Mr. Dingle, the Strong

The vacuum cleaner salesman Luther Dingle is a loser and regular client of a bar where two other regular costumers go to discuss baseball, boxing and gambles. One of them likes to punch the harmless and quiet Dingle on the face to relieve his discussions with the other man. One day, an invisible two-headed alien decide to use Dingle as guinea pig in an experiment, giving the strength of 300 men to him. What will Mr. Dingle do with his acquired power?

"Mr. Dingle, the Strong" is so far one of the silliest episodes of "The Twilight Zone". The title could have been "Once a loser, always a loser" since every viewer will certainly take pity on the poor Mr. Dingle. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Sr. Dingle, O Mais Forte" ("Mr. Dingle, the Strongest")

This is a cute episode. I guess, there are times when a writer who is less than imaginative, simply comes up with a premise. Imagine a guy, who is used to getting beaten on, just because he is weak and small. Suppose you give him super powers. What would he do? If he's like this guy, he just wastes the whole thing. He becomes a celebrity for a short time and runs around making a fool of himself. The good thing about the episode is Burgess Meredith, who was a stable for the Serling series. He mugs and groans as only he can. I think he was a national treasure. Anyway, the episode is fun, but with a better script, it could have been better yet.

It's Don Rickles at his mouthiest and most obnoxious, pushing around poor stuttering little Burgess Meredith. That is, until a two headed genie from Mars gifts Meredith with super human strength. Now the bully Rickles is in for it, or is he. Trouble is Meredith can't seem to decide how to show off his newly found power.

It's an okay episode, distinguished, in my book, by the imaginatively exotic critters from Mars and then Venus. Also, Meredith gets to again show his amazing thespic range as the cringing vacuum cleaner salesman. The premise itself is not exactly an unusual one—a ridiculed man suddenly getting transformative powers. Likely Meredith's demonstration of that newly found strength was hampered by budget constraints—punching holes in walls, splitting tables—all fairly cheap to stage. Still we get the idea.

What lingers from this 1961 entry is the two-headed space critter, which, I think, has become something of an icon for the series. Anyway, it's all done with a humorous undercurrent, making the overall mood a little different from the usual. All in all, it's Casper Milquetoast done entertaining TZ style.

One of the true stars of TZ Burgess Meredith played four very diverse characters. Quite often the lead actor in the comedy entries would spoil whatever possibility of an enjoyable show there was. Meredith is a rare exception as he makes Dingle incorrigibly stupid, but in an almost Stan Laurel-like engaging way. This character is mixed into a crazy production that has no subtlety whatsoever. This is the Looney Tunes of The Twilight Zone. Even Don Rickles is more frenetic than usual. As to the hilarious aliens...well you just have to see for yourself. They are...well..I give up trying to describe them as you just wouldn't believe me . I like the idea of Martians and Venutians hanging round a bar, unnoticed, enabling Dingle to punch through an obviously paper thin wall.

They don't make them like that anymore!!!

Serling starts out this cute but not exactly clever episode with the bizarre claim that the neighborhood bar is a "uniquely American institution." Really? Had he ever been out of the country at that time? I can't imagine he had never travelled before, which is why that's so confusing. Then again, his before and after monologues are quite often nearly senseless compilations of creepy sounding words delivered in his trademark way which, when really listened to and analyzed, often make remarkably little sense, although it's hard not to look forward to them. Unfortunately it's pretty obvious that they surely look great on paper but often don't translate to dialogue very well, especially given how enormously over-rehearsed his presentations often are.

We meet an unassuming man named Luther Dingle, a failure of a vacuum cleaner salesman who suddenly finds himself embroiled in an argument over a sporting event. When he doesn't give an astonishingly violent bettor (Don Rickles) the answer he wants in regards to a recent boxing match, the guy deals him a massive uppercut, sending the poor Dingle sailing backwards through the air and over the bar. Not the most effective way to try to prove your point to someone, I reckon.

Soon the episode's big set piece arrives in the form of a martian(s), a huge two-headed robot looking thing with human heads which converse with one another, delivering such hilarious lines as, "Are you sure we're invisible?" Someone get this guy a mirror! Soon we realize that the martians are on the lookout for a human weakling on whom to try out a superstrength experiment, so they endow Dingle with the strength of about 300 humans, just after watching Rickles deck the poor guy again for giving the wrong answer about a baseball game from nearly ten years in the past. Serling's commentary about the inane behavior of sports fanatics is coming through loud and clear!

He immediately notices a strange sensation about himself (does it tingle, Mr. Dingle?), and then, like most other episodes that have a character suddenly endowed with super powers, he spends the first half of this episode trying out his newfound strength, often accidentally. The things he suddenly finds himself able to do are as simple as can be and never very interesting (his vacuum cleaner is suddenly really light, doors and car handles come off in his hand, he can throw a football really far, etc), and then, also common among newborn super heroes, he can soon find nothing to do with himself, so in this case he sits on a bench in the park and tries to explain his situation to a total stranger.

My problem with episodes like this is that the people with the super powers suffer so much. While explaining his plight to a woman on the park bench, he demonstrates his strength by lifting the bench, with her on it, high into the air with one hand, describing it as "the most of his worries." What's to worry about? Like the relief that Hector Poole showed in the episode "A Penny For Your Thoughts," I can never understand why people struggle so much. Granted, being able to read peoples' minds (and not being able to control it) could be a pretty disruptive power, but what would be so bad about being super strong? It reminds me of that idiot politician in Heroes who wanted to keep his ability to fly a secret so it wouldn't hurt his political career. What the hell??

Soon Mr. Dingle finds himself being interviewed on television by a man who hosts a television show about "the unusual." Surely this part wasn't so hard for Serling to relate to! This is, unfortunately, probably the weakest part of the episode, as Dingle takes this highly publicized opportunity to demonstrate his power by breaking stuff. He karate chops a board in half, punches a hole in drywall (not the most impressive feat to be pulled off by someone with the strength of 300 men), and rips a stool out of the floor.

Personally I would consider more highly developed goals. I wonder if increased endurance would come with the increased strength? If so, I would get myself a bicycle and work my way up to the Tour de France, and steal that year's victory away from Jacques Anquetil, and then maybe win ten or fifteen Tours in a row to take the glory away from that pesky Lance Armstrong with his meager seven wins in a row (note: Lance is the king).

But it is just then that Serling installs his social commentary, which like usual, is highly effective and non-preachy. The martians observe this childish display and are disappointed that this is all that Dingle thinks to do with his power, so they take it away from him in the middle of his performance.

Ultimately this turns out to be a repeating experience for Dingle. On their way out with their disappointing findings, the martians happen to run into a couple of Venusians who are conducting a similar experiment, except this time involving extreme intelligence rather than strength. By a stroke of astronomical coincidence, they choose exactly the same subject, and Dingle immediately starts rambling on with meaningless technical mumbo jumbo about the physical complexities and probabilities of another baseball game, showing us that he hasn't learned anything and is now well on his way to disappointing yet another entire planet of disheartened beings.

I imagine we're meant to wonder about what it is that would cause someone to misuse such wonderful powers, and it seems that Serling is making a strong comment about the over-indulgence in sporting event related activities. If that's the case, he would be an unhappy man in 21st century America! Clever but not classic, this one is always good for some campy fun.