The Twiligh Zone -- Season 2 Episode 17 (Twenty Two)

There were some episodes of The Twilight Zone that seemed to pack a lot in.  They seemed like feature-length movies condensed to fit into a half-hour time slot.  Others seemed to drag on.  It stands to reason that not every episode would be a winner.  There were 156 of them.  Still, it seemed like Twenty Two could have done a little better.

The episode is about a woman named Liz Powell, who is recuperating in a hospital.  She keeps having these weird dreams where she finds herself in the morgue.  The woman there says, “Room for one more, honey.”  She’s not hurt in any of the dreams, nor does she seem to be in any danger.  It still freaks her out.

Her doctor tries to reassure her by introducing Liz to the morgue’s night nurse, who isn’t the same woman as in Liz’s dream.  Liz is still uneasy, but is eventually released.  It’s not until Liz tries to board Flight 22.  When she sees a flight attendant who matches the woman from her dream, Liz runs back to the terminal.  It’s a good thing, too, as the plane explodes.

It’s a rather simple episode by Twilight Zone standards.  Yes, we get the twist ending and all, but there didn’t seem to be as much buildup.  Part of the problem for me is that I’ve seen many of the episodes more than a few times.  Even if I don’t remember the episodes in their entirety, I usually have some sense of what’s going to happen.

Therein lies the problem.  This is one of the episodes that has little replay value.  It’s not particularly entertaining.  It also doesn’t have much of an ironic twist.  It’s more like an urban legend that was acted out.  It’s safe enough in terms of violence and language that it would be safe for most middle-school students.  This is basically going to be one of those free-period things a teacher might have on standby.  Maybe show it to your kid to waste a half an hour.  However, there’s a reason that I don’t normally think of this episode first when it comes to The Twilight Zone.

 

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The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 2 Episode 16 (A Penny for Your Thoughts)

I’ve often wondered what it would be like if everyone could read minds for a few days.  Even beyond honesty, to have that kind of unfettered access to someone’s inner thoughts could be devastating to people, if not society.  Imagine a person finding out that they married someone who was unfaithful?  You would know instantly what a prospective employer really thought of you or, if you were hired, why you didn’t get a raise.  People who think highly of themselves or their appearance would find out that most people didn’t even notice them.

Hector B. Poole gets a taste of that in A Penny for Your Thoughts.  When a quarter lands on its edge, Hector suddenly realizes that he can read people’s thoughts.  When he’s nearly hit by a car, the driver is polite, but secretly thinks that Hector should watch where he’s going.

When he gets to work, Hector’s coworkers and customers are full of surprises.  His boss is having an affair.  A would-be borrower is going to use the money for gambling to cover his embezzlement.  A trusted bank employee is thinking of stuffing his briefcase with money from the vault.

It creates some problems for Hector.  The boss nearly fires him until it comes out that the borrower was actually arrested.  The details favor Hector.  While Smithers doesn’t actually rob the bank, he admits that he did routinely think about it.  The details might change, but every night, he’d think about how easy it would be.

In the end, things work out better for Hector.  He gets a promotion.  An attractive coworker agrees to go on a date.  Hector even arranges for Smithers to get airfare to his favorite ‘retirement’ spot as a show of appreciation.

There are a few things that might strike the casual Twilight Zone viewer.  I’m not the first person to point out how odd mind-reading is.  At the very least, Hector can hear perfect sentences.  It’s also odd that he has to be within a few feet.  Sometimes, tales like this will show us how overwhelming it can be to hear everyone’s thoughts.

Here, it’s little more than a MacGuffin.  Hector has a series of choices to make.  Is it his place to inform the bank why a customer would need the money?  Gambling would pose a serious impediment to repayment if the gambler didn’t pick the right horses.  (The loan is for $200,000.  That would translate into about $1,740,000 in today’s money.)  A trusted employee does pose more of a direct threat, especially considering that it’s illegal.  Smithers doesn’t even seem to hold any hard feelings towards Hector.  Even the boss’s infidelity is little more than leverage.

It might make for an interesting story to have a mind-reader from a long line of mind-readers.  Hector has no guidance.  It’s plausible that he would react the way he does.  Guidance from a family member would prove useful.  It might allow for more analysis of an issue.  Even with the ability to read minds, you still don’t have all the facts.  This still makes for an interesting story.  There is something to take away from it.  You just have to know where to look.

