When I write a review of a The Twilight Zone episode, I always change the title. Some of you may have noticed that because you're perceptive lads and laddies (are "laddies" women or just small lads? I guess I should have said "lads and ladies" but then I couldn't have made a parenthetical reference (which are my favorite kinds of references)). My title might be a little bit on the nose although I could have made it more on the noserer by calling it "Death Sucks." But the original title was "The Purple Testament" and if you're wondering what the fuck that has to do with anything, keep fucking wondering because I'm not going to be able to explain it. I mean, sure, Rod Serling explains it in his narration although that dumb ass says it's a quote from William Shakespeare's Richard III when it's actually from Richard II. The quote is "He is come to open the purple testament of bleeding war." So you can see why Rod Serling uses the phrase "The Purple Testament" as his title. Because the story is about war. But why the fuck did William Shakespeare use it?! How should I know? Do I look like a Shakespeare scholar? The one thing anybody would rationally think after reading just a few of my comic book or The Twilight Zone reviews is, "This idiot definitely isn't a Shakespeare scholar." What I know about Shakespeare could fit in a small book of dick jokes. Because that's what he was famous for, right? Dick jokes?
I used to be able to quote the entire end speech by Othello where he's talking about not loving not enough but too much but I've gotten old enough to realize some things aren't important enough to keep taking up brain space. Now the only quote I remember from Shakespeare is "Out vile jelly!" from King Lear. It's my favorite quote to use when some other smart ass person at the party starts going on and on with things like "Life is like a box of chocolates, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" or "What is this dagger I see perchance sleeping before me" or "Alas, Poor Yorick! I knew him. Notice how I didn't say 'well' at the end of the quote because that's not actually part of the quote and also did you know the next part of this quote is where David Foster Wallace got his title for the book Infinite Jest?" So after they're looking smug and smart showing off their Shakespeare knowledge, I'll say, "Out vile jelly!" Then I make a grinding motion with my foot like I'm putting out Gloucester's eyes! Then I like to follow it up with "Did you know King Lear's daughters were all named after sexually transmitted diseases?" They weren't but a good percentage of the time, I can convince some of the people I'm talking to that Cordelia was actually named Chlamydia.
So the story is a war story and Serling calls it "The Purple Testament" because that's a phrase that's used in a Shakespeare quote that mentions "bleeding war." That's as good as an explanation as you're going to get because I doubt there's anybody in the entire academic world that can tell me what the fuck opening a purple testament has to do with war. The best I can come up with (as an amateur Shakespeare scholar which I suppose I can call myself. You can call yourself anything you want if you just stick "amateur" in front of it!) is that it's either a meta-purple prose comment about Bolingbroke declaring war or it's a dick joke. Either way, it's King Richard saying Bolingbroke has a huge erection for bloody war. The good thing is that you don't need to know anything about Shakespeare to understand this The Twilight Zone episode. Serling only mentions it because he knows everybody is going to be thinking, "What the fuck does a purple testament have to do with this fucking story?!"
The premise of the episode is that a soldier suddenly develops the power to predict which soldiers are about to die. It doesn't help to save them so it's not a power that really matters. At all. Which is kind of both the point and besides the point. See, this guy is fighting a war. Everybody around him could die at any moment. So seeing death in the faces of your fellow soldiers is just a thing you begin to live with. Actually having the power to see the light of death in their faces is just a metaphor for how much war sucks and a bunch of y'all are going to die. At one point, one of the characters actually says, "War sucks." And that's pretty much the only part of the script that matters. War fucking sucks, dude. Which one of these guys is going to die today? It's a mystery but you know it's going to be some of them! Does knowing which ones help? Nope! They're still going to die! So just suck it up and cross your fingers it's not you, even though it probably will be! War sucks!
From the moment the soldier reveals his power to Darrin Stephens, the astute The Twilight Zone viewer knows that he's eventually going to look in a mirror and see his own death. It's the only twist available to the story at that point. The question becomes, "How will the soldier react?" Will he rage against the dying of the light which isn't Shakespeare at all? Unless that Dylan guy stole it from a Shakespeare play (which Shakespeare would have stolen from some other now unknown play anyway!). Or will he just take it in stride and go to his death like a man was supposed to in 1959. Quietly, staunchly, and without tears or complaints. Well, this guy just takes it. Just sucks it up like never you mind. He sees the light in his face. He sees the light in the face of the man driving the Jeep taking him away from battle. And he hears about how there are loads and loads of landmines on the road ahead. And he just sits down, shuts the fuck up, and acts like a 1959 man. What a fucking fool.
It might not be dignified but I would have raised a bit of a fuss. I would have screamed, "I'm not going down that road! We're going to blow up! This guy driving is going to die! I'm going to die! I don't want to die!" But then I'd think, "What if not getting away from the front lines is why I die? Maybe forcing this guy to stay in camp with me is how we both die!? How can I be sure?!" Which is probably what the soldier in the episode already thought in his head. That whole mental struggle about how he's probably powerless to stop his own death symbolically took place when he smashed the mirror after seeing the death light on his face. That was the only time he allowed himself to not act like a 1959 man. Smashing the mirror was a bit hysterical and womanly of him and he quickly composes himself and goes off to die like a fucking idiot. I mean a fucking man.
That bit where I called him "hysterical and womanly" wasn't me believing that, you stupid fucking people who can't comprehend anything you read because you just want to be angry at other people. It was satire about the way people thought in the mid-20th century about gender roles. Try to keep up, asshole.
The most poignant part of the episode is when we learn Darrin Stephens believes the soldier when he leaves behind his family pictures and wedding ring as he goes off to die. He, too, takes all this shit in manly stride. I'm so glad I was raised in the 70s, the only decade when we all believed a human was a human was a human, no matter their gender, race, sexual identity, or ethnicity. Some younger generations today might not believe me when I say that decade existed but that's because they live in a world post-Reagan. He and his conservative asshat brigade were the huge pendulum shift away from a path where we were all beginning to get along with each other and into a world where we were all told to hate each other because everybody else was taking our jobs or giving us AIDS or stealing our VCRs or complaining to HR about how often we touch their bottoms in the workplace.
Did I say a more on the noserer title than "War Sucks" would have been "Death Sucks"? Because I just came up with the on the nosiest title of all: "Life Sucks."
Showing posts with label Rod Serling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rod Serling. Show all posts
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Thursday, February 6, 2020
Review of The Twilight Zone, Season 1, Episode 17: "The Curse of Oak Island"
I fell behind on watching The Twilight Zone episodes because I noticed that the new season of The Curse of Oak Island was available on Hulu. When I first noticed the show, The Curse of Oak Island, on Hulu, something nagged at the back of my mind. I started watching it and when they mentioned The Money Pit, a long lost memory of reading about The Money Pit hiding treasure on Oak Island while in Junior High came flooding back to me. I was hooked. Not long into the first season, I knew they were never going to find anything. But that made watching it even more enjoyable. Some people can't look away when they see a train wreck. I can't look away when I see people desperately waiting to see a train wreck that's never going to happen. These idiots have now spent millions and millions of dollars over six years (televised! They've been searching for the treasure even longer than that!) to find a few coins, two Bobby Dazzlers (Australian for jewelry, I guess?), a lead cross, and some pottery. But they still believe they're going to eventually find "the one thing" which will assure them the treasure is real and they haven't been wasting their time. Although I don't know what would be different if they found "the one thing." Because without finding "the one thing," they continue to go back to the island every year and throw millions of dollars into the money pit. The only people getting rich off of this treasure hunt are the people they hire to drill into the island.
Coincidentally enough, the latest episode of The Twilight Zone was also about some jerk who threw away all of his money in search of a fortune. The episode, called "Fever," iss about a righteous Midwestern man who winds up in Las Vegas with his wife on a free vacation. He's against gambling but that's only because he's never felt the thrill of it! As soon as he puts one dollar into a slot machine, he's hooked. He's got the fever, baby! And he just knows the island is going to eventually pay out! I meant the slot machine. If he just puts enough money into it, he'll win the ten thousand dollar jackpot. He stays up all night losing money until the machine takes his last dollar and breaks down. Upset not over his foolishness but over the machine cheating him out of one dollar, the man smashes it to the ground and is hauled off by security. He hasn't slept for over 24 hours which, in The Twilight Zone, means you have to throw yourself out of a window. Unless that means you're supposed to die of heart failure on the bed while dreaming you threw yourself out of a window. I think they're basically the same thing, at least for the person who dies.
The story seems to be a morality tale warning against the dangers of gambling. Unless it's warning against the dangers of strict adherence to moral platitudes. Because it's always the people who absolutely abstain from a thing who wind up diving dangerously into that thing when they finally submit to the temptation. I bet that's the real moral. Self-righteous people are just ticking time bombs!
Anyway, that's what the story seems to be. But I think the story is really just the tale of a mentally ill man succumbing to his schizophrenia. He begins hearing voices and he thinks the slot machine is calling to him. He is stricken with insomnia and unable to get any rest. He begins hallucinating that the slot machine is after him. He is convinced that he will win the jackpot if he just keeps playing long enough. He acts erratically, screaming at his wife and vandalizing the casino. Ultimately, unable to live in the world he thinks is real, he throws himself out of the hotel window and bleeds out on the streets of Las Vegas. Rod Serling says he took a detour through The Twilight Zone but really he was just suffering from abnormal brain chemistry. The poor guy. I don't think people knew that much about schizophrenia in 1959 so the guys that run the casino just take it in stride. "This kind of greed fever happens all the time," they say. "Just not to that extent!"
"Greed Fever" was probably part of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders up until the 80s when it just became Trickle Down Economics. "What's wrong with wanting more money at the expense of the middle class's comfort? Why shouldn't we change tax rates so that CEOs and upper management can make more money rather than putting it back into the company to provide health insurance, pensions, and cost of living wage increases to avoid paying 90% taxes on the income? That's not greed fever! That's just the common sense that comes with tying huge tax breaks to the same political ideology that believes in more access to guns and less access to abortions!" Too bad Rod Serling wasn't around to write scathing morality tales about Reagan-era greed! Just imagine all of the episodes he could have ended with people throwing themselves out of windows!
My favorite part of The Curse of Oak Island is when they find something and somebody, say Gary the Metal Detector Guy, says something like, "It's a hook!" And then the narrator, needing to make the show interesting and having graduated from Keith Morrison's Dramatic School of Narrating, says, "A hook? On Oak Island? Perhaps used for hauling treasure chests? Could it be a sign that the treasure is finally within reach? Is it possible that aliens made the hook and sold it to the druids who wrote a manifesto predicting the coming of the Templar Knights? For the Lagina brothers, it's a sure sign that they're closer than ever to discovering the secret of Oak Island." Man, that's good stuff!
