In Praise of Pip

This is incredibly cinematic for a TV show. The use of the hall of mirrors is remindful of The Third Man and Harry Lime. I'm sure there was a little of that in Serling's mind when he did this episode. This is an excellent story. It begins with a soldier, lying on a litter, ready to be taken to an evac hospital. He has little chance of survival. Cut to Jack Klugman's character, a cheap bookie who has no prospects. His son Phillip, called Pip, is the soldier. He is the only thing of significance in the man's life. He worries about him and expects news from time to time. He is, of course, at the beck and call of the guy who runs the book. Anyway, Klugman gets news that his son is dying in Vietnam (a place that many didn't know very well as of yet). To save another young man, he takes a bullet from a thug, retaliates, and goes on the run, rapidly losing blood. This is where Pip comes in. He appears as a child, giving Klugman's character a chance to spend some time with him. The man is known as a guy who has never made a sacrifice for anyone. Now he gets his chance. Very good episode.

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.

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.

Taking on the Vietnam War in 1963, Always taking on some nonsense from our society. Such a writer. As written in another comment on Rod..." Is there a writer that exists today that is as hard-hitting and prodigious as Serling was?

I hold him in awe not only because he did so much work, (and high-quality work at that) but also because so much of his stuff still holds up so well even today.

I mean, The Twilight Zone will be hitting the half-century mark in two years, yet there seem to be a lot of younger people who like and identify with the stories.

And for the life of me, I can't think of anyone else who's written for TV that can make the same claim (but perhaps you can)." Exactly.

In 1963, Most Americans were barely aware of our increasing involvement in Vietnam. However, three TV shows pioneered in Using it as a theme. Many people forget that the character who replaced Buzz Murdock on Route 66 was a Vietnam veteran. Several of the episodes allude to his experiences in Vietnam. That forgotten, under-rated, college drama, Channing, had an episode called A Window on The War, in which Don Gordon enrolled at Channing, in part to "get back" at a pro-war Professor.Finally, there was this wonderful episode of the Twilight Zone. Jack Klugman plays a slightly sleazy bookie, who cares about one thing, his son "Pip" ( Imagine! A bookie who reads Dickens!) Klugman learns that his place has been wounded in battle in some place called "South Vietnam' So, these sadly washed up man decides to offer God his life in exchange for that of his son. A moving morality tale.