July 23, 2023-numbers 143, 144, 145

“Queen of the Nile”

I do like how the episode “Queen of the Nile” did not come right out and namedrop Cleopatra as the true identity of the ageless starlet Pamela Morris. Sure, they implied it heavily, with plenty of evidence to support such an inference, but without the specific name coming up, this felt more in doubt.

Funny how the next episode, “What’s in the Box?” actually mentions Cleopatra.

“Jordan Herrick, syndicated columnist, whose work appears in more than a hundred newspapers. By nature a cynic, a disbeliever, caught for the moment by a lovely vision. He knows the vision he’s seen is no dream; she is Pamela Morris, renowned movie star, whose name is a household word and whose face is known to millions. What Mr. Herrick does not know is that he has also just looked into the face—of the Twilight Zone.”

All I could think of as I was watching this episode was the MCU movie, The Eternals, with Kumail Nanjiani’s character Kingo being a star in movies from Bollywood and having to pretend he is a descendent after so many years, since he did not age. Of course, Kingo did not need the help of an age-sucking scarab to stay youthful.

Poor Jordan Herrick never suspected the real truth about Pamela Morris and the sacrifices that she had to make in order to stay young. I suppose if he had stayed alive, he may have uncovered the whole truth, but when you are aged so rapidly that you turn to dust on the floor, you may not be able to realize that you’ve messed up.

I liked the end of this episode as Herrick met his fate and we see how Pamela remained so young after centuries of life.

“What’s in the Box”

This is another episode of The Twilight Zone where our main protagonists are just unlikable which makes it difficult to care what happened to either of them.

“Portrait of a TV fan. Name: Joe Britt. Occupation: cab driver. Tonight, Mr. Britt is going to watch “a really big show,” something special for the cabbie who’s seen everything. Joe Britt doesn’t know it, but his flag is down and his meter’s running and he’s in high gear—on his way to the Twilight Zone”

Honestly, it was the TV repairman that may have been the worst character around. I mean, he pulls some tricks with the TV causing Joe to see his future, the murder of his wife, Phyllis. The TV repairman, played by Sterling Holloway, did not appreciate the snide comments made by Joe so he pulled something sneaky with the TV and that led to the death of Phyllis. This feels a bit much for the TV repairman’s hurt feelings. It also seems a bad turn for the voice of Winnie the Pooh, himself (Sterling Holloway).

This is basically the same story as “A Most Unusual Camera” from season 2, only this is a TV instead of a camera. Overall this is not as good as that episode and this feels excessive.

“The Masks”

You may have to use some of that inheritance for some plastic surgery.

“Mr. Jason Foster, a tired ancient who on this particular Mardi Gras evening will leave the Earth. But before departing, he has some things to do, some services to perform, some debts to pay—and some justice to mete out. This is New Orleans, Mardi Gras time. It is also the Twilight Zone.”

Jason’s family was really a rotten group of people. This makes their eventual fate quite satisfying. You kind of see it coming, but it still works because of these terrible characters. They may not be as well developed of a group of characters (this is another one that might have benefitted from the longer run time of season 4), but we get enough of each character that lets us understand how lacking they are as human beings.

Robert Keith was excellent as the dying patriarch of the family that he had clearly had enough of over the years. He was very effective delivering the exposition in a clever and revealing manner.

This was a solid episode that does deliver the justice you want. The masks were sufficiently creepy and Keith is the pulse of the whole episode.

July 22, 2023-number 142

Spoilers

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”

An episode of The Twilight Zone that was unlike any of the others shown. Namely, it is an Academy Award winner.

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was a short film that was shot in France and won at the Cannes Film Festival. It also won an Academy Award for Best Short Film. According to Wikipedia, the rights to the French film was purchased by TV producer William Froug to show to the American public. With a few adjustments (such as adding an introduction from Rod Serling and closing narration at the end), the film became the 22nd episode of The Twilight Zone.

It was also very different than other episodes because there was barely any dialogue in the film, depending on background sounds (such as bird noises or military orders) and a song laid over sections of the episode.

The story focused on a man named Peyton Farquhar, who was being prepared to be hanged by Union soldiers during the Civil War off a bridge over Owl Creek. As he was pushed off the edge of the bridge, his rope broke and he fell into the creek below. As he was fired upon by soldiers, he made his desperate attempt to escape. He successfully escaped the soldiers and wandered back to where his wife lived.