My favorite part of Fever was when the wife screamed after her husband fell out of the window. She probably screamed because she was so surprised that the window broke so easily when he merely backed slowly up against it and then somehow flung himself out and over the sill. Maybe schizophrenics are more nimble than average people. I bet the next day, she sued the hotel for such shoddily built and unsafe windows and won way more than ten thousand dollars. Then she probably fucked a young Wayne Newton. Maybe I'll start writing a The Twilight Zone fan-fiction series entitled "The Next Day" so I can continue the stories of all the people in the episodes. Like that guy who was fucking the robot on an asteroid and he had to watch as the rocket ship pilot casually shot her in the face because she was too heavy to take back to Earth. That guy probably murdered everybody in the rocket on the journey back home.
Coincidentally enough, the latest episode of The Twilight Zone was also about some jerk who threw away all of his money in search of a fortune. The episode, called "Fever," iss about a righteous Midwestern man who winds up in Las Vegas with his wife on a free vacation. He's against gambling but that's only because he's never felt the thrill of it! As soon as he puts one dollar into a slot machine, he's hooked. He's got the fever, baby! And he just knows the island is going to eventually pay out! I meant the slot machine. If he just puts enough money into it, he'll win the ten thousand dollar jackpot. He stays up all night losing money until the machine takes his last dollar and breaks down. Upset not over his foolishness but over the machine cheating him out of one dollar, the man smashes it to the ground and is hauled off by security. He hasn't slept for over 24 hours which, in The Twilight Zone, means you have to throw yourself out of a window. Unless that means you're supposed to die of heart failure on the bed while dreaming you threw yourself out of a window. I think they're basically the same thing, at least for the person who dies.
The story seems to be a morality tale warning against the dangers of gambling. Unless it's warning against the dangers of strict adherence to moral platitudes. Because it's always the people who absolutely abstain from a thing who wind up diving dangerously into that thing when they finally submit to the temptation. I bet that's the real moral. Self-righteous people are just ticking time bombs!
Anyway, that's what the story seems to be. But I think the story is really just the tale of a mentally ill man succumbing to his schizophrenia. He begins hearing voices and he thinks the slot machine is calling to him. He is stricken with insomnia and unable to get any rest. He begins hallucinating that the slot machine is after him. He is convinced that he will win the jackpot if he just keeps playing long enough. He acts erratically, screaming at his wife and vandalizing the casino. Ultimately, unable to live in the world he thinks is real, he throws himself out of the hotel window and bleeds out on the streets of Las Vegas. Rod Serling says he took a detour through The Twilight Zone but really he was just suffering from abnormal brain chemistry. The poor guy. I don't think people knew that much about schizophrenia in 1959 so the guys that run the casino just take it in stride. "This kind of greed fever happens all the time," they say. "Just not to that extent!"
"Greed Fever" was probably part of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders up until the 80s when it just became Trickle Down Economics. "What's wrong with wanting more money at the expense of the middle class's comfort? Why shouldn't we change tax rates so that CEOs and upper management can make more money rather than putting it back into the company to provide health insurance, pensions, and cost of living wage increases to avoid paying 90% taxes on the income? That's not greed fever! That's just the common sense that comes with tying huge tax breaks to the same political ideology that believes in more access to guns and less access to abortions!" Too bad Rod Serling wasn't around to write scathing morality tales about Reagan-era greed! Just imagine all of the episodes he could have ended with people throwing themselves out of windows!
My favorite part of The Curse of Oak Island is when they find something and somebody, say Gary the Metal Detector Guy, says something like, "It's a hook!" And then the narrator, needing to make the show interesting and having graduated from Keith Morrison's Dramatic School of Narrating, says, "A hook? On Oak Island? Perhaps used for hauling treasure chests? Could it be a sign that the treasure is finally within reach? Is it possible that aliens made the hook and sold it to the druids who wrote a manifesto predicting the coming of the Templar Knights? For the Lagina brothers, it's a sure sign that they're closer than ever to discovering the secret of Oak Island." Man, that's good stuff!
My favorite part of Fever was when the wife screamed after her husband fell out of the window. She probably screamed because she was so surprised that the window broke so easily when he merely backed slowly up against it and then somehow flung himself out and over the sill. Maybe schizophrenics are more nimble than average people. I bet the next day, she sued the hotel for such shoddily built and unsafe windows and won way more than ten thousand dollars. Then she probably fucked a young Wayne Newton. Maybe I'll start writing a The Twilight Zone fan-fiction series entitled "The Next Day" so I can continue the stories of all the people in the episodes. Like that guy who was fucking the robot on an asteroid and he had to watch as the rocket ship pilot casually shot her in the face because she was too heavy to take back to Earth. That guy probably murdered everybody in the rocket on the journey back home.
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Review of The Twilight Zone, Season 1, Episode 16: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Rough Draft"
I saw Jacob's Ladder in a theater in 1990 when I was 19 and it blew my mind. Not a lot of things blow my mind because I think of those things before I experience them and then when I experience them, I think, "Yeah. No shit." It's why in my 20s I simply assumed I was the reincarnation of every major philosopher and writer that had ever lived and I was their vacation reincarnation spot where they could just relax and have a good time without stressing about their literary legacy. We were just going to read, play games, and drop acid. It's possible the dropping acid part of that was responsible for the "I'm the reincarnation of loads of super smart historical people and also probably Jim Morrison" part. Anyway, for some reason, Jacob's Ladder blew my mind.
If you haven't seen Jacob's Ladder, I'm going to spoil the 2019 remake for you because I can't talk about this episode of The Twilight Zone, "The Hitch-Hiker", without doing so. Jacob's Ladder is about a man returning from Vietnam and having a terrible time trying to live his post-war life, mostly because he keeps seeing demons and weird shit. But here's the big twist that some of you have probably already figured out without even having seen the movie yet because you were raised in a post-M. Night Shyamalan world: the guy's entire post-war life was just a hallucination he was having as he bled out and died in a helicopter in Vietnam. I might have some of the details wrong because I haven't seen the movie since that day in 1990. "The Hitch-Hiker" is the same story except a little looser with the laws of what dying people are capable of doing as they're dying. The guy in Jacob's Ladder simply hallucinated. The woman in "The Hitch-Hiker" continues to drive cross country trying to hook up with sailors after she died. But that's why this is a rough draft of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" which I haven't talked about but it's just another episode of The Twilight Zone that's basically Jacob's Ladder.
Finding that at least two episodes of The Twilight Zone were based on people living a little more life just after they died, I find it hard to believe that Jacob's Ladder blew my mind as it did (am I using that phrase too much? Maybe next time I'll say the movie made me shit my pants). I'm sure I'd seen both of these episodes of The Twilight Zone at some point, seeing as how I watched the show whenever I found it on television. Or, like Star Trek, I often had it playing in the background as I played computer RPGs on my Apple IIe. I suppose a large part of the movie making me shit my pants was that it completely duped me and I wasn't expecting to see anything so heady and thought-provoking. I'm pretty sure the only reason my friend Paul and I went to see it was because we thought it was a horror movie. And, I suppose, it was. Just not the kind we were expecting. This one definitely didn't have any teenagers fucking in the woods.
"The Hitch-Hiker" begins with a beautiful woman named Nan who is so beautiful that this sentence was supposed to say something else about her but now it's only going to be about how beautiful she is. She has just rolled her car off the side of the highway and died. But nobody knows it yet! Not even her! So instead of lying there and not saying or doing anything because she's dead, she thanks a mechanic for changing her tire for her and then follows him into town to get a new tire. It only costs thirty bucks!
On the way to the service station, and then again at the service station, Nan sees a creepy hitch-hiker that creeps her (and me!) out. The rest of the episode is Nan becoming more and more frightened as she continually sees this creepy dude trying to get into her car all across America. Eventually she gets so scared that she invites a sailor into her car for company. When he begins to suspect that she's crazy, he flees from her car even after she tells him she'll blow him if he stays. Remember this is 1959 so she says it 1959 language: "Look. I like you. I really like you very much, as a matter of fact. That's why I picked you up. Because I liked you. I thought that we could be friends and I'd kind of like for you to take me out." I mean, put it back in your scared shitless pants, lady! The sailor decides not to continue with Nan which is more unbelievable than Nan being dead, even for 1959.
Eventually, Nan decides to check in with her mom and call home. That's when she discovers her mom has been hospitalized for shock after finding out her daughter died on the highway after a blow out caused her to roll her car. And it's at that moment that Nan realizes the hitch-hiker was just another dead guy trying to get a lift to Hell. Or he maybe he was Death personified. Probably that one. Although I really like the idea that he was a hitch-hiker that she crashed into and killed when she died and he's been chasing her all over the country trying to get a ride-share to Hell.
I once picked up a hitch-hiker while driving North up the Pacific Coast Highway in my 1972 Volkswagen bus. He was all, "I'm going to Arcadia!" And I was all, "Tough shit! I'm going to Eureka!" And he was all, "Oh man!" And I was all, "Look. I really like you. Very much. That's why I picked you up! Because I liked you. I thought we could be friends so I guess I'll take you to Arcadia and then turn back around to Eureka." And then he blew me. As a friend, of course!
That story about me didn't have anything to do with the theme of this episode. But it was pretty sexy, right?!
This episode didn't really impress me much but I have to give it credit. If Jacob's Ladder could blow my shit in 1990, I suppose this story probably freaked the fuck out of a lot of people in 1959 (and earlier when the radio drama of Lucille Fletcher's story was first broadcast). And I bet in 1959 more people actually believed in ghosts and the afterlife! Although they were less afraid of hitch-hikers. Back then, hitch-hikers were just people trying to get from one place to another, probably to see a sick relative. But now we know 95% of all hitch-hikers are serial killers, rapists, or the personification of Death.
Anyway, my point is that Inger Stevens, the woman who played Nan, was scarily beautiful.
If you haven't seen Jacob's Ladder, I'm going to spoil the 2019 remake for you because I can't talk about this episode of The Twilight Zone, "The Hitch-Hiker", without doing so. Jacob's Ladder is about a man returning from Vietnam and having a terrible time trying to live his post-war life, mostly because he keeps seeing demons and weird shit. But here's the big twist that some of you have probably already figured out without even having seen the movie yet because you were raised in a post-M. Night Shyamalan world: the guy's entire post-war life was just a hallucination he was having as he bled out and died in a helicopter in Vietnam. I might have some of the details wrong because I haven't seen the movie since that day in 1990. "The Hitch-Hiker" is the same story except a little looser with the laws of what dying people are capable of doing as they're dying. The guy in Jacob's Ladder simply hallucinated. The woman in "The Hitch-Hiker" continues to drive cross country trying to hook up with sailors after she died. But that's why this is a rough draft of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" which I haven't talked about but it's just another episode of The Twilight Zone that's basically Jacob's Ladder.
