The Trouble with Templeton

I'm bemused that so many reviewers seem to have missed the point of this stellar and poignant excursion into The Twilight Zone.

Brian Aherne plays Booth Templeton, an aging stage icon who dwells in the past, still longing for his late wife, Laura, who died at 25. The first day of rehearsal for a new play brutally catalyzes a trip backwards during which Booth is reunited with not only with Laura but beloved friends as well, all deceased.

While I'm not going to spoil the episode for those who somehow haven't yet seen it, suffice it to say that its point is ultimately NOT "the past isn't all that it's cracked up to be," or some such. The actual resolution, which is far more subtle and ingenious, is what fuels Booth with the resolve to move on with his life and leaves us, the viewers, glowing like a torch. See it for yourself and behold the glory of 1960s television at its finest.

This is actually a very human story of an actor who has had acclaim throughout his career, but who has now reached that age where his appearance no longer benefits him. He also has the disadvantage of two things. One is that he quite kind in a bloodthirsty, winner take all society. He is also living in the past. He is still carrying a torch for his wife, who died very young. This is about a man who must confront his past in order to move on. The acting is quite good and the transitions between contemporary time and the past work quite well. We get to see how he can become superior to the dream world he always saw as the model for his life. It's about the reclamation of a life lost.

The nostalgic actor Booth Templeton I still longing for his former wife that is deceased and his life in the past. Out of the blue, when he leaves the theater through the stage door after a discussion with the new director and producer, he returns to 1927 where he meets his first wife Laura and his best friend Barney Fluegler. Soon he realizes that his past was not the way he had recollections.

"The Trouble with Templeton" deals with a usual behavior of people when get older, the feeling of nostalgia of the past that is usually idealized and the bad things are forgotten. It was necessary to Templeton to travel to The Twilight Zone and stop in the best year of his life to recall that his wife and friend were not so good as he misses. Mature audiences will certainly understand this episode. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Problema com Templeton" ("The Trouble with Templeton")

Plot-- An aging star actor is dissatisfied with current life and pines for former life with a deceased wife, all of which causes problems for those in his new play.

Rule of thumb--- when we step into a theatre, we step into a different world; when we step back into the street, we step back into the real world. Seems like an inarguable law of nature, except of course in the TZ.

Good episode, with Aherne delivering a nicely calibrated performance. And catch that 1920's speakeasy or should I say speakloud that really rocks, what with all the illegal liquor flowing. Scott too, shines as a sexy jazz baby that makes me wish I were born a lot sooner. And catch real life director Pollock playing a make-believe director. His mean guy is tyrannical enough to bully Hitler, let alone his forlorn cast. Gutsy career move on Pollock's part. Anyhow, what starts off as a character study transitions into sci-fi that transitions into thoughtful ending. All in all, it's a typically challenging 30-minutes from our friends at TZ.

In what is one of the best episodes of the Twilight Zone that I've seen so far, Brian Aherne stars as Booth Templeton, an aging Broadway play actor unhappy with what his life has become. One day, after witnessing his trophy wife flagrantly galavanting with an attractive lodger half Templeton's age, he beings lamenting about his lost past, and soon finds himself transported back to it.

Anytime I see time travel stories in movies or TV shows, one of the most interesting things to me is how the actual time travel is presented. In this case, it's not presented at all, Templeton literally walks out to the door to go to work, we go to commercial, and when we come back he's dropped off more than 30 years in the past, but this episode still has more layers of meaning than any other episode of the show I've seen so far.

Templeton is understandably shocked to find himself transported into his past, and succumbs to the obvious desire to get alone with his wife who, at the time we had met Templeton at the beginning of the episode, had been dead for many years but remained very much alive in his memories. In one of the show's most interesting scenes, he and his lost wife get into an argument, leading him to tell her he doesn't like what she has become.

What we in the audience know, and Templeton eventually figures out, is that it's not her that has become anything, it is him who has been changed by the decades that have passed since the last time they saw each other. It's an interesting analysis of how people change over the years, both from who they were when they were younger and, unfortunately often, from the person they have chosen as their life partner. We wonder how happy Templeton and this woman would be had she lived.

Watch for Sydney Pollack in an early role as an obnoxious director, of all things, and for Adhere's revelation early in the show of the fact that he has no idea how to tie a necktie. Past and present become confused at the end of the episode, but it's still one that makes you think even more than most other...