July 24, 2023-Numbers 146, 147, 148, 149

Spoilers

“I Am the Night-Color Me Black”

Director Abner Biberman was responsible for one of the best shots of the entire episode, as this point of view shot through the hangman’s noose was one of the images that truly stuck with me over this entire series.

“Sheriff Charlie Koch on the morning of an execution. As a matter of fact, it’s seven-thirty in the morning. Logic and natural laws dictate that at this hour there should be daylight. It is a simple rule of physical science that the sun should rise at a certain moment and supersede the darkness. But at this given moment, Sheriff Charlie Koch, a deputy named Pierce, a condemned man named Jagger, and a small, inconsequential village will shortly find out that there are causes and effects that have no precedent. Such is usually the case—in the Twilight Zone.”

There were a couple of familiar faces popped up in this episode. Ivan Dixon, Kinch from Hogan’s Heroes, and George Lindsey, Goober Pyle from the Andy Griffith Show, appear in this episode.

While this episode turned out to be a touch preachy, I really enjoyed the idea of the darkness overcoming the small town, how hate can only bring more hate to the world. The anger of the crowd toward Jagger, who killed a bigot supposedly in self-defense, and the desire of Goober to see him hanged really stood out.

According to Wikipedia, this episode was penned by Rod Serling as a response to the assassination of John Kennedy.

“Sounds and Silences”

Here is another Twilight Zone episode that suffers from a lead character that is wholly unlikable.

However, some of the comments made about Roswell by his staff and co-workers were very inappropriate and were directed simply at his weight. That makes them every bit as bad as this guy, who is absolutely obnoxious and loud.

“This is Roswell G. Flemington, two hundred and twenty pounds of gristle, lung tissue and sound decibels. He is, as you have perceived, a noisy man, one of a breed who substitutes volume for substance, sound for significance, and shouting to cover up the readily apparent phenomenon that he is nothing more than an overweight and aging perennial Sea Scout whose noise-making is in inverse ratio to his competence and to his character. But soon our would-be admiral of the fleet will embark on another voyage. This one is an unchartered and twisting stream that heads for a distant port called the Twilight Zone.”

This episodes shows the progression of a man and his succumbing to a mental illness. The episode shows Roswell first hearing every sound at a deafening level and then, after seeing a psychiatrist, trying to be able to control the sound, succeeding in a sense, but unable to adjust that volume back up again.

Another episode with sound effects that are truly awful, which is bad considering how important they are to this story. Overall, unlikable protagonist and unenterable sound beats in the story. One of the weaker episodes of the series.

“Caesar and Me”

The idea of a living ventriloquist dummy returns to “Caesar and Me.”

“Jonathan West, ventriloquist, a master of voice manipulation. A man, late of Ireland, with a talent for putting words into other peoples’ mouths. In this case, the other person is a dummy, aptly named Caesar, a small splinter with large ideas, a wooden tyrant with a mind and a voice of his own, who is about to talk Jonathan West – into the Twilight Zone.”

This is another episode that deals with mental illness, as Jonathan West descends into a dark place because of the machinations of the dummy, Caesar. Of course, the episode makes us think that Caesar can talk, but this is clearly a metaphor for someone hearing voices and having those voices make you do things. Jackie Cooper’s desperate pleading to Caesar to talk when the police had arrived was a haunting moment of a very good episode.

This is the same dummy used in the season three episode entitled “The Dummy.” On fact, in my head (although not labeled as such) I considered this a sequel to that episode, seeing where the dummy ends up after that last appearance.

There is also one of the worst characters of the show. The young girl named Susan, played by Morgan Brittany (who appeared later in Dallas), was just a horrible person and shown as a whiny, cruel, mean-spirited character and I do not think it is a coincidence that she ends up with Caesar at the end of the episode.

“A little girl and a wooden doll. A lethal dummy in the shape of a man. But everybody knows dummies can’t talk – unless, of course, they learn their vocabulary in the Twilight Zone.”

While this is not as great as “The Dummy,” “Caesar and Me” is another very strong episode that I enjoyed tremendously.

“The Jeopardy Room”

Welcome to The twilight Zone, Martin Landau!

Some spycraft arrives in the Twilight Zone with a single room setting, creating some stress and claustrophobia.

“The cast of characters—a cat and a mouse, this is the latter. The intended victim who may or may not know that he is to die, be it by butchery or ballet. His name is Major Ivan Kuchenko. He has, if events go according to certain plans, perhaps three or four more hours of living. But an ignorance shared by both himself and his executioner, is of the fact that both of them have taken the first step into the Twilight Zone.”

The cat and mouse between Martin Landau and John van Dreelen (who played Commissar Vassiloff) was the highlight of this episode. Vassiloff was clearly interested in finding a worthy adversary which he even placed above the actual mission – which was to kill Kuchenko.

Because of his personal machinations, Vassiloff created several holes that allowed Kuchenko a chance to survive. Vassiloff even pulled The Dread Pirate Roberts’ trick of drinking a poison that he was immune to in order to win the confrontation. No idea if this was Iocane Powder or not, though that was the deadliest poisons known to man and it did not kill Kuchenko (Love a good Princess Bride connection!)

I did like this episode a lot, but the ending turned out to be cheesy. Kuchenko turned the trap back onto Vassiloff and his henchman Boris, a henchman that proved himself to be a really stupid one, answering a booby trapped phone even though he knew that it had a bomb in it. That ending was a bit of a drawback to the solid episode.

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The Daily Zone is down to seven remaining episodes in the final season of the original version of The Twilight Zone.