Finding that at least two episodes of The Twilight Zone were based on people living a little more life just after they died, I find it hard to believe that Jacob's Ladder blew my mind as it did (am I using that phrase too much? Maybe next time I'll say the movie made me shit my pants). I'm sure I'd seen both of these episodes of The Twilight Zone at some point, seeing as how I watched the show whenever I found it on television. Or, like Star Trek, I often had it playing in the background as I played computer RPGs on my Apple IIe. I suppose a large part of the movie making me shit my pants was that it completely duped me and I wasn't expecting to see anything so heady and thought-provoking. I'm pretty sure the only reason my friend Paul and I went to see it was because we thought it was a horror movie. And, I suppose, it was. Just not the kind we were expecting. This one definitely didn't have any teenagers fucking in the woods.
"The Hitch-Hiker" begins with a beautiful woman named Nan who is so beautiful that this sentence was supposed to say something else about her but now it's only going to be about how beautiful she is. She has just rolled her car off the side of the highway and died. But nobody knows it yet! Not even her! So instead of lying there and not saying or doing anything because she's dead, she thanks a mechanic for changing her tire for her and then follows him into town to get a new tire. It only costs thirty bucks!
On the way to the service station, and then again at the service station, Nan sees a creepy hitch-hiker that creeps her (and me!) out. The rest of the episode is Nan becoming more and more frightened as she continually sees this creepy dude trying to get into her car all across America. Eventually she gets so scared that she invites a sailor into her car for company. When he begins to suspect that she's crazy, he flees from her car even after she tells him she'll blow him if he stays. Remember this is 1959 so she says it 1959 language: "Look. I like you. I really like you very much, as a matter of fact. That's why I picked you up. Because I liked you. I thought that we could be friends and I'd kind of like for you to take me out." I mean, put it back in your scared shitless pants, lady! The sailor decides not to continue with Nan which is more unbelievable than Nan being dead, even for 1959.
Eventually, Nan decides to check in with her mom and call home. That's when she discovers her mom has been hospitalized for shock after finding out her daughter died on the highway after a blow out caused her to roll her car. And it's at that moment that Nan realizes the hitch-hiker was just another dead guy trying to get a lift to Hell. Or he maybe he was Death personified. Probably that one. Although I really like the idea that he was a hitch-hiker that she crashed into and killed when she died and he's been chasing her all over the country trying to get a ride-share to Hell.
I once picked up a hitch-hiker while driving North up the Pacific Coast Highway in my 1972 Volkswagen bus. He was all, "I'm going to Arcadia!" And I was all, "Tough shit! I'm going to Eureka!" And he was all, "Oh man!" And I was all, "Look. I really like you. Very much. That's why I picked you up! Because I liked you. I thought we could be friends so I guess I'll take you to Arcadia and then turn back around to Eureka." And then he blew me. As a friend, of course!
That story about me didn't have anything to do with the theme of this episode. But it was pretty sexy, right?!
This episode didn't really impress me much but I have to give it credit. If Jacob's Ladder could blow my shit in 1990, I suppose this story probably freaked the fuck out of a lot of people in 1959 (and earlier when the radio drama of Lucille Fletcher's story was first broadcast). And I bet in 1959 more people actually believed in ghosts and the afterlife! Although they were less afraid of hitch-hikers. Back then, hitch-hikers were just people trying to get from one place to another, probably to see a sick relative. But now we know 95% of all hitch-hikers are serial killers, rapists, or the personification of Death.
Anyway, my point is that Inger Stevens, the woman who played Nan, was scarily beautiful.
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Review of The Twilight Zone, Season 1, Episode 15: "Astronauts Were Fucking Dumb in 1959"
I know in this Internet day and Internet age, we're not supposed to shit on other people's creative projects. I know we're supposed to bite the holy fuck out of our tongue and just try to say around the gouts of blood, "It just wasn't for me." Well, let me begin by saying, "The episode of The Twilight Zone entitled 'I Shot an Arrow into the Air' was not for me. Not at all. Not even fucking close." You can stop reading now if criticism makes your blood boil to the point that you can't not begin a terrible debate and hashtag about it on Twitter.
The title of this episode (the real title and not my more apt but not real title (also, since only seven men were considered "astronauts" in 1959, I'd like to apologize to them and their legacy and say, "It was a joke title referencing the fictional astronauts in this television episode and not Misters Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Shepard, and Slayton. Luckily none of them are alive to beat me up for feeling insulted although I'm sure, even dead, some of them could take me.")), "I Shot an Arrow into the Air," was taken from a Henry Wordsworth Longfellow poem. It only uses the first sentence of the poem because if they'd included the second sentence, it would have spoiled the surprise twist ending. That sentence is "It fell to Earth, I know not where." Well, I know exactly where after watching this episode: 97 miles outside of Reno.
The "Arrow" of the title is an experimental space craft. It's so experimental that, as Colonel CalmDownEverbody says, it doesn't even have a prototype. Does that mean it was the prototype? Who flies into space in the prototype?! Or, should I say, who flies a little ways into the air and then crashes in the Nevada desert in the prototype?! Because that's the basic plot of the story. A bunch of astronauts in an experimental ship crash immediately back to Earth after which they prove why they were the most expendable military men when they begin trying to figure out where they might be. Which is when I really began to have a problem with this episode.
Obviously the heart of the story is man's humanity and/or inhumanity to man when faced with imminent death. Two characters remain reasonable and kind, compassionate and giving, while one character becomes a giant murdering selfish asshole. It's possible this entire story is simply a critique of capitalism and I missed it because I was busy punching holes in my wall and screaming, "Why are these astronauts such fucking imbeciles?!" If that's the case, I won't apologize because the writing was terrible and also punching the wall was cathartic.
Four of the eight astronauts were killed in the crash. I suppose the four killed were the science officer, the engineer, the bookworm with glasses, and the guy with only a third grade education. Of the four who survived, one dies almost immediately from either his wounds, a lack of water, or the bitter sting of rejection he felt from Corey, the capitalist maniac. The three who survived didn't know they were dumb as rocks because people who are as dumb as rocks never know they're dumb as rocks. But, believe me, they're dumb as rocks. Maybe dumber. With their limited scope, education, and perception, they begin to ponder where they might be and they decided they've crash landed on an asteroid.
Okay, fine. I don't know how long an experimental craft in a fictional 1959 takes to get airborne. But let's assume it took three days to reach the edge of space because what else am I supposed to believe? That these men riding in the spacecraft couldn't tell that the ship crashed almost immediately which couldn't possibly mean they made it into space and crashed on a nearby asteroid. Let me also assume that the creators of the show didn't mean to have any shots of the Nevada desert that included scrub brush because plant life would mean water which would mean hope, even if these men still thought they were on an asteroid. I'm really making some fucking concessions here! But I'm about at my limit. Because another clue these dolts figure out is how the sun is basically the same size as they remember it. So their conclusion? No, not that they might be in an Earth desert. They decide the asteroid they're on is in the same orbit as Earth! I'd ask if any of these assholes had ever heard of Occam's Razor but the guy with the third grade education died, remember? So why bother asking?
So these fuckwits think they're stranded on an asteroid with five gallons of water between them and no hope of being rescued because they were in the prototype spacecraft which took four years to build. And yet, even though they're all fucking doomed, Corey decides murdering them all so he could last ten days instead of three would be the best option. Never mind that when one of them decides to try to pinpoint their location using the stars, he points out that he can't because the sky was overcast. OVERCAST?! That means you have fucking moisture in the atmosphere! Wait. Atmosphere?! On an asteroid?! Not to mention Colonel ISaidRemainCalmEverybody has a fucking watch but doesn't notice that the day and night cycle seems about the fucking same as on Earth. Hey! Did you notice the sun went down at exactly the same time it did yesterday, you stupid motherfucker?!
Anyway, Corey panics and murders everybody because that's capitalism, baby! When other people play by the rules, you win by playing by not the rules! But then when people ask, "Hey, did you play by the rules?" You just say, "Of course! Also, let's change some of the rules in my favor so I don't have to cheat as much as you think I did which I totally didn't." Eventually, Corey climbs over a hill instead of living it up with his five gallons of water and sees highway signs for Nevada and Reno. Then he goes on and on about telephone poles and apologizes to the men he killed. Because if he'd known they were still on Earth where murder is illegal, he obviously wouldn't have done it. Colonel See?IToldYouToCalmDown!NowLookWhatYou'veGottenYourselfIntoEverybody and Pearson, being dead, probably forgive him because what do they care now? Corey almost certainly goes back into the desert to make it look like Pearson murdered the Colonel and also to get his precious five gallons of water. Later, when he's awarded a Medal of Honor for his bravery in difficult circumstances, he'll begin fostering the delusion that, of course, it absolutely was Pearson who murdered the Colonel and he, Corey, behaved in an exemplary fashion.
But eventually, one of Pearson's children, suspicious about the entire ordeal, will start a Podcast which examines the happenings of this unfortunate beginning to space exploration. She'll uncover the truth through lengthy interviews with people associated with Corey and also maybe some DNA evidence because obviously Corey had sex with bookworm with glasses' corpse when he thought he'd never see another living sexpot again, what with being stranded on an asteroid with an atmosphere and moisture in the air and desert plants all around. By then, Corey will have been dead many years from liver failure as he found his delusions losing their strength of conviction and had to replace them with the blissful dark ignorance of nightly scotch blackouts.
Boy, astronauts really were fucking dumb in 1959.
The title of this episode (the real title and not my more apt but not real title (also, since only seven men were considered "astronauts" in 1959, I'd like to apologize to them and their legacy and say, "It was a joke title referencing the fictional astronauts in this television episode and not Misters Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Shepard, and Slayton. Luckily none of them are alive to beat me up for feeling insulted although I'm sure, even dead, some of them could take me.")), "I Shot an Arrow into the Air," was taken from a Henry Wordsworth Longfellow poem. It only uses the first sentence of the poem because if they'd included the second sentence, it would have spoiled the surprise twist ending. That sentence is "It fell to Earth, I know not where." Well, I know exactly where after watching this episode: 97 miles outside of Reno.