 

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The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 2 Episode 15 (The Invaders)

I remember having a nightmare once.  I was trapped in my grandmother’s house.  All of the doors were locked and I was being chased by a small snail that secreted ribbons.  I have no idea why, but I was deathly afraid of this snail.  I could easily outrun it, but I kept screaming and trying to get out of the house.

In The Invaders, an unnamed woman finds herself in a similar situation.  A high-pitched noise precedes a small flying saucer.  A small being emerges and chases her around her house.  In this case, the small being is dangerous, as it can wield one of her knives.  It’s unclear why she doesn’t simply leave the building or call for help, but she’s terrified of the small man.

In a way, though, the fear is understandable.  There is a risk to her life.  She can easily kick or throw the being far away, but it returns.  She did nothing to provoke him, yet he’s aggressive and that’s enough.  And then, there’s the twist at the end.  Rod Serling liked to play with our perspective and we get a bit of whopper here.

The Twilight Zone was no stranger to budget restrictions.  It shows here, in that there’s one building, requiring a minimum of sets.  There are two characters, one played by Agnes Moorehead and the other by what would appear to be a toy robot.  With this, we’re given a complete story.  We have a beginning, a middle and a resolution.

There are also a minimum of lines.  The Woman tells us everything with little more than grunts and facial expressions.  Maybe it’s not a particularly deep episode.  There aren’t a lot of complexities, but we get the point.  She wants nothing more than to defend herself and her property from The Invader.

To be fair, she would appear to be on a farm in a remote area.  As to why she didn’t call for help, it’s possible that her neighbor was too far away.  My big question is why the invaders would head for these extremely large artificial structures.  You’d think that someone would have the good sense to keep their distance.

Still, it’s a good study in simplicity.  Motion pictures are more than just words and people.  There’s an emotional element to it.  There’s a physical aspect that’s just as important as sounds.  This episode relies on the small details.  If you are able to watch this, pay attention.

 

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The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 2 Episode 14 (The Whole Truth)

George Carlin once said that if honesty were introduced to politics, that the system would fall apart.  You would think that honesty would count for something.  Certainly, you don’t have to lie all the time.  It’s generally considered a good trait to tell the truth.

Harvey Hunnicut would rather lie his way to an easy buck.  He has his own used car lot and would seem to typify the stereotype of a lying about everything.  If he told you the weather was bright and sunny, you’d look out a window to make sure.

The episode starts with Harvey trying to sell a clunker to a young couple, only to have the car fall apart on him.  As they’re looking it over, a man drives another used car in for Harvey to buy, which he does for $25.  There’s just one catch:  The legal owner is compelled to tell the truth, no matter how hurtful or damaging it is.

As you might expect, things go south for Harvey.  He can’t sell a car.  He’s compelled to tell his wife that he’s actually playing poker when he says he’s doing inventory.  He even loses his one employee, who only wants a raise.  Harvey almost sells the car to Honest Luther Grimbley, a politician.  Before they can close the deal, the two hatch a plan.  A visiting foreign dignitary will be steered to Harvey’s lot so that this dignitary can be the car’s next victim. 

There are certain Twilight Zone episodes that I am just now seeing for the first time on Netflix.  In most cases, like The Whole Truth, I can see why they don’t make it into the normal rotation.  It’s one of the weaker episodes.

On the face of it, there is a lesson to be learned.  Yes, truth is good.  If your girlfriend’s grandmother makes her special casserole, you don’t say anything, no matter how bad it is. 

The problem is that Harvey is an out-and-out liar.  Sure, he could be honest.  There’s nothing stopping him from buying better cars or fixing up the ones he has.  He could easily be more truthful.  Then again, there does come a point where it is acceptable to lie.

The twist ending is also kind of weak.  It’s implied that international relations will take a sharp left once the whole truth starts coming out.  There isn’t any sort of punch.  I don’t know if it was supposed to be funny or satirical.  Most world leaders would probably handle their affairs through intermediaries, so some of the damage could be mitigated under the right circumstances.   There’s only one explanation that I can think of: Harvey did one good thing in his life by at least trying.

 

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The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 2 Episode 13 (Back There)

There are a lot of ways time travel could go wrong.  True, there are a lot of ways it could go right, but it’s impossible to know how one small change will affect things.  Go back and kill Hitler and Himmler takes over, who could be much worse.  Even if you prevented the deaths of millions, you have no idea what those people would have done.

