July 18, 2023- numbers 132, 133, 134

“Ninety Years Without Slumbering”

More grandfather clock shenanigans on The Twilight Zone.

“Each man measures his time; some with hope, some with joy, some with fear. But Sam Forstmann measures his allotted time by a grandfather’s clock, a unique mechanism whose pendulum swings between life and death, a very special clock that keeps a special kind of time—in the Twilight Zone.”

Sam was a grandfather living with his granddaughter and he believed that as soon as the grandfather clock stopped running, he would die. So he was obsessively rewinding it, making sure that it never stopped. His granddaughter and her husband were getting concerned that grandpa had lost his mind.

There was a whole psychiatrist thing happen, but grandpa wound up selling the clock to a neighbor so he could keep taking care of it. However, the neighbors left town for the weekend and the clock was going to stop ticking. Grandpa tried to break in but he got caught by the cops.

So Grandpa had accepted his fate, that he was getting ready to die. He spirit left his body and then… he told his spirit that he wasn’t going to die. He just said, nope… not dying tonight.

This was such a silly end to an episode that could have had some real anxiety to it, but never did. Just a waste of an episode. Ed Wynn is a likable actor though and he did a good job with his performance, but the writing was just not up to par.

“Ring-a-Ding Girl”

I have complained a few times during the Daily Zone that The Twilight Zone had plenty of episodes that had a pretty solid set-up, a very good premise, but the ending just did not pay it off properly. Well, this is the first time that I can remember from the series that the episode was dull and not working for me, until the ending, which was absolutely fantastic and pulled the episode off the heap.

“Introduction to Bunny Blake. Occupation: film actress. Residence: Hollywood, California, or anywhere in the world that cameras happen to be grinding. Bunny Blake is a public figure; what she wears, eats, thinks, says is news. But underneath the glamour, the makeup, the publicity, the buildup, the costuming, is a flesh-and-blood person, a beautiful girl about to take a long and bizarre journey into The Twilight Zone.”

Bunny Blake received this mood ring from her sister that she hadn’t seen in years and, though she was expected to be in Rome to film her next movie, she decided to stop off in her hometown and see her sister. Bunny was seeing images in the ring of people she knew from the town and they kept asking for Bunny’s help.

Bunny was intended to be shown as a stuck-up, vain actress that would look down on the common world. However, Maggie McNamara, the actress playing Bunny, was so charming and relatable, I never once held any of that against her. You could feel that there was something going on with her, but I had no idea what it was. And that is what would eventually make this episode better than expected.

Bunny was definitely trying to get the town to not go to the park for the annual founder’s day picnic. None of it made sense… until it did.

We find out that Bunny was actually on a plane that would crash into the park, killing all the people who attended. But since Bunny had worked to get the people elsewhere, she saved most of the townspeople. We then learn that Bunny was truly on the plane and had died in the crash, and that the Bunny who was here visiting her sister and fixing it so the town would not be at the park was just a spirit.

“We are all travelers. The trip starts in a place called birth, and ends in that lonely town called death. And that’s the end of the journey, unless you happen to exist for a few hours, like Bunny Blake, in the misty regions of the Twilight Zone.”

As I was watching this episode, I was thinking that it was going to be a very low 3 or perhaps a high 2 for the rating, but then the ending happened and I found myself elevating the episode all the way up to …

That shows how a successful twist at the end of the show can improve what they had seen. It made everything make more sense and put a real emotional touch on the episode.

“You Drive”

I hated Oliver Pope immediately.

There have been a bunch of characters that have appeared on The Twilight Zone over the previous 133 episodes that I disliked. There were even a few that I hated, but Oliver Pope is right near the top of that list.

“Portrait of a nervous man: Oliver Pope by name, office manager by profession. A man beset by life’s problems: his job, his salary, the competition to get ahead. Obviously, Mr. Pope’s mind is not on his driving.”

When the narration finished, Oliver hit a kid on a bicycle with his car and then drove off. Rod Serling continued his narration:

“Oliver Pope, businessman-turned-killer, on a rain-soaked street in the early evening of just another day during just another drive home from the office. The victim, a kid on a bicycle, lying injured, near death. But Mr. Pope hasn’t time for the victim, his only concern is for himself. Oliver Pope, hit-and-run driver, just arrived at a crossroad in his life, and he’s chosen the wrong turn. The hit occurred in the world he knows, but the run will lead him straight into—the Twilight Zone.”

Oliver went home, filled with guilt, but not filled enough to do anything about it. He was more concerned with his job and a guy who he believed was trying to get his job. And when that guy got arrested as a suspect in the hit-and-run, Oliver celebrated the fact that he did not have to worry about his job any more.

The episode started with some good creepiness as the car in his garage was making noises. Unfortunately, the rest of the episode got really silly, as the car would honk its horn, drive itself back from the shop, and chase Oliver down the road.

There was a moment when it looked like the car was going to run over Oliver’s head, but it stopped short of that. Instead, it drove Oliver to the police station where he, apparently, confessed to the hit-and-run that had killed the boy.

I don’t know if this episode inspired Stephen King to write Christine, but it did not inspire me to do anything but want a more satisfying punishment for Oliver.