The "Arrow" of the title is an experimental space craft. It's so experimental that, as Colonel CalmDownEverbody says, it doesn't even have a prototype. Does that mean it was the prototype? Who flies into space in the prototype?! Or, should I say, who flies a little ways into the air and then crashes in the Nevada desert in the prototype?! Because that's the basic plot of the story. A bunch of astronauts in an experimental ship crash immediately back to Earth after which they prove why they were the most expendable military men when they begin trying to figure out where they might be. Which is when I really began to have a problem with this episode.
Obviously the heart of the story is man's humanity and/or inhumanity to man when faced with imminent death. Two characters remain reasonable and kind, compassionate and giving, while one character becomes a giant murdering selfish asshole. It's possible this entire story is simply a critique of capitalism and I missed it because I was busy punching holes in my wall and screaming, "Why are these astronauts such fucking imbeciles?!" If that's the case, I won't apologize because the writing was terrible and also punching the wall was cathartic.
Four of the eight astronauts were killed in the crash. I suppose the four killed were the science officer, the engineer, the bookworm with glasses, and the guy with only a third grade education. Of the four who survived, one dies almost immediately from either his wounds, a lack of water, or the bitter sting of rejection he felt from Corey, the capitalist maniac. The three who survived didn't know they were dumb as rocks because people who are as dumb as rocks never know they're dumb as rocks. But, believe me, they're dumb as rocks. Maybe dumber. With their limited scope, education, and perception, they begin to ponder where they might be and they decided they've crash landed on an asteroid.
Okay, fine. I don't know how long an experimental craft in a fictional 1959 takes to get airborne. But let's assume it took three days to reach the edge of space because what else am I supposed to believe? That these men riding in the spacecraft couldn't tell that the ship crashed almost immediately which couldn't possibly mean they made it into space and crashed on a nearby asteroid. Let me also assume that the creators of the show didn't mean to have any shots of the Nevada desert that included scrub brush because plant life would mean water which would mean hope, even if these men still thought they were on an asteroid. I'm really making some fucking concessions here! But I'm about at my limit. Because another clue these dolts figure out is how the sun is basically the same size as they remember it. So their conclusion? No, not that they might be in an Earth desert. They decide the asteroid they're on is in the same orbit as Earth! I'd ask if any of these assholes had ever heard of Occam's Razor but the guy with the third grade education died, remember? So why bother asking?
So these fuckwits think they're stranded on an asteroid with five gallons of water between them and no hope of being rescued because they were in the prototype spacecraft which took four years to build. And yet, even though they're all fucking doomed, Corey decides murdering them all so he could last ten days instead of three would be the best option. Never mind that when one of them decides to try to pinpoint their location using the stars, he points out that he can't because the sky was overcast. OVERCAST?! That means you have fucking moisture in the atmosphere! Wait. Atmosphere?! On an asteroid?! Not to mention Colonel ISaidRemainCalmEverybody has a fucking watch but doesn't notice that the day and night cycle seems about the fucking same as on Earth. Hey! Did you notice the sun went down at exactly the same time it did yesterday, you stupid motherfucker?!
Anyway, Corey panics and murders everybody because that's capitalism, baby! When other people play by the rules, you win by playing by not the rules! But then when people ask, "Hey, did you play by the rules?" You just say, "Of course! Also, let's change some of the rules in my favor so I don't have to cheat as much as you think I did which I totally didn't." Eventually, Corey climbs over a hill instead of living it up with his five gallons of water and sees highway signs for Nevada and Reno. Then he goes on and on about telephone poles and apologizes to the men he killed. Because if he'd known they were still on Earth where murder is illegal, he obviously wouldn't have done it. Colonel See?IToldYouToCalmDown!NowLookWhatYou'veGottenYourselfIntoEverybody and Pearson, being dead, probably forgive him because what do they care now? Corey almost certainly goes back into the desert to make it look like Pearson murdered the Colonel and also to get his precious five gallons of water. Later, when he's awarded a Medal of Honor for his bravery in difficult circumstances, he'll begin fostering the delusion that, of course, it absolutely was Pearson who murdered the Colonel and he, Corey, behaved in an exemplary fashion.
But eventually, one of Pearson's children, suspicious about the entire ordeal, will start a Podcast which examines the happenings of this unfortunate beginning to space exploration. She'll uncover the truth through lengthy interviews with people associated with Corey and also maybe some DNA evidence because obviously Corey had sex with bookworm with glasses' corpse when he thought he'd never see another living sexpot again, what with being stranded on an asteroid with an atmosphere and moisture in the air and desert plants all around. By then, Corey will have been dead many years from liver failure as he found his delusions losing their strength of conviction and had to replace them with the blissful dark ignorance of nightly scotch blackouts.
Boy, astronauts really were fucking dumb in 1959.
Monday, January 6, 2020
Review of The Twilight Zone, Season 1, Episode 13: "Just One Guy Actually Dies"
Certain eras of television and movies make various uses of visual signifiers to indicate to the audience that they're supposed to believe something that isn't actually happening. The one that annoys me the most in our current times is gagging a person. To indicate a person can't speak or yell or make any noise whatsoever, a character will simply put a piece of cloth around somebody's head so that it is clenched in their teeth like a horse's bit. Obviously that won't stop a person from screaming at the top of their lungs. But I don't think non-horse-bit gags work as well as television and movies want us to believe they do for conveniences of plot anyway, so who really cares, right? I'm sure actors were tired of having duct tape wrapped around their faces to at least seem somewhat believable which led to some really uptight actor saying, "Can't I just hold this in my teeth and pretend that I can't yell? Acting!" And some director was all, "Fuck. Fine. Whatever. Just get the fucking scene shot already!" And then everybody saw it and was all, "Wait. Audiences will buy that that person can't make a sound now? Fuck yeah! No more duct tape, baby!"
In the fifties, one of the worst visual signifiers was saved for two people kissing. Instead of actually kissing, they just pursed their lips and smashed their faces together, with little to no movement, for an amount of time depending on how passionate the kiss was supposed to be. I've kissed my own grandmother more erotically than a 50s era television kiss. I bring this up because there's a kissing scene in The Twilight Zone episode, "The Four of Us are Dying," that looks like a child took two dolls and mashed their faces together for an awkwardly long amount of time. Actually, a child with two dolls would have been more dramatic. Maybe I shouldn't blame the 50s entirely. I'm pretty sure Ward and June Cleaver shared kisses that sometimes made me think, "Hugh Beaumont is enjoying that a little too much."
This episode also contains the signifier of loads of neon signs floating about the protagonist's head to indicate he's in a big city. I have no idea who first came up with that one but it's actually pretty good. I'm sure it was first done in some stage production of whatever early to mid-century play sees the protagonist go from a rural area to New York. Does that happen in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? What about Poor Little Ritz Girl? Or maybe it was first done in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
I thought that by the time I was done discussing the terrible kiss that I'd accidentally find a way to talk about this episode but it didn't happen. I don't know what George Clayton Johnson's original story, "All of Us are Dying," was actually like because I'd have to find a collection of his short stories to learn but I can't imagine it was lacking in as much substance as Serling's teleplay seemed to be. I was hoping that my brain would figure out the point of this episode so that I don't expose my own ignorance when somebody on the Internet decides to "actually" me and make me look stupid. And since I never received an "A-ha!" moment from on high that truly satisfied me for the reason this episode had to be filmed by Serling, I guess I'll just try to flesh out the only thought that came to me.
I'm sure people have made categories for all the different kinds of The Twilight Zone. Some are about the existential terror of loneliness, some are about nostalgia, some are about terrible disasters, some are about Kojak taking the piss out of his step-daughter's stupid doll, some are about a terrible person getting their comeuppance, and so on. I haven't figured out all the categories myself! But this one seems to be one of the comeuppance ones which introduces the audience to an unlikable guy and then kills him at the end so the audience learns not to be unlikable.
Serling's introduction to Arch Hammer is thus: "His name is Arch Hammer. He's thirty-six years old. He's been a salesman, a dispatcher, a truck driver, a con man, a bookie, and a part-time bartender. This is a cheap man, a nickle and dime man, with a cheapness that goes past the suit and the shirt; a cheapness of mind, a cheapness of taste, a tawdry little shine on the seat of his conscience, and a dark room squint at a world whose sunlight has never gotten through to him." I haven't heard a string of petty insults so beautifully rendered since Thurl Ravenscroft took The Grinch to task for being such a huge asshole. Sometimes when you're in the Twilight Zone, you don't have time for ambiguity! You just need to know, right from the start, if the protagonist is an asshole or a hero. Also, you always need to know that the male lead is actually thirty-six.
Hammer, a man who can change his facial features to look like whomever he wants, decides to use the power to accrue love and money. He uses his power as shortcuts to getting the things most people desire. He looks like the lover of a woman who believed he was dead (I mean, the actual lover was dead. But she readily accepts that it was all a case of mistaken identity) so that he can get some easy loving. Then he pretends to be a criminal betrayed by some other criminals so he can steal some stolen cash stolen from the guy he was pretending to be. But in the end, as he takes on the identity of a stranger he sees on a poster in an alley, he discovers that pretending to be other people comes with their terrible baggage as well. He runs into the guy he's pretending to be's father who hates him for knocking up a nice girl and ruining the reputation of the family. The father shoots him in the gut and pisses on his dying corpse. That sounds like maybe it wouldn't have aired on a 1950s television show so maybe I dreamed that bit later.
I guess the point is that there are no easy shortcuts because some shortcuts lead through bear country and you're liable to be mauled by a bear when you use one of those shortcuts even if that shortcut leads to tons of money and pussy.
Apparently in the original story (which I still haven't read but I've now read about!), Hammer couldn't control how he looked. In the end, he dies not knowing who he is, awash in the memories and lives of every person other people saw him as. There's probably a moral in that about being who we are and not who other people expect us to be lest we lose ourselves in the process. But who knows? Not me! I didn't read the original story! And Serling seems to have heard the treatment and thought, "Yeah! That'll be terrific! The man who could be anybody! Just think how much easy money and pussy you could get doing that! And how many cigarettes you could smoke!" Then he needed a way to show that maybe that wasn't the greatest life so he had to introduce the psychopathic father figure. Audiences would have nodded sagely when Hammer was shot, and probably said things like, "That creep had it coming!" and "Just goes to show you!" and "Just think how much more pussy he could have gotten if that jerko dad hadn't murdered him for practically no reason at all!" That last one would have been said by me after I time traveled to the 1950s.
