In Praise of Pip

I really like Jack Klugman. I loved Quincy and The Odd Couple. But on this episode of The Twilight Zone I think he does his absolute finest acting. He was on several episodes of The Twilight Zone, those were pretty good shows. But "In Praise of Pip" he really shows how great an actor he was. If a person does not feel emotion while watching this episode they must be a Sociopath or something. The emotion in this episode simply pours out of the television. I am currently watching a New Year marathon of The Twilight Zone and this is the only one I have written a review of. And of course fabulous child actor Billy Mumy is good too. He was on several episodes also. He was a good kid.

In 1963, the year of the first broadcast of this episode, I was a junior in college in the ROTC program and within a year would be requested to indicate my first assignment. As another said, Vietnam did not really exist in the minds of the American public to any degree and to me was just another name on a sheet of places to be stationed. Although I have seen this episode a number of times, I had never seen the beginning when the name of the country is flashed on the screen. What a shock that was even though I found out that it was not Serling's idea to use that country but rather Laos. Good story and performances but I can say that my father would not be able to relate to Klugman. To him it was duty, honor, and country and you did what you had to do.

This one always gets better and more meaningful over time. A splendid, much more succinct, and meaningful variation on the other 'golng back' Zones. At the heart of this story is a message that the most important and rewarding role in life is as a parent. Something that can become all too apparent too late. For Max Phillips (Jack Klugman) his son Pip is the only redeeming part of his life. When he hears that Pip is near death in an army hospital in Vietnam Max quickly turns against his squalid life of working for a despicable bookie. This scene is played wonderfully well by Klugman. It is a portrait of a man waking up and being true to himself at last. But is he too late where it really matters ? Rod Serling was serving overseas in WW2 when he lost his father. I don't know how much that may have been an emotional spur for this truly fine story of love between a father and son. This is undeniably written from the heart, and for me it ranks among the best three of all ventures into The Twilight Zone.

Jack Klugman stars as Max Philips, a small-time bookie who is in a frantic state upon learning that his son Pip was wounded while fighting in Vietnam, which inspires him to give a second chance to a young bettor his son's age. This angers Max's bosses. who put a bullet in him, but only wounded, Max goes to an old amusement park to see Pip(played by Bill Mumy) young again, which gives him a second chance to be a better father, and offer God a deal to swap one life for another... Heartfelt episode to begin the fifth season sees a welcome return to the half-hour format, and an excellent performance by Klugman, leading to a satisfying end.

I can't watch it. It's so well done and affecting that it brings me to tears every time as I am reminded of my own failings as a parent. Just reading the reviews and composing my own right now bring me right back to the heavy emotional state that this beautiful, but heart wrenching episode elicits. To me there are two equally compelling storylines here, the explicit one and the one only to be revealed over time and indicating Mr. Serling's prescience.

First, Klugman is a tour de force as the aging bookie, weighed down by a lifetime of bad decisions, who gets and takes his last shot at redemption. No one could play this kind of character as well as him as he - along with Burgess Meredith - crystalizes his legacy here, effectively as one of the TZ's actors in residency. He is so powerful, yet vulnerable, an absolute master of his craft working some Sterling's best, most poignant writing.

The second story line speaks to, what might be seen as Mr. Serlings' foresightedness. The release date was 27 September 1963. JFK had a little less than two months to live. The American public knew, and cared very little at that point in time about our nation's latest proxy war with communist forces and ideology ... the "conflict" in Vietnam. Kennedy, by his own admission was ambivalent about his intentions for the conflict with many, to this day, claiming that, had he lived, he would have withdrawn after the 64 election. We were still in the phase of sending "advisors" there, not actual combat troops. By years end, we would have over 16,000 advisors there with a little less than 200 total deaths since the beginning of our involvement. The first actual combat troops would arrive in March of 1965 under LBJ. At peak, by 1968, we would have over 550,000 troops deployed and by wars end, in 1975, over 58,000 American deaths. Estimates of "enemy" deaths range from 1 to 3 million people.

What is initially remarkable here is that it was one televisions earliest mentions of Vietnam, if not the very first. References to Vietnam anywhere, other than on the news were so rare and actually jarring to see and hear, even later on in the war and especially on entertainment TV. I know that on Route 66, one of the lead characters was called out as a Vietnam vet and, perversely, on the Munsters, when Herman was being given a baseball tryout, Manager, Leo Durocher, so awed by Herman's strength power, exclaimed that he didn't "know whether to sign him with the Dodgers or send him to Vietnam". To this day, given the polarizing tendencies of Vietnam, those sorts of references can actually be disturbing or at least disquieting.

Klugman's exasperated line: "There isn't even supposed to be a war going on there" might not have carried a lot of weight during the first broadcast in 1963, but given what Vietnam would become in less than two years and the fact that the overwhelming number of episode views would come later in syndicated reruns, that line would come to have both agonizing and ironic gravitas.