Static

The bachelor Ed Lindsay is a bitter middle-aged man that has been living in the same boarding house that hates the TV shows that the other residents like to watch. He retrieves his old radio from the basement and brings it to his room and he finds that he can receives old music and shows from New Jersey radio station WPDA. He recalls his happier youth when he intended to marry the resident Vinnie. However his only friend Professor Ackerman and Vinnie only hear static from the radio and they learn that WPDA is out of business for many years. Vinnie and the other residents decides to get rid of the radio since they are worried about his mental state and delusion. When he discovers, he seeks his radio at the junk dealer Will Ed find his precious radio?

"Static" is a wonderful "The Twilight Zone" episode with a beautiful tale of second chance in life. The nostalgic Ed is a man embittered by bad choices made when he was younger. Unfortunately we do not have a radio tuned in The Twilight Zone to do things right in the past like Ed did. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Estática" ("Static")

In "Static", a deeply embittered resident of a peculiar type of retirement home is fed up with the TV-addiction of his fellow residents and dusts off an antique radio that got stored in the basement since many years. Alone in his room, he finds the frequency of a radio channel that seemingly broadcasts directly from the 1940s and instantly gets catapulted back to better and more glorious times. This is certainly not my preferred type of "Twilight Zone" episode, because it's sentimental and talkative instead of sinister and Sci-Fi like, but at the same time I must also acknowledge it's perhaps one of the most ambitious, thought-provoking and intelligent installments of Rod Serling's entire series! How much depth and symbolism can you put into one simple 25-minute story; - seriously? Serling and the genius writer Charles Beaumont evoke a few very depressing but also timeless and universal feelings here: we are ALL sad beings yearning for the nostalgia of lost years and endlessly regretting the non-grabbing of life's opportunities for whatever reason. Anything as simple as an (imaginary?) radio show can tear those old wounds right back open. It doesn't sound like a typic "Twilight Zone" premise, but it's subtly and absorbingly handled by the entire cast and crew of this nifty episode. And, to me, it also illustrates how timeless and immortal this TV-show is. Protagonist Ed Lindsay sees television as the modern demon that trampled his beloved radio, whereas now, more than half a century later, 40-ish dorks like myself curse the internet & social media for oppressing our good old-fashioned television set.

"Static" is pretty static in terms of anything much happening. In the rooming house where he lives, aging Dean Jagger hates new-fangled TV that the others are glued to. Desperate, he rescues an old radio console for his room, where he mysteriously tunes in to old time radio shows that only he can hear. Naturally, the others think he's going batty. However, it looks like he's somehow tuned in to radio station TZ.

Hitchcock favorites Mathews and Emhardt pick up paydays as co-residents, while thuggish Johnson does a milder version of his usual thing. From the production notes, it appears this entry, along with five others, were cramped into single settings because of a less-costly filming process. This, I assume, explains the general lack of action. Still, the script coordinates plausibly by never needing to leave the boarding house.

Geezers like me, raised on radio instead of TV, can relate to the sentimental premise. Radio entertainment engaged the imagination in ways that TV's literal visuals cannot. While watching this 30-minutes, recollections of Gangbusters, Suspense, Inner Sanctum, et al. flitted happily through my head. Understandably, this is a rather nostalgic entry for some TZ fans, though likely not for all tastes.

It's a interesting subject to discuss and share, all old people are nostalgic with their past time, I realize it with my father who refuses at any means the new technologies and correlated stuffs, thus happens with Ed Lindsay (Dean Jagger) who missed the opportunity to marry Vinnie (Carrie Mathews) in the past, he complains over the TV that replaced the radio, then he brings back a old radio and starting listen an old tunes of Tommy Dorsey from a radio station that actually close thirteen years before, just he hear this songs, when someone else enter in the room the broadcasting disappears catching just a static, however the ending is too moving, stay tuned !!!

Resume:

First watch: 2019 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.25

'Static' is one of my favorite 'Twilight Zone' episodes because it's tantalizing, because it waltzes graciously with the sense that the body ages inexorably but the heart lives outside the bounds of time.

Dean Jagger's line that "radio has to be believed to be seen" is itself a minor gem. Perhaps Rod Serling devoted his television offerings to trying to put into "seen to be believed" video images what in earlier times of radio he'd "believed to be seen."

The IMDb site software informed me that the foregoing two paragraph review could not by itself be made to appear on the IMDb site, because it did not consist of the minimum number of ten lines of text. Be that as it may, I hope that if you happen to see 'Static,' you'll now appreciate that radio alone does not generate it.