The writer of the original story, George Clayton Johnson, also wrote the script for the first Star Trek episode, "The Man Trap." It's pretty much the same story except with an alien whose only desire is the luscious salt within the human body.
In conclusion, I am concluding this review by suggesting that perhaps this story wasn't meant to have much of a point at all. Perhaps Rod Serling was just sitting around one day and thought, "You know what I want to make? An episode that's a metaphor for jazz!" And that was this episode!
In the fifties, one of the worst visual signifiers was saved for two people kissing. Instead of actually kissing, they just pursed their lips and smashed their faces together, with little to no movement, for an amount of time depending on how passionate the kiss was supposed to be. I've kissed my own grandmother more erotically than a 50s era television kiss. I bring this up because there's a kissing scene in The Twilight Zone episode, "The Four of Us are Dying," that looks like a child took two dolls and mashed their faces together for an awkwardly long amount of time. Actually, a child with two dolls would have been more dramatic. Maybe I shouldn't blame the 50s entirely. I'm pretty sure Ward and June Cleaver shared kisses that sometimes made me think, "Hugh Beaumont is enjoying that a little too much."
This episode also contains the signifier of loads of neon signs floating about the protagonist's head to indicate he's in a big city. I have no idea who first came up with that one but it's actually pretty good. I'm sure it was first done in some stage production of whatever early to mid-century play sees the protagonist go from a rural area to New York. Does that happen in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? What about Poor Little Ritz Girl? Or maybe it was first done in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
I thought that by the time I was done discussing the terrible kiss that I'd accidentally find a way to talk about this episode but it didn't happen. I don't know what George Clayton Johnson's original story, "All of Us are Dying," was actually like because I'd have to find a collection of his short stories to learn but I can't imagine it was lacking in as much substance as Serling's teleplay seemed to be. I was hoping that my brain would figure out the point of this episode so that I don't expose my own ignorance when somebody on the Internet decides to "actually" me and make me look stupid. And since I never received an "A-ha!" moment from on high that truly satisfied me for the reason this episode had to be filmed by Serling, I guess I'll just try to flesh out the only thought that came to me.
I'm sure people have made categories for all the different kinds of The Twilight Zone. Some are about the existential terror of loneliness, some are about nostalgia, some are about terrible disasters, some are about Kojak taking the piss out of his step-daughter's stupid doll, some are about a terrible person getting their comeuppance, and so on. I haven't figured out all the categories myself! But this one seems to be one of the comeuppance ones which introduces the audience to an unlikable guy and then kills him at the end so the audience learns not to be unlikable.
Serling's introduction to Arch Hammer is thus: "His name is Arch Hammer. He's thirty-six years old. He's been a salesman, a dispatcher, a truck driver, a con man, a bookie, and a part-time bartender. This is a cheap man, a nickle and dime man, with a cheapness that goes past the suit and the shirt; a cheapness of mind, a cheapness of taste, a tawdry little shine on the seat of his conscience, and a dark room squint at a world whose sunlight has never gotten through to him." I haven't heard a string of petty insults so beautifully rendered since Thurl Ravenscroft took The Grinch to task for being such a huge asshole. Sometimes when you're in the Twilight Zone, you don't have time for ambiguity! You just need to know, right from the start, if the protagonist is an asshole or a hero. Also, you always need to know that the male lead is actually thirty-six.
Hammer, a man who can change his facial features to look like whomever he wants, decides to use the power to accrue love and money. He uses his power as shortcuts to getting the things most people desire. He looks like the lover of a woman who believed he was dead (I mean, the actual lover was dead. But she readily accepts that it was all a case of mistaken identity) so that he can get some easy loving. Then he pretends to be a criminal betrayed by some other criminals so he can steal some stolen cash stolen from the guy he was pretending to be. But in the end, as he takes on the identity of a stranger he sees on a poster in an alley, he discovers that pretending to be other people comes with their terrible baggage as well. He runs into the guy he's pretending to be's father who hates him for knocking up a nice girl and ruining the reputation of the family. The father shoots him in the gut and pisses on his dying corpse. That sounds like maybe it wouldn't have aired on a 1950s television show so maybe I dreamed that bit later.
I guess the point is that there are no easy shortcuts because some shortcuts lead through bear country and you're liable to be mauled by a bear when you use one of those shortcuts even if that shortcut leads to tons of money and pussy.
Apparently in the original story (which I still haven't read but I've now read about!), Hammer couldn't control how he looked. In the end, he dies not knowing who he is, awash in the memories and lives of every person other people saw him as. There's probably a moral in that about being who we are and not who other people expect us to be lest we lose ourselves in the process. But who knows? Not me! I didn't read the original story! And Serling seems to have heard the treatment and thought, "Yeah! That'll be terrific! The man who could be anybody! Just think how much easy money and pussy you could get doing that! And how many cigarettes you could smoke!" Then he needed a way to show that maybe that wasn't the greatest life so he had to introduce the psychopathic father figure. Audiences would have nodded sagely when Hammer was shot, and probably said things like, "That creep had it coming!" and "Just goes to show you!" and "Just think how much more pussy he could have gotten if that jerko dad hadn't murdered him for practically no reason at all!" That last one would have been said by me after I time traveled to the 1950s.
The writer of the original story, George Clayton Johnson, also wrote the script for the first Star Trek episode, "The Man Trap." It's pretty much the same story except with an alien whose only desire is the luscious salt within the human body.
In conclusion, I am concluding this review by suggesting that perhaps this story wasn't meant to have much of a point at all. Perhaps Rod Serling was just sitting around one day and thought, "You know what I want to make? An episode that's a metaphor for jazz!" And that was this episode!
Friday, January 3, 2020
Review of The Twilight Zone, Season 1, Episode 12: "Slippery Shoes"
Once upon a time, people who were told stories listened carefully, sat in rapt attention at the twists and turns of the plot, and felt empathy for the protagonists. In this way, audiences generally became wiser and more compassionate. They heard stories about people different from them and their scope of the world grew. By journeying, even metaphorically, with another person on their trials and tribulations against a harsh and uncaring world full of people ready to manipulate and take advantage of whomever they could, we grew stronger in our ties. We built up the muscles of empathy and compassion. We were taught to root for those standing up against injustice and to boo and mock those who would cynically destroy other people for their own advantage. Once upon a time, stories could weave beneficent magic. But now in this all too current time, when hearing stories of goodness and justice and equality and underdogs against those who would use their selfishness and greed to advance their own cynical and dangerous desires, people simply see a critique of their own terrible flaws of character and they erupt in anger at the storyteller. We learn nothing. And we're proud of our defensiveness and our ignorance.
If you'll listen — listen in the old ways — I would like to tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a boy who claimed he loved ambiguity and subtlety in storytelling. "Why must the writer tell me right up front which character I should cheer and which character I should boo and hiss? Can I not be allowed to make up my own mind?" he would say to anybody who would listen (which was apparently about two dozen total strangers and not one family member (which was probably a good thing because how could he be honest about his life if he knew the people whom he was venting about were listening to his stories that didn't exactly portray them in a decent light?)). He believed a story that presented itself as a puzzle was the greatest kind of story a storyteller could tell. "If the story is intriguing enough, people will put in the effort to understand it!" he once claimed to a friend he knew was smart but who absolutely missed the entire point of John Barth's story "Night-sea Journey" from Lost in the Funhouse. That friend insisted that authors had a duty to their audience to make their message plain and simple. And yet he claimed to love "Night-sea Journey" while never realizing that the narrator of the story was a spermatozoa. But without that knowledge, without making the mental "A-ha!" leap of understanding while reading it, the story cannot be understood as it was meant to be understood. When the boy saw his friend do an existential double-take over learning the truth of "Night-sea Journey" not two minutes after declaring David Lynch failed his audience with Lost Highway, the boy nearly traded philosophical positions with his friend. Maybe his friend was right. Maybe subtlety and ambiguity were too much for even intelligent people to discern. Perhaps truth was too important to risk being misunderstood by the audience.
The boy did not change his opinion of complicated and not easily decoded stories. He continued to read Barth and Pynchon, Danielweski and Dick, Stein and DeLillo and Nabokov and Heller. And yet he also read comic books — so many comic books! Something in him demanded stories that were easily digestible. Stories so obviously about right and wrong that they took no brain power at all. Unambiguous stories not meant to say anything too deep or disturbing or existentially terrifying. Stories simply meant to inspire and to say, "Hey! Look, kids! We can defeat the bad guys if we just give it the old college try! Not the new college try because is beating evil worth the debt incurred? No, wait, never mind! That's getting too ambiguous!" Stories so simple that the boy could not help but mock them ceaselessly at every opportunity.
But one day, even comic books began to believe that ambiguity was more important than truth and inspiration. Writers began to ask, "What would happen if the good guys weren't as good as we thought they were?" And suddenly comic books themselves had changed their nature so much as to be unrecognizable. Where once the stories were about how we, as humans, could aspire to be like these flawless heroes who would sacrifice their own lives to make the world a better place, they were now stories about how they, as superheroes, were actually entirely too human and no better than the rest of humanity. And the boy thought, "Wait. What the hell is happening?"
But the boy could not change his nature. He might have noticed how comic book heroes were changing but he also loved stories full of ambiguity and subtlety. He liked stories about characters who couldn't claim to be either good or evil but were just people trying to navigate the maze of artificial social constructs on which civilization is based. Surely the audience, being intrigued by the high level of effort put into these stories, would ferret out the message and learn a little something about truth or maybe courage or possibly even the American Way (not the real American Way but the ideal American Way that has never really actually existed). Obviously a large portion of storytelling's audience would not have the patience or intelligence or will to read Somebody the Sailor or Gravity's Rainbow or House of Leaves or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch or "Melanctha" or White Noise or Pale Fire or Catch-22. But they would absolutely be able to read Watchmen or Sandman or Animal Man, being that their ideas and ambiguities and questions were somewhat camouflaged by all of the pretty pictures. So the boy was pleased with this turn of events where lots and lots of people were learning that stories could convey important ideas through complex and hard-to-navigate narratives. At least for awhile.
Eventually, perhaps even too late, the boy realized that the heart within a story so well hidden by intellectual contortions of storytelling might as well not even exist. If the audience can't find their way to the heart, the story has failed the audience. The boy realized his friend Soy Rakelson may have had an accidental point. Audiences would not be intrigued by a complex story. Audiences could not be trusted to put any work into their role. If the heart were too well hidden, the audience would never find it. They would barely even try to look. Instead, the audience would simply be angry and feel mocked. The audience would grow defensive. The audience would not just turn against the particular storyteller but against all storytellers. They would call the storytellers to task and demand stories that were not complex. They would demand stories that didn't point fingers at their flaws. They would demand stories about nothing at all. If the stories being told were important but the importance couldn't be ferreted out, well, why not just tell unimportant stories that simply state, "This person is good. This person is bad. By the end, the bad guy will be punched in the nose. And, don't worry, nobody will be upset by what makes the bad guy bad. He's just bad, okay? He's not a reflection of you, the audience! You're the good guy! Now calm down already and go read more garbage."
