"Death and the Joyful Woman" is an episode of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" that simply has too much story and with so many story elements, it seemed rather convoluted.
Luis Aguilar (Gilbert Roland) is a truly awful person. He owns a winery and should be a happy man...but instead he's bitter and awful. Through the course of the episode, you learn that he has disowned his son because the young man refused to marry a woman his father demanded he marry. Why? Because she is from a family that owns another large winery...and the marriage would combine them into one huge winery. I could go on from here about the plot but frankly I don't want to. It's confusing and too many store elements are here...and the entire final portion comes from out of left field.
So is it any good? Well, the plot certainly isn't. Gilbert Roland is great playing a huge jerk...he did a good job. But otherwise this episode left me very flat and seemed unnecessarily complicated. It also had a few technical issues (such as a son who drank until he was unconscious...and yet only minutes later he seemed 100% sober). All in all, an episode I just didn't enjoy.
