The Message

I'd like rate this higher because I love Marlee Matlin. My problem with this episode is the constant and blatant ableism. I found it very hard to enjoy the plot while distracted by the unfair treatment. The character's doctors and husband speak about her behind her back and make decisions about her welfare without her input. When her own husband refuses to believe her and drags her around forcing her to what he wants its enough to make me want to write this episode off completely. All of this might have been palatable if they had only addressed the fact that the actions were ableist, but leaving this unaddressed is inappropriate and irresponsible.

THE MESSAGE is a science fiction movie featuring Marlee Matlin as a deaf schoolteacher, Robert Wisden as her husband, and Larry Drake is a janitor in a hospital. The janitor was formerly an astrophysicist knowledgeable in computer programing and laser technology, but he fell upon hard times, and was forced to take the janitor job.

The story is about a woman who receives an implant in her ear that is supposed to restore hearing. However, this particular implant does not work properly, and the result is that the woman "hears" strange things. She writes down what she "hears" and the result is a series of X's and O's. She writes down thousands and thousands of X's and O's. The woman works in a school for deaf children, and her experience is first disclosed when she is teaching the class using the blackboard. The camera shows her from a side-view angle, busily jotting things down on the blackboard. The viewer cannot see what she is writing. One of the children senses that something is wrong, and she runs out for help. The school principal returns, and the viewer sees that the blackboard is filled with lines of X's and O's.

As one might expect, things go downhill for Marlee, since almost nobody believes her claim that she is really hearing things. The fact that the X's and O's are, at first glance, devoid of any sense, reinforces skepticism about Marlee's claims that she is really hearing actual things. Her doctor proscribes her with an anti-psychotic drug called MOROXYDOL. (I looked this up, and I found it amusing that there does not exist any drug called MOROXYDOL. It was made up solely for this episode of Outer Limits!!!) The janitor immediately recognizes the many X's and O's as binary code, and he transcribes them to his computer. As the story unfolds, Marlee's husband grows increasingly skeptical regarding her wife's mental health, and the janitor becomes increasingly devoted to decoding the series of X's and O's. Regarding the code, the unfolding plot shows that the meaning of the code is similar to that in CONTACT, a movie starring Jodie Foster. (Don't worry, I do NOT give away the ending.) THE MESSAGE does not have any violence, bad words, disturbing computer graphics, or concupiscence. Thus, this story is fine for children. THE MESSAGE was released in 1995, hence, people interested in following the career of Marlee Matlin will be pleased to view this movie (remember, it was in 1986 that she starred in CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD). The storyline of THE MESSAGE is not particularly clever, and not astonishingly unique, relative to the best of the OUTER LIMITS stories from the 1990's. However, THE MESSAGE is a cute little movie, and I am glad that I watched it.

Honestly, the hardest part of this episode for me to suspend my disbelief over is that two *relative* nobodies - a deaf teacher, and a janitor who used to work for NASA, briefly - could build a laser capable of reaching space. That aside, the events of this episode could conceivable actually happen.

That being said, both the leads here - Marlee Matlin and Larry Drake - are great, but then they're always great to watch. I'm especially fond of Larry Drake as an actor, and his work here is as good as anything else he's been in.

As for the story itself, it's a lovely little rumination on the power of communication, especially when a person is open to hearing the message being broadcast, and caring about the source of the broadcast.

This episode is as much about a relationship between a couple of troubled souls as its science fiction element. A young deaf woman (Marlee Matlin who appeared frequently on "The West Wing") finds an implant has failed to bring her hearing back. She is married to an insensitive jerk who has no respect for her feelings. Shortly after her surgery, she begins to receive binary code messages through the implant. There is a scene where she begins to put ones and zeros, along with some x's on the blackboard in front of her hearing impaired students. Doctors, of course, convince her husband that she is having a psychotic episode and needs medications. Meanwhile, as she waits in the hospital, a janitor who has himself been diagnosed with schizophrenia (and who was dismissed as an engineer with NASA, played by Larry Drake). Takes her binary notes home so he can input them on his computer. What follows is a cat and mouse game as the clueless husband refuses to listen to anything his wife tells him, seeing her as dangerous to their child and mentally unbalanced. She and the former engineer realize that they have received messages from an alien life form and it is critical that they build a laser to keep this species from going out of control and destroying themselves. It is a neat and intense episode. The hard part to believe is the incredible machine the two are able to build. They do have pretty limited resources. Also, there is an egalitarianism at work here that will probably get them nothing going forward.