The boy thought, "How did we come to this? If important stories are too complex for their audience, that doesn't mean stories shouldn't still be important. Perhaps there was something to stories being simple and still important." Thinking to himself, he clarified his position: "Don't get me wrong! Don't take me halfway up to heaven without letting me swing down on my birch or whatever this allusion to a Frost poem was meant to say while also letting the audience know I'm well read! I still want complex, ambiguous, subtle stories about existential dilemmas without any real answers! But I could probably do with a lot more simple morality tales as well!" And it was with that statement, that the boy decided to discuss The Twilight Zone episode, "What You Need."
"What You Need" is a story of two men. One man is the protagonist. One man is the antagonist. One man, you are supposed to root for. One man, you are supposed to boo and hiss. Rod Serling tells you right up front which guy you should boo and hiss. After being introduced to Fred Renard barking at the bartender, Rod Serling interrupts the scene with his opening narration: "You're looking at a Mister Fred Renard who carries on his shoulder a chip the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a friendless man, a lonely man, a grasping, compulsive, nervous man. This is a man who has lived thirty-six undistinguished, meaningless, pointless, failure-laden years and who at this moment looks for an escape, any escape, any way, anything, anybody, to get out of the rut." Basically, Serling calls the guy a loser. In a more complicated, late-twentieth century story, I would forgive the audience for thinking that maybe Serling's narration was describing the type of person who might wind up being the underdog hero. But this was the fifties and the audience knew that a statement declaring that a thirty-six year old was a directionless, lost failure of a human being meant that person was the antagonist. That person was lower than fleas on amoebas. That person was practically a rebellious youth except worse because that person was thirty-six and hadn't matured. This Fred Renard is the bad guy.
What happens in the story is that Fred meets a man with psychic gifts and decides to manipulate that man so that Fred can get whatever he desires. His greed and selfishness are writ big to be mocked by the storyteller. The audience cannot mistake that his attributes are not attributes to be admired. And the audience of the time would not have scoffed and been upset and made stupid statements about virtue signaling and social justice. They would watch the story and think, "That guy's a dick. Why would anybody want to be like that guy? What a jerk."
By the end of the story, the old man uses his psychic gifts to kill Fred Renard. He does so in self defense because he foresaw that Renard was going to kill him. In a modern story, that might be played ambiguously. Who is the real hero if the psychic killed the down-on-his-luck man just trying to turn his life around? The subtleties of the story would be ignored for a quick hot take where the person making the hot take, wanting to be thought of as intelligent and critical, simply thinks, "What's the opposite conclusion that any normal, sane, intelligent person would reach after watching this story? I'll pretend I believe that and everybody will be amazed by my insight and ability to deconstruct the story, even if I'm completely misunderstanding deconstruction in the same way New Age misfits misunderstand Quantum Physics!" And, yes, a story simply told can include subtleties. Because the beauty of this story lies within the subtleties.
Upon watching "What You Need," an audience would need not be forgiven for asking this question ("need not be forgiven" for it's the first and most important question to be asked by an audience trying to understand the character of Pidott, the old psychic man): "Why does the old man give Renard the scissors that save his life? If the old man saw that Renard was going to kill him, why not just let Renard die in the elevator accident?" And here is the heart of this story, not entirely hidden, but maybe needing some minor archaeology to uncover the entire thing (archaeology? That probably should have been a medical analogy!). The old man is the protagonist because he is a decent person. He doesn't want to be the architect of harm to any person, even Renard. He only wants to help people. If he doesn't give Renard the scissors, he is the cause of Renard's death. He saw it and could have prevented it. But even more subtle, he's giving Renard a chance to become a better person. He's Jesus allowing Renard the chance at redemption. The scissors are Pidott's way of saying, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Perhaps if he saves Renard's life, Renard will see his life in a new light and change his ways. But he doesn't. So Pidott gives Renard another chance: he gives Renard the opportunity to win money gambling. But that's not enough either. Finally, Renard becomes the architect of his own destruction by jumping to the conclusion that a pair of slippery shoes are what he needs next. The big twist is that the slippery shoes are what Pidott needs. Renard's inability to change or to see past his own selfish desires become his undoing and he's comically hit by a car. I don't think it was meant to be comical. Maybe that was just the juxtaposition of my love of terrible old special effects and my love of people being hit by cars.
Renard isn't even portrayed as an evil or terribly bad person which is another slight subtlety that I love about the story. In its simple way, it's obvious who the audience should cheer and who they should boo. But it isn't simply because Pidott is preternaturally good and Renard is preternaturally evil. At one point, Pidott tells Renard exactly what he needs and they're things Pidott can't give him: serenity, peace of mind, humor, the ability to laugh at oneself, and patience. I don't know if this moment is in the original short story by Lewis Padgett or it was added by Serling in the teleplay but it's a tactical nuclear strike against terrible people in any decade. It's saying, "Renard, you aren't evil because Evil with a capital 'E' exists and some people are just bad and we need to destroy them." It's saying, "Renard, you've got some serious flaws that cause you to act horribly. They are things you can work on, if you choose to. You can be redeemed." To an audience that is willing to listen to a story, and consider the story, and reflect on its message, the story would have easily accessible heart and value and meaning.
Once upon a time today, the audience would simply see their flaws reflected back at them, and they would be angry. Because the audience today has no patience. It has no ability to laugh at itself. It has no serenity and no peace of mind. And while they all think they have humor because they still laugh at racist jokes, they are sorely lacking in truly understanding comedy. They can't even properly parse tragedy. Why should they? It might lead to a terrible bout of self-reflection.
If you'll listen — listen in the old ways — I would like to tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a boy who claimed he loved ambiguity and subtlety in storytelling. "Why must the writer tell me right up front which character I should cheer and which character I should boo and hiss? Can I not be allowed to make up my own mind?" he would say to anybody who would listen (which was apparently about two dozen total strangers and not one family member (which was probably a good thing because how could he be honest about his life if he knew the people whom he was venting about were listening to his stories that didn't exactly portray them in a decent light?)). He believed a story that presented itself as a puzzle was the greatest kind of story a storyteller could tell. "If the story is intriguing enough, people will put in the effort to understand it!" he once claimed to a friend he knew was smart but who absolutely missed the entire point of John Barth's story "Night-sea Journey" from Lost in the Funhouse. That friend insisted that authors had a duty to their audience to make their message plain and simple. And yet he claimed to love "Night-sea Journey" while never realizing that the narrator of the story was a spermatozoa. But without that knowledge, without making the mental "A-ha!" leap of understanding while reading it, the story cannot be understood as it was meant to be understood. When the boy saw his friend do an existential double-take over learning the truth of "Night-sea Journey" not two minutes after declaring David Lynch failed his audience with Lost Highway, the boy nearly traded philosophical positions with his friend. Maybe his friend was right. Maybe subtlety and ambiguity were too much for even intelligent people to discern. Perhaps truth was too important to risk being misunderstood by the audience.
The boy did not change his opinion of complicated and not easily decoded stories. He continued to read Barth and Pynchon, Danielweski and Dick, Stein and DeLillo and Nabokov and Heller. And yet he also read comic books — so many comic books! Something in him demanded stories that were easily digestible. Stories so obviously about right and wrong that they took no brain power at all. Unambiguous stories not meant to say anything too deep or disturbing or existentially terrifying. Stories simply meant to inspire and to say, "Hey! Look, kids! We can defeat the bad guys if we just give it the old college try! Not the new college try because is beating evil worth the debt incurred? No, wait, never mind! That's getting too ambiguous!" Stories so simple that the boy could not help but mock them ceaselessly at every opportunity.
But one day, even comic books began to believe that ambiguity was more important than truth and inspiration. Writers began to ask, "What would happen if the good guys weren't as good as we thought they were?" And suddenly comic books themselves had changed their nature so much as to be unrecognizable. Where once the stories were about how we, as humans, could aspire to be like these flawless heroes who would sacrifice their own lives to make the world a better place, they were now stories about how they, as superheroes, were actually entirely too human and no better than the rest of humanity. And the boy thought, "Wait. What the hell is happening?"
But the boy could not change his nature. He might have noticed how comic book heroes were changing but he also loved stories full of ambiguity and subtlety. He liked stories about characters who couldn't claim to be either good or evil but were just people trying to navigate the maze of artificial social constructs on which civilization is based. Surely the audience, being intrigued by the high level of effort put into these stories, would ferret out the message and learn a little something about truth or maybe courage or possibly even the American Way (not the real American Way but the ideal American Way that has never really actually existed). Obviously a large portion of storytelling's audience would not have the patience or intelligence or will to read Somebody the Sailor or Gravity's Rainbow or House of Leaves or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch or "Melanctha" or White Noise or Pale Fire or Catch-22. But they would absolutely be able to read Watchmen or Sandman or Animal Man, being that their ideas and ambiguities and questions were somewhat camouflaged by all of the pretty pictures. So the boy was pleased with this turn of events where lots and lots of people were learning that stories could convey important ideas through complex and hard-to-navigate narratives. At least for awhile.
Eventually, perhaps even too late, the boy realized that the heart within a story so well hidden by intellectual contortions of storytelling might as well not even exist. If the audience can't find their way to the heart, the story has failed the audience. The boy realized his friend Soy Rakelson may have had an accidental point. Audiences would not be intrigued by a complex story. Audiences could not be trusted to put any work into their role. If the heart were too well hidden, the audience would never find it. They would barely even try to look. Instead, the audience would simply be angry and feel mocked. The audience would grow defensive. The audience would not just turn against the particular storyteller but against all storytellers. They would call the storytellers to task and demand stories that were not complex. They would demand stories that didn't point fingers at their flaws. They would demand stories about nothing at all. If the stories being told were important but the importance couldn't be ferreted out, well, why not just tell unimportant stories that simply state, "This person is good. This person is bad. By the end, the bad guy will be punched in the nose. And, don't worry, nobody will be upset by what makes the bad guy bad. He's just bad, okay? He's not a reflection of you, the audience! You're the good guy! Now calm down already and go read more garbage."
