The Bard

I don't loathe this episode but the story should have been written much more as a dramatic piece. The attempts at humour are met with failure, for the most part. Jack Weston does pretty well, he can handle light comedy. Humour was never Rod Serling's forte but he's only human like the rest of us. I agree with other reviewers that Burt Reynolds does a good job at spoofing Marlon Brando. His mannerisms and general demeanour prove to be effective. I've seen evidence that the one hour "Twilight Zone" episodes do work, in spite of what British critic Leslie Halliwell thought. However, "The Bard" has a plot which is too tightly stretched and incapable of lasting the whole hour. Luckily, the final season of this show was to provide several new masterpieces.

The former bus driver Julius Moomer is an aspirant television writer without any talent. He is insistent with the agent Mr. Hugo to have a chance and he gives a couple of days to Julius to write about black magic. Julius goes to a book shop to look for a black magic book and the owner gives one to him. Julius accidentally summons Willian Shakespeare and forces him to write for him. However, when Shakespeare hears and see what is happening to his writing, there is a conflict with Julius.

"The Bard" is an awful episode of "The Twilight Zone". The plot is annoying, boring and unfunny, and the histrionic Jack Weston is irritating. The intention of the writer could have been how talentless people works in television, or how the sponsors affect the final work, but indeed the plot and the story are awful. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "O Poeta" ("The Poet")

I like this episode, one of the rarest in the fourth season not to be in the line of the other episodes of this season; I mean, copycats of the previous seasons eps. This plot reminded BEWITCHED series, produced during the same period. And it evokes the Tv industry business, the behind the curtain hard, hard work which the screenwriters had to endure to survive. It is a bit light hearted but still excellent to watch. Watch it, please, it belongs to the top batch episodes of the whole series. Include William Shakespeare in this story is very surprising and fun too. One of the funniest story of TZ.

Last broadcast episode of the fourth season stars Jack Weston as Julius Moomer, a talentless hack TV writer who wont stop bothering his agent for jobs, so to get him out of the office, promises him a script if he can devise something worthwhile out of a black magic pilot. Sold on the idea, Julius finds a real book on black magic and somehow conjures up the spirit of William Shakespeare(played by John Williams) who is not impressed by modern Hollywood or Moomer, though he does have ideas... Dud episode is among the worst, featuring forced and unfunny comedy, a most silly ending, and Weston hamming it up with more relish than mustard...

"The Bard" is already the last episode of the overall very satisfying fourth season of "The Twilight Zone", so I genuinely wished I had more positive things to write about it. Alas, I found it one of the weakest entries of the season, and once again the poor attempts at inserting too much comedy elements are to blame. I said it before and I'll say it again, the very best TZ-episodes are bleak, disturbing, and frightening. Those just happens to be the last three terms you could use to describe "The Bard".

The idea behind this tale is nonetheless ingenious. An untalented but over-enthusiast aspiring writer with a silly name (what kind of surname is Moomer?) finds a way - via black magic - to teleport none other than William Shakespeare to contemporary Hollywood, and makes use of his still very vivid and genius imagination to write new stories. Shakespeare still got it, of course, but can he deal with modern day obstacles, like censorship, rewrites, stubborn method actors, and producer demands? "The Bard" is watchable but dull, with too many annoying characters (and ditto performances) and an insupportable lack of "Twilight Zone" trademarks. I am, however, giving it one extra point for Burt Reynolds' witty impersonation of Marlon Brando, and for the resemblance of Shakespeare's looks, and the looks of all the other historical figures, during the end sequence.