June 24, 2023- numbers 81,82,83

Spoilers

“Nothing in the Dark”

Robert Redford is Mr. Death?

“An old woman living in a nightmare, an old woman who has fought a thousand battles with death and always won. Now she’s faced with a grim decision—whether or not to open a door. And in some strange and frightening way she knows that this seemingly ordinary door leads to the Twilight Zone.”

Wanda Dunn has been hiding away from Mr. Death for years. She has seen him when others have died and it has led her to shut herself inside a condemned building and not leave the premises. When a police officer is shot outside her door, she opens it up to help him.

However, everything was not as it seemed, as is common in The Twilight Zone. When another man comes to try and convince Wanda to leave because the building has to be torn down, she realized that that man could not see the injured police officer in the room.

Turns out that the police officer was Mr. Death, offering Wanda a chance to come with him. He shows Wanda her own dead body, which lies on the bed in the room.

Well acted episode and the dialogue between Robert Redford and Gladys Cooper, who played Wanda, was a highlight.

“One More Pallbearer”

Not sure how the purpose of this episode. Was it meant to be a revenge tale or simply a practical joke meant to teach the subjects an abject lesson?

Either way, I did not like this.

“What you have just looked at takes place three hundred feet underground, beneath the basement of a New York City skyscraper. It’s owned and lived in by one Paul Radin. Mr. Radin is rich, eccentric and single-minded. How rich we can already perceive; how eccentric and single-minded we shall see in a moment, because all of you have just entered the Twilight Zone.”

Paul Radin held grudges from his life and he is looking for a way to save face. He pretends that he has called back three people form his past who have treated him poorly and he pretends that the world is going to be destroyed in a nuclear bombing. He provides them safety in his bomb shelter but he asks for apologies. None of the ‘victims’ want to stay. They all prefer to go to their homes and loved ones and die together if they must. This drives Paul crazy.

None of this makes any sense and it is just filled with exposition and nonsense.

“Dead Man’s Shoes”

The shoe is on the other foot, literally.

Another weaker episode of the show, as it follows poor hobo Nathan Bledsoe as he finds a dead body and steals that body’s new shoes.

“Nathan Edward Bledsoe, of the Bowery Bledsoes, a man once, a specter now. One of those myriad modern-day ghosts that haunt the reeking nights of the city in search of a flop, a handout, a glass of forgetfulness. Nate doesn’t know it but his search is about to end, because those shiny new shoes are going to carry him right into the capital of the Twilight Zone.”

The shoes belonged to a gangster named Dane, whose spirit then possessed Nathan in an attempt to gain revenge on the gangster that killed him.

However, Dane shows himself not very smart as he winds up dead again and dumped in another alley (this time, it being poor Nathan). Another hobo takes the shoes and apparently starts the circle all over again.