D. W. Griffith did not "usurp" the position of McCutcheon; rather he inherited and profited from the fine work that McCutcheon had done. For the importance of McCutcheon see my review of Caught by Wireless. McCutcheon who was getting on in years and, presumably, not well (he was in fact still under fifty but was known to everyone as "the old man"). He was very largely responsible for creating the first director-unit system at Mutoscope (along with writer Frank Marion and cinematographer A. E. Weed and later Billy Bitzer). Now he simply retired in the hope that his son Wallace was succeed him. Unfortunately McCutcheon Jr. turned out to be incompetent which is what gave Griffith his chance. But he owed an enormous debt to McCutcheon Sr.
This print is played over-fast which gives the film much more of an old-fashioned look than it should really have. It is a simple gag but well told. Interesting to note that McCutcheon prefers the no fourth wall/split screen device to cross-cutting. It is in its way equally effective and would be popular during the next decade. Lois Weber's use of it in the 1913 film Suspense, for instance, is well known and much praised although it actually copies a use by Edwin Porter in the lost 1908 film Heard on the Phone. (both films are based on André de Lorde's 1901 play Au téléhone of which Griffith also made a version, Lonely Villa, in 1909 where. characteristically he used cross-cutting rather than a spit screen.). But there is more than one way to pluck a duck, as the French say.
More of an innovation, although to my mind a bit retrograde - back to the vaudeville "facial" - and irritating, are the close-up scenes in the course of what I assume is intended to be a cab-ride. Such scenes also enjoyed something of a vogue in the years that followed. A very similar scene, for instance, occurs in the Bunnyfinch Tangled Tangoists (1914)
LIttle is know about McCutcheon but he seems to have had a background in the theatre, which was one of his strengths as a director. Griffith, by contrast, was just a failed occasional actor. He is not too bad in this however.