Just before their happy reunion, he snapped his head backwards and went taut and we saw, in reality, that he had never escaped and had been hanged on the bridge. We realized that everything that had happened after his rope broke took place in his head during the time when he had been pushed off the bridge and before the rope when tight.

“An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, in two forms: as it was dreamed … and as it was lived and died. This is the stuff of fantasy, the thread of imagination … the ingredients of the Twilight Zone.”

I found this to be an extremely engaging and exceptional episode of the show. I actually had figured out that he was still hanging on the bridge before the reveal, but I thought all the events that had happened were a purgatory of some sort instead of it all being in his head. I thought that twist at the end was really well done.

Roger Jacquet brought an excellent performance to the episode, showing his desperation and determination to get back to his love. The episode leaves with a haunting image of Farquhar hanging from the bridge.

July 21, 2023-number 141

Spoilers

“Spur of the Moment”

The Twilight Zone is once again dealing with time.

“This is the face of terror. Anne Marie Henderson, 18 years of age, her young existence suddenly marred by a savage and wholly unanticipated pursuit by a strange, nightmarish figure of a woman in black, who has appeared as if from nowhere and now, at driving gallop, chases the terrified girl across the countryside, as if she means to ride her down and kill her, and then suddenly and inexplicably stops to watch in malignant silence as her prey takes flight. Miss Henderson has no idea whatever as to the motive for this pursuit. Worse, not the vaguest notion regarding the identity of her pursuer. Soon enough, she will be given the solution to this twofold mystery, but in a manner far beyond her present capacity to understand, a manner enigmatically bizarre in terms of time and space – which is to say, an answer from… the Twilight Zone”

The start of this episode was pretty strong. Admittedly, it would have been nice to have the mysterious woman look a little more mysterious as you can tell immediately that this is the same actress. Still, it is unclear what was going on in the scene.

Then, to have this turn into a confrontation between old and new loves…is a totally different feel. When her former fiancé, David, arrived at the door, you get the feeling of what was going to happen. She was going to marry Robert despite her love for her childhood sweetheart and she would ruin her life. We have seen this dozens of times in narratives, the denial of true love causing pain.

However, that is not what happened. We see Anne in the future (or is it the present?), depressed, angry, her father dead, her mother begging for help and married to a drunken David. We learn that Anne did indeed run off with her love David, leaving Robert at their engagement party, and this was led her down the path to unhappiness and angst.

The future Anne realized that the frightening confrontation she had with her younger self was nothing more than a desperate attempt to warn herself of her failure.

July 20, 2023- numbers 135, 136, 138, 140

Spoilers

I have weaved around the Amazon Prime listing and I am back on regular track for the correct listing of Twilight Zone episodes. However, this morning’s episodes are quite a run of mediocre offerings.

“The Long Morrow”

This is the best of the episodes that will be on this post. A new world version of “Romeo and Juliet” where you have the doomed couple that is fated for failure.

“It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears. Case in point, the scene you’re watching. This is not a hospital, not a morgue, not a mausoleum, not an undertaker’s parlor of the future. What it is is the belly of a spaceship. It is en route to another planetary system, an incredible distance from the Earth. This is the crux of our story – a flight into space. It is also the story of the things that might happen to human beings who take a step beyond, unable to anticipate everything that might await them out there.”

“Commander Douglas Stansfield, astronaut, a man about to embark on one of history’s longest journeys: forty years out into endless space and hopefully back again. This is the beginning, the first step towards man’s longest leap into the unknown. Science has solved the mechanical details and now it’s up to one human being to breathe life into blueprints and computers, to prove once and for all that man can live half a lifetime in the total void of outer space, forty years alone in the unknown. This is Earth. Ahead lies a planetary system. The vast region in between is the Twilight Zone.”

So the plan was to put Doug into suspended animation so when he returned to earth, he would be the same age, basically, that he was when he left, though the earth would be 40 years older. However, before his departure, he met his young colleague, Sandra Horn and they fell in love. They were sad that he was leaving and, when he would return, he would be in his 70s.