Is it even possible?  That’s the topic of discussion at the Potomac Club on the night of April 14, 1961.  Even if time travel were possible, could major events be changed?  Peter Corrigan is about to get a very powerful lesson on that in The Twilight Zone.  He’s allowed to go back to April 14, 1865 with just enough time to maybe prevent Lincoln’s assassination.

This puts him in a difficult position.  He knows, but how does he prove it?  For that matter, how does he tell someone without looking guilty?  Peter tries, but gets himself arrested for making a scene.  He’s eventually released to Mr. John Wellington, who subsequently drugs Peter.  By the time Peter awakens, it’s too late.  Then again, this is The Twilight Zone so Peter does effect some change.  It just isn’t the change he expected.

There is some irony in that Peter is the one person who thought time travel was ridiculous.  It had to be him that went back.  There’s a greater sense of futility, though.  It’s possible that Peter could have saved Lincoln.  He wasn’t given the opportunity to prepare, which undoubtedly came at a cost.  Had he been given more time to prepare, he might have avoided certain pitfalls.

There’s no talk of what kind of person or president Lincoln was.  Of course, does that even matter?  How could Peter not try to save someone?  Does it even matter that history would have been altered?  The episode just puts the idea out there, that maybe we live in a universe that has a sick sense of humor.  It gives us just enough that we can try, but not enough that we could reasonably succeed.  If it’s that important, it’s going to happen anyway.

 

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The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 2 Episode 12 (Dust)

Luis is someone who, at first glance, might seem irredeemable.  He killed a child.  Yes, it was accidental, but he’s still found guilty and sentenced to death.  His father pleads for Luis’s life.  Luis was drunk and despondent, which doesn’t make the death of the girl any easier.  However, the father is now faced with the impending loss of his own grown son.

Enter Sykes, the man who sold the sheriff a five-strand rope for the hanging.  He offers the condemned’s father some magic dust that, if used properly, might cause the family to feel sympathetic towards Luis.  The father is desperate enough to buy it.

When the time comes, the rope fails.  Did the dust work?  We know that it’s ordinary dust because we saw Sykes gather it from the ground.  Then again, it comes from the same person who sold the rope to the sheriff.

The twist ending here isn’t typical of The Twilight Zone, but it is something to make you think.  What really did happen?  Maybe the dust didn’t work.  Maybe it was just a placebo.  However, there are issues of punishment and suffering.  How is it right to increase suffering when it won’t bring back the victim?

The episode is weak for the episode, as it’s not necessarily magical.  Sykes sells defective products.  There’s no surprise that the rope didn’t work.  In fact, I don’t even feel guilty about giving that bit of information away.  It does work on an emotional level, even if it is still a little weak.

Luis admits what he did.  He is actually guilty in this case.  The fact that the victim is a child only serves to make the crime that much more tragic.  How do you convince the parents to forgive someone when their daughter’s life was cut short so soon?  Also, drunkenness and despondency aren’t particularly good excuses.  However, I don’t think the episode was meant to focus too heavily on that.

I have to admit that I didn’t really feel too much for Luis.  He’s not a particularly sympathetic character.  Neither is Sykes.  The sheriff does show some empathy, but the character we’re supposed to identify with is the father, who mostly comes across as desperate.  The episode comes across as a morality play.  In the end, Sykes learns his lesson and everything is a little better than it was at the start.

 

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The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 2 Episode 11 (The Night of the Meek)

There are different kinds of Christmas stories.  It’s a Wonderful Life would seem to be the gold standard, in which a man gets a special wish and comes to realize how important he is.  There are angels and the spirit of good will and everything.

There are those like A Christmas Story, which was the one teachers showed on that free day before Christmas Break.  It kind of got overplayed for me.  There is a slightly more commercial aspect, as Ralphie is on a mission to get his gun.  But you still have family and a mall Santa.  (“You'll shoot your eye out, kid.”)

A case could even be made for Die Hard.  It’s about a man who visits his family on Christmas and saves his wife and her coworkers from terrorists.  There are naysayers who would tell you otherwise, but they’re wrong.  Just wrong.  ("Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.")

Then, there are the productions that just exist.  It’s as if someone did it just to make a Christmas movie or have a Christmas episode for their TV series.  For The Twilight Zone, The Night of the Meek would be that episode.  I don’t know if Rod Serling honestly thought it was a good idea or if he was under pressure from the network, but there it is.

