Showdown with Rance McGrew

This is one of my least favorite Twilight Zone episodes. I guess some of it has to do with the demise of the Western as a television staple. At the time this was made, TV was inundated with Westerns, from Bonanza to Gunsmoke and back again. In this one Rance McGrew, a phony baloney, uncooperative actor who has become a hero to his television audience, is accosted by his imaginary rivals. Mainly, the true personage of Jesse James. The silly byplay between Rance, the director, and the other persons on the set is so fifties and so outdated. The story is pretty much the dumb actor being thrown through windows and beaten up and having to change his image to a submissive. Anyway, it is dull, and because of the conclusion, there's no one to root for.

And also one more western scheme, where the escape in time is so easy to include. This is not the first episode with this plot; I even think that there was a ZANE GREY series episode which proposed a more or less similar story. But the moral, message here is very interesting, showing this arrogant and disgusting actor who took advantage of his lead characters to impose himself to other actors and shooting crew members. The intrusion into the TWILIGHT ZONE is so juicy, so interesting, that I am very excited by this smart scheme. So this story reunites the western, escape in time and also a very powerful morale, related with narcissism, arrogance, and above all, life, real and true life doesn't always look like the fake plot of a film. Movie reality is not necessarily the actual reality. Also funny and not gloomy, unlike so many other episodes.

Larry Blyden plays Hollywood actor and difficult western TV star Rance McGrew, who has become spoiled, lazy, and inefficient in his job as the star who plays famous Marshall Rance McGrew, who always gets his man, and survives impossible odds, until one day, while he is filming a scene involving Jesse James, the real Jesse James(played by miscast Arch Johnson) shows up from heaven, determined to punish Rance for his historical inaccuracies and phony TV persona. How will McGrew handle this bizarre dilemma? Good premise is sadly squandered in failed attempt at satire, with the "real" west being every bit as phony as the "TV" west. First real misfire of the series.

"Showdown with Rance McGrew" is another clear attempt to insert comedy into the traditional Sci-Fi/Fantasy concept of "The Twilight Zone", which is something Rod Serling already tried earlier in the third season with "Once Upon a Time". Personally, I prefer my episodes as dark and sinister as possible, and I don't like the light-headed, comical or overly moralistic ones. "Showdown with Rance McGrew" isn't an exception, although I gladly admit I had to laugh out loud a couple of times with the spoofing of typically arrogant Hollywood actors and how contemporary TV-series illustrate the supposedly "Wild" West. The spoiled and obnoxious actor Rance McGrew is a loathsome person to work with on set, but naturally considers himself to be God's gift to screen entertainment. In his films, he supposedly defeats the meanest guns of the Far West without much effort. But then, a typical TZ-occurrence takes place, and McGrew finds himself inexplicable transported back in time and faced with the real Jesse James for a little lesson in humbleness. It's a forgettable and thoroughly unremarkable entry, but - as said - good for a handful of chuckles, especially whenever McGrew hysterically calls out to his stunt double.

Rod Serling wrote two scripts for series three that were inspired by an idea from another writer, Frederick Louis Fox. The other was the quaint but likable 'Hocus-Pocus and Frisby'. Fox was generally a writer of TV western screenplays, so unsurprisingly this one is set in the world of the then popular TV-west-that-never-was.

Rance McGrew (Larry Byden) is TV cowboy who suddenly steps out of his make-believe world and into the 'real' west where he is confronted by Jesse James.

It starts brightly with visual gags, a film crew and the ridiculousness of the sixties' TV western. However when Jesse James came in he was such an anodyne character of the TV western ilk anyway, when the show needed a dynamic and deadly, movie type like Lee Marvin ('The Grave', series three) or Martin Landau ('Mr Denton On Doomsday',series one). The rest falls very flat as there is nothing to consider remotely realistic about Jesse James, and so the story peters out badly.