The couple made decisions as it was happening that were in direct opposition. Doug chose not to go into suspended animation and age regularly while Sandra chose to go into suspended animation on earth and not age at all until he would return.

Doug did not want to saddle this young beauty with an old man so he left her. Romantic and tragic all the same time.

“The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross”

Salvadore Ross is yet another protagonist in The Twilight Zone who are unlikable and just a bad guy. I’ve seen some review that have said that the audience can relate to him with his desire to improve himself. I never got that from him. I saw him as someone who just wanted something that he couldn’t have and would go to any extremes to do it no matter what the cost. I was very pleased with the end of the episode with Salvadore taking a bullet, even though it basically destroyed the life of the man who wound up shooting him.

“Confidential personnel file on Salvadore Ross. Personality: a volatile mixture of fury and frustration. Distinguishing physical characteristic: a badly broken hand, which will require emergency treatment at the nearest hospital. Ambition: shows great determination towards self-improvement. Estimate of potential success: a sure bet for a listing in Who’s Who in the Twilight Zone.”

Salvadore had some kind of supernatural ability to make deals that would do amazing things. He made a deal with an old man in the hospital to switch his cold with Sal’s broken hand. The old man agreed, not knowing that the deal would happen.

Salvadore then started making deals to make money, to make himself old, to regain his youth… all to the detriment of the people in which he was dealing. He was not doing it to improve himself, but in order to try and make his desired woman, Leah Maitland, fall for him.

He was played with quite a temper and I definitely got the vibe from him that he would be an abusive husband. He grabbed Leah by the arm and put his hand up around her chin several times in the episode during their arguments. I found most of the early scenes between Sal and Leah to be quite cringeworthy and uncomfortable.

He bought the compassion off of Leah’s father, which led to Leah’s father shooting and killing him so he would not marry Leah. While that is a happy ending for me, it would certainly lead to prison for her father and would lead to another person out of Leah’s life. Salvadore was so selfish and self-absorbed in this episode that he turned out to be one of the worst characters on the show.

“Black Leather Jackets”

Aliens preparing for an invasion of the earth, who speak to a giant eyeball on a computer screen? Oh, and these aliens are shown wearing black leather jackets, like those troublesome kinds of the time.

“Three strangers arrive in a small town; three men in black leather jackets in an empty, rented house. We’ll call them Steve, and Scott, and Fred, but their names are not important; their mission is, as three men on motorcycles lead us into the Twilight Zone.”

There is a whole bunch of silliness here. The whole black leather jacket/motorcycle thing is a stereotype. The love story that comes between alien Scott and neighbor girl Ellen is ridiculous and makes no sense. There was zero chemistry between the two of them and I did not believe their relationship even once.

Why was the leader shown only as a giant eyeball? We may never know.

There was a recognizable face here though. Duke of Hazzard’s Uncle Jesse/Grizzly Adams’s Mad Jack, Denver Pyle played Ellen’s father, who confronted the aliens early and got mind controlled after they bullied him. Ellen was also a known actress, Shelley Fabares, Christine on Coach.

“From Agnes-with Love”

You can always tell when there is going to be an attempt at a comedic episode of The Twilight Zone. You get the cartoonish background music, trying to use the music to help make episode funnier than it was.

Again, that is unable to help this one.

“James Elwood: master programmer. In charge of Mark 502-741, commonly known as Agnes, the world’s most advanced electronic computer. Machines are made by men for man’s benefit and progress, but when man ceases to control the products of his ingenuity and imagination he not only risks losing the benefit, but he takes a long and unpredictable step into… the Twilight Zone.”

The computer named Agnes wanted to help with James’s love life, giving him tips for women (tips by the way that were remarkably sexist or even a touch misogynistic), especially one woman in particular, Millie.

The computer responded to verbal questions with the large font print on what looked like paper. The entire set up was ridiculous.

Poor little nerdy James really had no chance. He clumsily poured champagne all over Millie on one date. She, for some reason, gave him another date, even after giving her roses, flowers in which she was allergic. James, unintentionally introduced Millie to another co-worker and they hit it off really well.

Turned out that Agnes was sabotaging James, as if he needed the help, because Agnes was jealous. I guess this led to a nervous breakdown for James.. who was just trying to get some work done. James’s boss was Mr. Drysdale from the Beverly Hillbillies.