Henry Corwin is a department-store Santa.  He’s not a very good one at that.  He comes in so drunk that he’s not even fooling the children.  Henry basically spends his Christmas Eve doing two things:  Getting drunk and getting fired.  All he wants is to make kids happy.  He wants kids to know actual joy.  He feels that he’d make a good Santa, if only…

This may be a weak episode, but it’s still The Twilight Zone.  Henry finds a magical bag that allows him to give people whatever they ask for.  Henry reaches into the bag and there it is.

Naturally, this attracts the attention of the police, who assume he’s stealing from his former employer.  Rather than rebuke the store manager, Henry gives him a bottle of cherry brandy, which Henry notes was a good year.

In the end, Henry doesn’t take a gift for himself.  To him, it was a joy to see the looks on everyone else’s faces.  He ultimately gets his wish, finding a reindeer-led sleigh and an elf.  It looks like the gift-giving gig has become permanent.

I don’t think this episode is going to make it into my permanent Christmas rotation.  It wasn’t a great Twilight Zone episode.  Normally, we get some sort of morality play.  Greed catches up with people.  A person down on his luck comes to realize what’s really important.  There’s a message.  Here, it looks like Serling was pressured into making the episode.

Speaking of which, it doesn’t really work as a Christmas story, either.  It’s just a man who eventually becomes Santa.  There’s no rhyme or reason except that maybe he failed at everything else.  He finally has the job he wanted for himself all along.

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The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 2 Episode 10 (A Most Unusual Camera)

The Twilight Zone was never too heavy on the science.  For that reason, I would consider it more fantasy.  Take A Most Unusual Camera.  A husband-and-wife pair of crooks comes across a camera that seems much like any other instant camera.  You press a button and out comes a photograph.  It’s never explained where the camera came from or how it works, but it does work.

Chester notes that there’s no place to load film.  But what the heck?  It’s the only thing of note in an otherwise worthless haul.  It doesn’t take long for them to realize that the camera takes in image from five minutes into the future.  Chester thinks of all the good it could do humanity.

When Paula’s brother, Woodward, turns on a horse race, Chester hatches a brilliant plan:  Take the camera to the race track.  They can photograph the results and bet on the winners.  So, of course they come back with a bag full of cash.  (I guess we’re left to assume that they paid taxes, although it’s unclear why they let Woodward tag along, since he escaped from prison.)

It’s understandable that we would never get an origin story on the camera.  That’s not the focus of the story.  Instead, Serling chooses to focus on the fact that greed always catches up with us.  Even if the IRS doesn’t notice, someone else will.  The hotel’s waiter, Pierre, follows them into the room with the intent of helping himself to their winnings.

My main issue is that the story seemed a bit rushed.  Chester and Woodward get into a fight and fall out a window, which is understandable.  What gets me as strange is that Paula and Pierre meet a similar fate.  The only reasoning seems to be that a different death would be harder to explain.

Normally, I’d lament that the story didn’t get a longer run time.  This time it did.  There was a movie called Time Lapse, which seems to folly the basic plot pretty closely and was done pretty well, if I recall.  The moral of the story is the same, though.  If you find a camera like this, play it safe.   Don’t get greedy.

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The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 2 Episode 9 (The Trouble with Templeton)

One of the common themes with The Twilight Zone is going back to relive past glories.  Youth seemed great when compared to adulthood.  In the case of Booth Templeton, he longs for his first wife, Laura, who was taken from him after too short a marriage.  Sure, he has a great career.  He even has a second wife, who is younger and more beautiful than he deserves.  It’s not the same, though.

True to Twilight Zone fashion, Booth gets the opportunity to step back to 1927 and have a second chance with Laura.  It dawns on him that maybe his first marriage wasn’t exactly the way he remembered it.  He’s taken back to 1960 to continue with his life in his present.

One of the problems in reviewing episodes of The Twilight Zone is that they’re often basic.  There’s not much to them.  This is the case here.  (It’s what Rod Serling might call a detour into The Twilight Zone.)  It’s just enough time for the main character to get the message.

It is an understandable message.  At some point, you realize that most of your life is behind you.  You would be forgiven for thinking like Booth does.  It would be nice to go back and relive the fun parts.  Unfortunately, it’s not always that fun.

I think this is what made the show so accessible.  It didn’t try for anything fancy.  It told its story plainly and was never insulting or condescending about it.  This may be a byproduct of the half-hour format, but it works.  Don’t live in the past; live in the present.

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