The boy thought, "How did we come to this? If important stories are too complex for their audience, that doesn't mean stories shouldn't still be important. Perhaps there was something to stories being simple and still important." Thinking to himself, he clarified his position: "Don't get me wrong! Don't take me halfway up to heaven without letting me swing down on my birch or whatever this allusion to a Frost poem was meant to say while also letting the audience know I'm well read! I still want complex, ambiguous, subtle stories about existential dilemmas without any real answers! But I could probably do with a lot more simple morality tales as well!" And it was with that statement, that the boy decided to discuss The Twilight Zone episode, "What You Need."
"What You Need" is a story of two men. One man is the protagonist. One man is the antagonist. One man, you are supposed to root for. One man, you are supposed to boo and hiss. Rod Serling tells you right up front which guy you should boo and hiss. After being introduced to Fred Renard barking at the bartender, Rod Serling interrupts the scene with his opening narration: "You're looking at a Mister Fred Renard who carries on his shoulder a chip the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a friendless man, a lonely man, a grasping, compulsive, nervous man. This is a man who has lived thirty-six undistinguished, meaningless, pointless, failure-laden years and who at this moment looks for an escape, any escape, any way, anything, anybody, to get out of the rut." Basically, Serling calls the guy a loser. In a more complicated, late-twentieth century story, I would forgive the audience for thinking that maybe Serling's narration was describing the type of person who might wind up being the underdog hero. But this was the fifties and the audience knew that a statement declaring that a thirty-six year old was a directionless, lost failure of a human being meant that person was the antagonist. That person was lower than fleas on amoebas. That person was practically a rebellious youth except worse because that person was thirty-six and hadn't matured. This Fred Renard is the bad guy.
What happens in the story is that Fred meets a man with psychic gifts and decides to manipulate that man so that Fred can get whatever he desires. His greed and selfishness are writ big to be mocked by the storyteller. The audience cannot mistake that his attributes are not attributes to be admired. And the audience of the time would not have scoffed and been upset and made stupid statements about virtue signaling and social justice. They would watch the story and think, "That guy's a dick. Why would anybody want to be like that guy? What a jerk."
By the end of the story, the old man uses his psychic gifts to kill Fred Renard. He does so in self defense because he foresaw that Renard was going to kill him. In a modern story, that might be played ambiguously. Who is the real hero if the psychic killed the down-on-his-luck man just trying to turn his life around? The subtleties of the story would be ignored for a quick hot take where the person making the hot take, wanting to be thought of as intelligent and critical, simply thinks, "What's the opposite conclusion that any normal, sane, intelligent person would reach after watching this story? I'll pretend I believe that and everybody will be amazed by my insight and ability to deconstruct the story, even if I'm completely misunderstanding deconstruction in the same way New Age misfits misunderstand Quantum Physics!" And, yes, a story simply told can include subtleties. Because the beauty of this story lies within the subtleties.
Upon watching "What You Need," an audience would need not be forgiven for asking this question ("need not be forgiven" for it's the first and most important question to be asked by an audience trying to understand the character of Pidott, the old psychic man): "Why does the old man give Renard the scissors that save his life? If the old man saw that Renard was going to kill him, why not just let Renard die in the elevator accident?" And here is the heart of this story, not entirely hidden, but maybe needing some minor archaeology to uncover the entire thing (archaeology? That probably should have been a medical analogy!). The old man is the protagonist because he is a decent person. He doesn't want to be the architect of harm to any person, even Renard. He only wants to help people. If he doesn't give Renard the scissors, he is the cause of Renard's death. He saw it and could have prevented it. But even more subtle, he's giving Renard a chance to become a better person. He's Jesus allowing Renard the chance at redemption. The scissors are Pidott's way of saying, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Perhaps if he saves Renard's life, Renard will see his life in a new light and change his ways. But he doesn't. So Pidott gives Renard another chance: he gives Renard the opportunity to win money gambling. But that's not enough either. Finally, Renard becomes the architect of his own destruction by jumping to the conclusion that a pair of slippery shoes are what he needs next. The big twist is that the slippery shoes are what Pidott needs. Renard's inability to change or to see past his own selfish desires become his undoing and he's comically hit by a car. I don't think it was meant to be comical. Maybe that was just the juxtaposition of my love of terrible old special effects and my love of people being hit by cars.
Renard isn't even portrayed as an evil or terribly bad person which is another slight subtlety that I love about the story. In its simple way, it's obvious who the audience should cheer and who they should boo. But it isn't simply because Pidott is preternaturally good and Renard is preternaturally evil. At one point, Pidott tells Renard exactly what he needs and they're things Pidott can't give him: serenity, peace of mind, humor, the ability to laugh at oneself, and patience. I don't know if this moment is in the original short story by Lewis Padgett or it was added by Serling in the teleplay but it's a tactical nuclear strike against terrible people in any decade. It's saying, "Renard, you aren't evil because Evil with a capital 'E' exists and some people are just bad and we need to destroy them." It's saying, "Renard, you've got some serious flaws that cause you to act horribly. They are things you can work on, if you choose to. You can be redeemed." To an audience that is willing to listen to a story, and consider the story, and reflect on its message, the story would have easily accessible heart and value and meaning.
Once upon a time today, the audience would simply see their flaws reflected back at them, and they would be angry. Because the audience today has no patience. It has no ability to laugh at itself. It has no serenity and no peace of mind. And while they all think they have humor because they still laugh at racist jokes, they are sorely lacking in truly understanding comedy. They can't even properly parse tragedy. Why should they? It might lead to a terrible bout of self-reflection.
Friday, December 13, 2019
Review of The Twilight Zone, Season 1, Episode 11: "Three Unnecessary Characters"
From early on in the story, you can feel something different about The Twilight Zone episode, "When the Sky Was Opened." It's not because the main character is so sweaty that it causes the viewer to feel uncomfortable, anxious, and sexually satisfied. Something about the existential dread felt by the characters in this episode reaches a level only hinted at in previous episodes. So it was absolutely no surprise to see that while Rod Serling wrote the teleplay, Richard Matheson, sci-fi/horror legend (wordplay!), wrote the story this episode was based on. I knew his name would be showing up in the credits eventually but wasn't expecting it so soon. In a way, it's a bit disappointing because I was thinking, "Wow! Rod really began hitting his writing stride earlier than I realized!"
This is a story about three test pilots who wind up in one of existence's subplots that Somebody ultimately realized wasn't needed. They return to Earth after crashing an experimental craft, begin to feel an undefined existential dread, and then disappear from existence entirely one by one. My theory is that God has a higher power which we should call The Editor. The Editor looks upon God's creation and, occasionally, says, "Do we really need this story about this experimental craft? I mean, it's 1960. Are people going to believe this crap? Maybe wait until later in the decade for this kind of thing. And now that you've got me looking closely at the three pilots, do we even need them? Just excise their entire existences. But don't mess with that nurse! I've always loved Miss Landers!" Although Sue Randall (Miss Landers) died at 49 which I guess is either proof that God's Editor loved her too much or not enough. It's hard to tell when you're dealing with omnipotent beings like Gods and editors.
Maybe Rod Serling learns something from his experience writing the teleplay of this story. Maybe he learns you don't need a compelling and definitive explanation for the cause of the main character or characters' existential dread. You don't need the U-boat first officer explicating the first two-thirds of the story during the final third. You don't need the accidental time-traveler's father patiently explaining to his time traveling son how maybe he should stop time traveling, literally and daydreamily. You don't need the man full of existential dread to dream the reason for his existential dread before he flings himself out of the window to die on the couch. You can just present a situation to which the protagonist can react with fear, paranoia, and anxiousness until that fear, paranoia, and anxiousness is ultimately proven true and the protagonist disappears without a hint of a reason why. Oh, sure, this story isn't perfect in that regard. But the theories as to why these men are disappearing come straight from the men trying to figure out why they're disappearing. Which is the entire point of this episode and The Twilight Zone in general and life in super general.
We're all eventually going to die and be forgotten. If that doesn't make you, at least occasionally, sweat like an anxious and terrified protagonist of a 1960s television show, you might not understand life at all.
I realize that I would only make every story I review worse with my suggestions but here's my suggestion to make this story better: instead of the main protagonist going back to the third astronaut after the first one disappears in his need for somebody to understand his terror of how reality has warped before him and his need to find some meaning behind it and possibly a way to fix it, he should just stay in the hotel fucking his girlfriend until he disappears mid-thrust. Some people might think I'm a pervert for coming up with that story change and, while I am a pervert who still thinks about Maya the Cat Girl's sexy dance (but with Sue Randall in the original actress's place), it would also be a pretty good metaphor for life. We're all just here to fuck until we wink out of existence because fucking is the only way to ensure that you're not the only one who has to suffer existing. Fuck you, future generations! You need to experience this terror too! Because if there is one thing more powerful than the drive to produce offspring, it's the drive to make people suffer as much as you've suffered. I could point to politics but I'd rather point to goat.se and Ringu and Bill Cosby (in three different examples. I don't have an overarching theory that combines them all). I feel when most people see goat.se, there's a biological need to show somebody else. Maybe even a gleeful need to make somebody else experience the shock and pain you've just experienced. In the novel, Ringu, the only way to keep from dying after watching a movie full of existential dread and terrifying images is to make another person watch the video as well (and to make a copy! Which only bolsters what I'm saying since Ringu really just asks the question, "What are memes?" I mean, it asks the question, "What is the biological imperative of every living thing and can inanimate objects somehow have the same viral drive to replicate?" Okay, maybe it doesn't ask that exactly but what am I? A critic? I mean an actual critic that is smart and does research and actually understands things like plot and character development and why movies hardly ever show boobies anymore). My third example doesn't have anything to do with Bill Cosby drugging and raping people. It's about his comedy which is still pretty good even if it now makes you think, "I'm laughing hysterically at a guy who raped people!" In whatever album it is where he talks about Fat Albert, he tells the story of being scared by a friend with a Frankenstein mask. After getting scared, the first thing Bill wants to do is scare somebody else. It's just the way we're fucking programmed, man!
Does that make my perverted story idea sound better when I add a bunch of bullshit 7th Grade argumentative reasons for it? I suppose the other reason is that I just want to see two people fuck for ten minutes but nobody wants to agree to that one! At least not out loud.
