My Own Worst Enemy has a lot going on. I like the business about Henry and Edward-the first names of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. If there are similar gags for the many other duel personalities in the show, I have not caught them. It seems that everyone who works for Henry’s boring giant company is a duel agent who has a marshmallow side and serial killer side. The serial killers do wet work while the marshmallows are the perfect cover stories.
There was a short story in Fantasy and Science Fiction in the 1980s which featured a world filled with people who lived two lives. The gist of the story, as I remember it, was that our hero hated his other self and often left him in dangerous and/or compromising positions. Skying down a mountain, in bed with a strange woman, skydiving. I don’t remember how the story ended-seems that one of the personalities was wiped-just as they do it in My Own Worst Enemy.
There is something wonderfully interesting about the idea of having a second life that even we don’t know about. The gimmick in My Own Worst Enemy is that our hero does know he is sharing his body, but there is very little he can do about it.
One of my favorite Steve Martin films was called All Of Me-about Steve having to share his body with Lily Tomlin. This was a fun film which had a mystic and magical quality instead of an implanted chip in the brain. The whole bit of two minds sharing the same body still works.
The big surprise with My Own Worst Enemy is Christian Slater, who I tend to think of as a movie star. Most American actors pick either films or TV and seldom make the break from one to the other. Slater is very good here, as both the nice guy and bad guy.
But really, the best of this kind of stuff was done by Captain Kirk himself-William Shatner. Twice he was cast out of his real man body in Star Trek and had to face his feminine side. I loved that bit where Captain Kirk’s possessed body throws a hissy fit when no one will follow her orders. The other time he was physically split in two and ended up being unfit to command. This is more what we have in My Own Worst Enemy-a soft and wimpy man and a psycho killer.
Never the twain shall meet? We’ll have to wait and see.
