June 30, 2023-numbers 99, 100,101

Spoilers

These bring a close to season three of The Twilight Zone.

“Young Man’s Fancy”

“Young Man’s Fancy” or “what a Mama’s Boy” is the next Twilight Zone episode. While I found this one interesting, I did think the ending was fairly predictable and one has to wonder what the wife was thinking by marrying this loser.

That may be too harsh.

“You’re looking at the house of the late Mrs. Henrietta Walker. This is Mrs. Walker herself, as she appeared twenty-five years ago. And this, except for isolated objects, is the living room of Mrs. Walker’s house, as it appeared in that same year. The other rooms upstairs and down are pretty much the same. The time, however, is not twenty-five years ago but now. The house of the late Mrs. Henrietta Walker is, you see, a house which belongs almost entirely to the past, a house which, like Mrs. Walker’s clock here, has ceased to recognize the passage of time. Only one element is missing now, one remaining item in the estate of the late Mrs. Walker: her son, Alex, thirty-four years of age and, up till twenty minutes ago, the so-called perennial bachelor. With him is his bride, the former Miss Virginia Lane. They’re returning from the city hall in order to get Mr. Walker’s clothes packed, make final arrangements for the sale of the house, lock it up and depart on their honeymoon. Not a complicated set of tasks, it would appear, and yet the newlywed Mrs. Walker is about to discover that the old adage ‘You can’t go home again’ has little meaning in the Twilight Zone”

I do believe this is one of the episodes that I had seen before because, although I was not sure of what was the main plot, I do remember something about that haunted grandfather’s clock.

Mrs. Walker also seemed to give up pretty quickly considering she had started it all with her comments to the mother before any of the haunting began. Something about ‘claws.’ Still, you would think that you would understand about the deep-seeded connection to his mother Alex held before she married him. Discovering this unhealthy aspect of his character before the honeymoon feels like a mistake on her part as much as his.

“I Sing the Body Electric”

Mary Poppins meets A.I. in this sentimental episode of The Twilight Zone that just felt like there was something missing for me.

Larry Tate (er… I mean David White, the actor who played Larry on Bewitched) returned to the Twilight Zone as a busy widowed father with three kids that he has apparently been ignoring. They find an advertisement for an artificial intelligence that could be a nanny.

“They make a fairly convincing pitch here. It doesn’t seem possible, though, to find a woman who must be ten times better than mother in order to seem half as good, except, of course, in the Twilight Zone”

So it is Mary Poppins as a robot. They even go as far as having a kite scene. However, the movie Mary Poppins came out in 1964 while this episode was shown in 1962. Maybe this episode was inspired by the Mary Poppins book by P.L. Travers which was written in the later 30s.

There were some intriguing character moments here, especially with Anne, one of the little kids, but things resolve too quickly and wrap up so saccharine sweet that it did not feel like the Twilight Zone. Admittedly, the scene where the kids run around the Facsimile Ltd. factory picking out body parts for the robot was unbelievably creepy (which I do not think it was meant to be). Plus, robot, that they called Grandma- also creepy- did not have the hair that the boy picked out. What a rip off!

“Cavender is Coming”

You would think that an episode of The Twilight Zone featuring EYG Hall of Famer Carol Burnett would not be after three full seasons my least favorite episode of the series. But you would be wrong.

Another example of how comedy has been one of The Twilight Zone’s Achilles’ Heel, this episode is just features so many unfunny things and a story so bad that it can only be saved (somewhat) by the charm of Carol Burnett.

This is yet another homage to “It’s A Wonderful Life” as Cavender is a guardian angel trying to get his wings by helping out clumsy Carol. The slapstick does not work as the episode never fully commits to it, and when it does, it just does not hit. The Twilight Zone seems to insist on adding silly sound effects to their comedic episodes that just do not aid anything.

There is a nice message of the episode about not needing wealth to be happy, but the execution just is not there. The angels in heaven scenes are like a high school production they are so amateurish.

“A word to the wise now to any and all who might suddenly feel the presence of a cigar-smoking helpmate who takes bankbooks out of thin air. If you’re suddenly aware of any such celestial aids, it means that you’re under the beneficent care of one Harmon Cavender, guardian angel. And this message from the Twilight Zone: Lotsa luck!”

Season four is next. Only 18 episodes, but they expand to an hour long.