite the fact he was wearing his brother’s jersey. It was weird that he knew
which one was Jiels, says Shelly, but “he could tell; that’s how much he hated
him.”
Just as a nightmare resolved Chris’s critical confusion, this little story
resolves his identity crisis. Chris rushes back to explain his solution to Bernard,
who is skeptical of their being able to find their separateness in the context of
their sameness. Chris notes that it is Bernard who loves Ann, not him. “Down in
the deepest recesses of our being, down in that crazy intersection of sense, and
impulses and passion that we call the human heart, you have different wiring.
He’s not me; he is not the same. You are a different person.” Bernard is
delighted, and Chris breathes a sigh of relief
Joel’s sense of difference is restored wlien he comes into conflict with
the man who was supposed to have cleaned the heads of his VCR. When Joel
tried to watch his New York movies, the VCR did not work. The repair man
agreed to fix it for the cost of the parts, but Joel insists on having parts and labor
free as the machine worked fine before he brought it into the shop. The man
refuses, and Joel, asserting his consumer rights as he would have done at home,
sues, and his response to this conflict once again distinguishes him from his
easier-going neighbors.
“Let me get this straight,” Maggie says vslien she hears that Joel refused
the man’s offer. “Instead of a VCR that works, you have a useless VCR, a
pending lawsuit, and an enemy for life; and that makes you happy.”
“Yeah,” Joel replies.
The storylines in “Altered Egos” are clearly mediations on the
importance a felt sense of difference has in the establishment and maintenance
of personal identity.^® Without it, a sense of personal identity vanishes.