June 12, 2023- numbers 45, 46

Spoilers

After three of the best episodes of the series so far in the last group of four, the enxt to are watchable and enjoyable, while not, perhaps, extraordinary.

“The Trouble with Templeton”

An aging theater actor, whose wife is openly cheating on him, reminisces back to his first wife who had since died.

“Pleased to present for your consideration, Mr. Booth Templeton; serious and successful star of over thirty Broadway plays, who is not quite all right today. Yesterday and its memories is what he wants, and yesterday is what he’ll get. Soon his years and his troubles will descend on him in an avalanche. In order not to be crushed Mr. Booth Templeton will escape from his theater and his world, and make his debut on another stage, in another world, that we call the Twilight Zone.”

Arriving late for his latest play, a hotshot new director chastised Templeton, causing the actor to flee from the theater. Before he knew it, Booth Templeton found himself back in the middle 1920s and was able to go to see his late wife Laura once again.

However, as is the case with most of The Twilight Zone episodes, Templeton did not expect what he found. His wife Laura was at a speakeasy having a lot of fun and was not overly pleased to see Templeton. She wanted to stay and dance whereas Templeton wanted to go be alone with his wife.

Templeton realized that his idyllic memories of Laura had been shaped by his loss and his loneliness and that his wife was not as perfect as he thought he remembered. He found a script in his pocket covering the very conversation he was having. He decided that the ghosts of the past were performing this play for him to bring him out of his funk.

When he returned to the present, Templeton faced the new director and, filled with new confidence, demanded the respect he deserved.

This was a solid episode with a nice use of the time travel trope.

“A Most Unusual Camera”

Chester and Paula Diedrich were a married couple who worked together as small time thieves, robbing antique shops. In their hotel room, they were going over their disappointing haul from that night’s robbery.

“A hotel suite that, in this instance, serves as a den of crime, the aftermath of a rather minor event to be noted on a police blotter, an insurance claim, perhaps a three-inch box on page twelve of the evening paper. Small addenda to be added to the list of the loot: a camera, a most unimposing addition to the flotsam and jetsam that it came with, hardly worth mentioning really, because cameras are cameras, some expensive, some purchasable at five-and-dime stores. But this camera, this one’s unusual because in just a moment we’ll watch it inject itself into the destinies of three people. It happens to be a fact that the pictures that it takes can only be developed in The Twilight Zone.“

Chester and Paula find a strange box camera among their loot and they wind up taking a picture with it. The picture showed Paula wearing a fur coat, that she did not own. A few minutes later, she found a fur coat among the objects that they had stolen and she put it on, striking the exact pose shown in the picture.

They took a second picture with the camera which showed Paula’s brother standing in the doorway. They knew that couldn’t happen because he was in prison. Yet, a few minutes later, her brother Woodward entered the room claiming to have escaped.

Chester realized that the camera was taking pictures that showed the very near future. Trying to find a way to take advantage of the camera, they went to the race track and made a ton of money taking pictures of the winner’s board before the races started and then betting on the winners shown in the pic.

The greed and selfishness of the trio came through later when a French bellhop decoded the camera indicating that they only are able to take 10 pictures. They argued over what to do with the final two and eventually led to Chester and Woodward falling out the window to their death.

That point would have made a dark and satisfying ending for the episode, but unfortunately, it kept going. For some reason, Paula took a picture of the dead bodies from her window with the camera. The French bell hop returned and stole the money, threatening to turn Paula in. He took the picture of the dead bodies and said that there were more than two.

Oddly, Paula went rushing to the window to look at the bodies and she tripped, flying out he window as well. Then the bellhop looked at the picture and saw four bodies and somehow fell out the window too.

That ending turned out to really cut into what was a decent episode. The cartoony ending, especially with Paula and the bellhop, tarnished what could have been a solid, though dark ending.

Overall the episode was fine, but it could have been so much more.