June 20, 2023-numbers 68,69,70

Spoilers

Season three started kind of meh, but then we got three really good episodes in a row.

“The Shelter”

Realistic episodes of The Twilight Zone are few and far between. Most of them have some bit of magical/mystical buts to them. However, every once in awhile we come across those that are grounded in reality.

“The Shelter” has no mysterious aliens, magical curses or unbelievable circumstances. It is about something that could have easily happened in the early days of the Cold War.

It is Dr. Bill Stockton’s birthday and a bunch of the neighborhood friends were over celebrating. When a message from the President comes across the television that there were incoming unidentified objects approaching the US and that people should take cover.

The people assumed that these were incoming nuclear weapons fired from an enemy. Bill, who had been constructing a bomb shelter beneath his home, got his wife and son to work, organizing food, water and essentials while the neighbors, who had teased and made fun of Bill for his choice, scattered back to their houses for their own families.

As Bill locked his family into the bomb shelter, the others came to him, begging Bill to let them inside the shelter too. Bill, saying that it was only built for three, refused. This sent the group into a rage, forming a mob mentality. They were in such a panic that they were even turning on each other, showing their anxieties and their natural bigotry.

Eventually, they constructed a battering ram and broke open the door to the bomb shelter. Just as they had burst through, the announcement that the objects were identified as satellites and were not bombs came through, leaving the mob shocked and dejected over their behaviors.

Honestly, if I were Dr. Bill Stockton, I would have immediately told these people to get the hell out of my house and to never come back. Perhaps he was filled with remorse over the decision to leave everyone outside the shelter, but there was little for him to do.

Watching these friends and neighbors turn on each other and become a hysterical mob was difficult and knowing that this is they nature of the human race is hard to swallow. It was a very compelling episode.

“The Passersby”

Civil War. North vs. South. Southerners vs. Yankees. There have been plenty of stories told about this tragic time of our country’s history.

Episode four of season three of the Twilight Zone heads into the past to the end of the Civil War for a specific ghost story.

A widowed Southern woman sits out front of her home as a wounded sergeant approaches asking for water. Other wounded soldiers walked on the street past the house. We have no idea where they are heading.

The woman told a story about her husband’s death and how she planned on killing the next Union soldier that passed by. The Sergeant told her that a Union soldier had saved his life and that he hoped that she would not do so. When a Union soldier stopped, silhouetted on his horse, and asked for water, she did shoot him, though the gun apparently did not hit him. With light from the Sergeant’s lantern, it was revealed that the soldier on the horse had a terrible injury to his eyes and face, and everyone realized that he was dead… and that they were dead too, the sergeant from the war and the woman from a fever she had.

This is where the episode should have ended. However, it went too far, feeling the need to explain everything going on with needless exposition. What was going on was obvious and then, with the arrival of Lincoln, who was also dead at this point, the episode took a bit of a turn.

“Incident on a dirt road during the month of April, the year 1865. As we’ve already pointed out, it’s a road that won’t be found on a map, but it’s one of many that lead in and out of the Twilight Zone.”

This was excellent until the last five minutes or so. The episode was still exceptional, but the need to explain everything weakened a very eerie episode.

“A Game of Pool”

Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters are actors known for some of their comedic performances, but this was a straight-forward dramatic turn for both and they deliver a compelling and thrilling episode, all around a game of pool.

“Jesse Cardiff, pool shark, the best on Randolph Street, who will soon learn that trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risks. In or out of the Twilight Zone.”

When Jesse Cardiff challenged the late, great Fats Brown to a pool match to determine who was the best pool player of all time, Jesse never expected the challenge to be answered Nor did he expect that he would be playing the game of pool for his life.

Jesse, who spent his entire life in the pool halls honing his game above everything else, placed his life on the line for this challenge.

There was a lot of tension built during the game as the two men argued and debated about their lives and the challenge before them. When Jesse won, Fats was not unhappy. This is because of the twist that Fats knew. As the best ever, Jesse had to replace Fats as the pool challenge and could not enjoy the afterlife.

A really good episode with a twist at the end that helped take the episode to another level. Two great performances too as Klugman and Winters worked extremely well together.