I am not sure that the show has ever had a successful episode of comedic nature. At least this comedic episode did not try to get by on slapstick and the music changed as the episode moved on.

July 19, 2023

Spoilers

This is another episode out of official order on Prime. I will continue to do the write-up according to Prime’s listing, but include the actual order/numbers.

“Number 12 Looks Just Like You”

Another mysterious and dark future is shown to us in The Twilight Zone where a dystopian future has every young person at the age of 19 is transformed into a beautiful body of their choosing, surgically. There are only a handful of choices to be made and everyone looks alike.

“Given the chance, what young girl wouldn’t happily exchange a plain face for a lovely one? What girl could refuse the opportunity to be beautiful? For want of a better estimate, let’s call it the year 2000. At any rate, imagine a time in the future where science has developed the means of giving everyone the face and body he dreams of. It may not happen tomorrow, but it happens now, in The Twilight Zone.”

The episode reminded me of Pixar’s The Incredibles. In that movie, Syndrome, the villain, wanted to give weaponry to the world because he had a hatred of the super people and he believed that “… when everyone is super… no one will be.” The same idea is going on in this episode, except instead of ‘supers,’ it is beautiful people. In fact, the quote “when everyone is beautiful, then no one will be” is used a couple of times in the episode.

The episode implies that the surgery is not voluntary, and that there is someone behind the scenes that is pushing for this conformation for all. As Marilyn had chosen not to undergo the transformation, but she is taken to the hospital and basically forced into having the surgery.

The three actors: Richard Long, Pam Austin, and Suzy Parker played all of the different roles to show how everyone in this world looked alike. Richard Long, in particular, took on all the male roles in the hospital, from doctors to orderlies to Marilyn’s father and uncle. Collin Wilcox gives a strong performance as the young girl who did not want to join the collective and become just another beautiful person. The ending of the episode is quite tragic and dark.

This is an episode that does a decent job of world building, but does not feel as if it were complete. I think this is one that could have been a successful episode in season four when there were more time for the story.

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.

July 17, 2023- number 130,131

Spoilers

“The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms”

June 25, 1876 is a dark day in the history of the US Military. June 25, 1964 was a dark day in the history of The Twilight Zone.

The episode took the story of Custer’s Last Stand and had three soldiers from the show and had them tracing the path of the past, only to get stuck in it.

“June twenty-fifth 1964—or, if you prefer, June twenty-fifth 1876. The cast of characters in order of their appearance: a patrol of General Custer’s cavalry and a patrol of National Guardsmen on a maneuver. Past and present are about to collide head-on, as they are wont to do in a very special bivouac area known as….the Twilight Zone.”

It was weird because we started with three military officers from the Old West and I thought we were getting another of the Western themed episodes of The Twilight Zone. A few moments later, there was a tank and that threw a monkey wrench into the plans.

This episode gave me more specifics about the lead up to the slaughter of Custer and his men, which was fairly interesting, but the episode did not engage me in much else. It was an intriguing premise, but the overall execution of the episode felt pretty lacking.

“A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain”

A new version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the idea how scientists will test their formulas on themselves… although this is a scientist testing his formula on his brother.

“Picture of an aging man who leads his life, as Thoreau said, ‘in quiet desperation.’ Because Harmon Gordon is enslaved by a love affair with a wife forty years his junior. Because of this, he runs when he should walk. He surrenders when simple pride dictates a stand. He pines away for the lost morning of his life when he should be enjoying the evening. In short, Mr. Harmon Gordon seeks a fountain of youth, and who’s to say he won’t find it? This happens to be the Twilight Zone.”

So, Harmon basically talks his brother into testing his formula on him because he wanted to be young again so he could keep up with the love of his life, his young wife Flora. Flora, btw, is one of those horrible characters from the Twilight Zone that you just hate.

Of course, it is also a Fountain of Youth trope and it turns out much like you would expect.

The relationship between Harmon and Flora was inconsistent and unlikable. There was no reason I believed that Harmon was in love with this rotten woman and I believe even less that she wouldn’t just walk out the door and return with a lawyer when the doctor threatened to have all of his brother’s money and the gifts that he gave her away from her if she did not take care of her newly ‘childish’ husband.

This one was not one of the better episodes of the show. Not much to benefit for the story.