“The Whole Truth” is significant in the way it presaged the premise of the Jim Carrey hitby more than three decades: It’s about a shady used car salesman who loses the ability to lie after inheriting a “haunted” car. The humor doesn’t go far beyond the simplistic and one-note “used car salesman has to tell the truth about the crappy vehicles he’s trying to unload” joke. To add insult to injury, the episode ends with a button that condones the prejudices stemming from the era’s Cold War paranoia.
This caper about a group of robbers stealing millions of dollars’ worth of gold and then putting themselves in suspended animation in order to get away with their crimes has a terrific twist ending that lays the dark humor on thick. Unfortunately, the pacing before that point is rather too languid, and Serling spends more than enough time on the robbers bickering—which turns out to be unimportant to the episode’s narrative. Yet almost all is forgiven once we reach the climax.