This is a story about three test pilots who wind up in one of existence's subplots that Somebody ultimately realized wasn't needed. They return to Earth after crashing an experimental craft, begin to feel an undefined existential dread, and then disappear from existence entirely one by one. My theory is that God has a higher power which we should call The Editor. The Editor looks upon God's creation and, occasionally, says, "Do we really need this story about this experimental craft? I mean, it's 1960. Are people going to believe this crap? Maybe wait until later in the decade for this kind of thing. And now that you've got me looking closely at the three pilots, do we even need them? Just excise their entire existences. But don't mess with that nurse! I've always loved Miss Landers!" Although Sue Randall (Miss Landers) died at 49 which I guess is either proof that God's Editor loved her too much or not enough. It's hard to tell when you're dealing with omnipotent beings like Gods and editors.
Maybe Rod Serling learns something from his experience writing the teleplay of this story. Maybe he learns you don't need a compelling and definitive explanation for the cause of the main character or characters' existential dread. You don't need the U-boat first officer explicating the first two-thirds of the story during the final third. You don't need the accidental time-traveler's father patiently explaining to his time traveling son how maybe he should stop time traveling, literally and daydreamily. You don't need the man full of existential dread to dream the reason for his existential dread before he flings himself out of the window to die on the couch. You can just present a situation to which the protagonist can react with fear, paranoia, and anxiousness until that fear, paranoia, and anxiousness is ultimately proven true and the protagonist disappears without a hint of a reason why. Oh, sure, this story isn't perfect in that regard. But the theories as to why these men are disappearing come straight from the men trying to figure out why they're disappearing. Which is the entire point of this episode and The Twilight Zone in general and life in super general.
We're all eventually going to die and be forgotten. If that doesn't make you, at least occasionally, sweat like an anxious and terrified protagonist of a 1960s television show, you might not understand life at all.
I realize that I would only make every story I review worse with my suggestions but here's my suggestion to make this story better: instead of the main protagonist going back to the third astronaut after the first one disappears in his need for somebody to understand his terror of how reality has warped before him and his need to find some meaning behind it and possibly a way to fix it, he should just stay in the hotel fucking his girlfriend until he disappears mid-thrust. Some people might think I'm a pervert for coming up with that story change and, while I am a pervert who still thinks about Maya the Cat Girl's sexy dance (but with Sue Randall in the original actress's place), it would also be a pretty good metaphor for life. We're all just here to fuck until we wink out of existence because fucking is the only way to ensure that you're not the only one who has to suffer existing. Fuck you, future generations! You need to experience this terror too! Because if there is one thing more powerful than the drive to produce offspring, it's the drive to make people suffer as much as you've suffered. I could point to politics but I'd rather point to goat.se and Ringu and Bill Cosby (in three different examples. I don't have an overarching theory that combines them all). I feel when most people see goat.se, there's a biological need to show somebody else. Maybe even a gleeful need to make somebody else experience the shock and pain you've just experienced. In the novel, Ringu, the only way to keep from dying after watching a movie full of existential dread and terrifying images is to make another person watch the video as well (and to make a copy! Which only bolsters what I'm saying since Ringu really just asks the question, "What are memes?" I mean, it asks the question, "What is the biological imperative of every living thing and can inanimate objects somehow have the same viral drive to replicate?" Okay, maybe it doesn't ask that exactly but what am I? A critic? I mean an actual critic that is smart and does research and actually understands things like plot and character development and why movies hardly ever show boobies anymore). My third example doesn't have anything to do with Bill Cosby drugging and raping people. It's about his comedy which is still pretty good even if it now makes you think, "I'm laughing hysterically at a guy who raped people!" In whatever album it is where he talks about Fat Albert, he tells the story of being scared by a friend with a Frankenstein mask. After getting scared, the first thing Bill wants to do is scare somebody else. It's just the way we're fucking programmed, man!
Does that make my perverted story idea sound better when I add a bunch of bullshit 7th Grade argumentative reasons for it? I suppose the other reason is that I just want to see two people fuck for ten minutes but nobody wants to agree to that one! At least not out loud.
Friday, December 6, 2019
Review of The Twilight Zone, S1, E10: "You-Boat"
Back in 2011 or so, I was re-watching Spielberg's Amazing Stories on Netflix and this was one of my thoughts on the show: "I think Spielberg filled a notebook with 2-3 sentence story ideas and told a bunch of other writers to flesh them out." I'd forgotten that but my brain reused the same basic theory for The Twilight Zone and Rod Serling. Apparently my view on sci-fi anthology shows is that they tend to feel like one simple idea taffy-pulled out into an extended story. Sometimes the character presented in the story fleshes it out in a way that makes the story more appealing and less like a one-note concept. The best ones, I believe, are ideas like "What if a person with X personality found themselves in Y situation." Because then the story doesn't have to rely on one twist moment or one speculative plot point. And then there's episodes like Episode 10 of Season 1 of The Twilight Zone, "Judgment Night."
This episode tells the story of an amnesiac German man aboard a British ocean liner. He only knows who he is and that something terrible is about to happen. Eventually he realizes the boat will be sunk by a U-boat at 1:15 in the morning and he freaks the fuck out more and more as time goes on. Nobody will listen to him and then the U-boat's spotlight hits the boat! They're all going to die! He gets out some binoculars and looks at the U-boat, seeing the captain of the U-boat standing on top directing fire when he realizes: the captain is him! Then the boat sinks and he drowns.
If that were the entire story, audiences would have discussed this episode for decades. What does it mean? How could he have been in both places? What sort of spooky nonsense took place here?! But, alas, Rod Serling decided the story needed to be explained explicitly in a short epilogue that takes place on the U-boat. Based on the beginning narration by Serling which seems inordinately long for a typical The Twilight Zone episode, it didn't surprise me that the end was just another long monologue to explain the point of the story.
Just when the audience is most confused by what happened, they're met with a scene where the main character, now acting as the German U-boat commander, sits in his submarine office proud of the murder he's just done. The first officer comes aboard sweaty and upset and full of pangs of conscious. He's all, "Are we the baddies?" And the commander is all, "We're at war! We had to kill everybody on board! Even the stupid kid with the stupid doll! Heil Hitler!" But the first officer isn't convinced. He's all, "Shouldn't we have at least warned them we were going to kill them?" And the commander is all, "Ah ha ha! You naive dolt!" And then the first officer looks at the camera and winks and says, "Don't worry! I'm going to explain my view of the universe and the afterlife right now and it's going to be spot on, according to the story you just watched! Because I believe the afterlife is where we have to reenact the terrible things we did in life but as the victims of those terrible things! Over and over and over again! That's what I think!" And you know what? The kid was right! He was like that one character in The Good Place whose image hangs in Ted Danson's office because he's the only person to ever figure out how it all actually works. Or like the woman in the coffee shop in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (unless it was one of the sequels!) who suddenly figures it all out and knows her plan to fix everything will work and then she is vaporized as the Vogon's destroy Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
I'm not going to complain too much about the tacked on explanation of the story. Did Rod Serling even know in 1959 that a writer and director could be Lynchian?! You know what I mean! I know he didn't "literally" know he could be Lynchian because what was David Lynch doing in 1959? Getting his eagle scout masturbation badge? You know what I meant was, "Did Rod Serling even know he could write a story that didn't explicitly tell the audience exactly what was going on and just leave it a mystery for them to philosophize and theorize on?" Maybe in later seasons! But he was still finding his Twilight Zone legs by episode ten.
This episode wasn't terrible but it loses something in the tension it tries to build because there's no mystery to what's going to happen. The ship is going to be sunk by a submarine. Why everybody isn't as paranoid as the German guy is the bigger mystery! They should be running around flipping the fuck out the way everybody does in Airplane when they realize they're out of coffee and the "Okay, panic" light goes on. And the tacked on explanation at the end just seems like a CBS executive saw Serling's episode and was all, "What the fuck was that?" And Serling was all, "Pretty evocative, right? So crazy! What's going on?!" And the producer was all, "In your show notes, you wrote, 'German U-boat commander punished for all eternity to be victim of his own surprise murder.' Can you just stick that in there at the end explaining it?"
Maybe I'm being too hard on television executives and not hard enough on Serling! He just didn't work the script long enough to come up with a natural way of portraying that this night was just one of an endless string of identical nights in the U-boat commander's eternal Hell. He probably had a few packs of cigarettes to smoke and couldn't be bothered with it.
This episode tells the story of an amnesiac German man aboard a British ocean liner. He only knows who he is and that something terrible is about to happen. Eventually he realizes the boat will be sunk by a U-boat at 1:15 in the morning and he freaks the fuck out more and more as time goes on. Nobody will listen to him and then the U-boat's spotlight hits the boat! They're all going to die! He gets out some binoculars and looks at the U-boat, seeing the captain of the U-boat standing on top directing fire when he realizes: the captain is him! Then the boat sinks and he drowns.
If that were the entire story, audiences would have discussed this episode for decades. What does it mean? How could he have been in both places? What sort of spooky nonsense took place here?! But, alas, Rod Serling decided the story needed to be explained explicitly in a short epilogue that takes place on the U-boat. Based on the beginning narration by Serling which seems inordinately long for a typical The Twilight Zone episode, it didn't surprise me that the end was just another long monologue to explain the point of the story.
Just when the audience is most confused by what happened, they're met with a scene where the main character, now acting as the German U-boat commander, sits in his submarine office proud of the murder he's just done. The first officer comes aboard sweaty and upset and full of pangs of conscious. He's all, "Are we the baddies?" And the commander is all, "We're at war! We had to kill everybody on board! Even the stupid kid with the stupid doll! Heil Hitler!" But the first officer isn't convinced. He's all, "Shouldn't we have at least warned them we were going to kill them?" And the commander is all, "Ah ha ha! You naive dolt!" And then the first officer looks at the camera and winks and says, "Don't worry! I'm going to explain my view of the universe and the afterlife right now and it's going to be spot on, according to the story you just watched! Because I believe the afterlife is where we have to reenact the terrible things we did in life but as the victims of those terrible things! Over and over and over again! That's what I think!" And you know what? The kid was right! He was like that one character in The Good Place whose image hangs in Ted Danson's office because he's the only person to ever figure out how it all actually works. Or like the woman in the coffee shop in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (unless it was one of the sequels!) who suddenly figures it all out and knows her plan to fix everything will work and then she is vaporized as the Vogon's destroy Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
I'm not going to complain too much about the tacked on explanation of the story. Did Rod Serling even know in 1959 that a writer and director could be Lynchian?! You know what I mean! I know he didn't "literally" know he could be Lynchian because what was David Lynch doing in 1959? Getting his eagle scout masturbation badge? You know what I meant was, "Did Rod Serling even know he could write a story that didn't explicitly tell the audience exactly what was going on and just leave it a mystery for them to philosophize and theorize on?" Maybe in later seasons! But he was still finding his Twilight Zone legs by episode ten.
This episode wasn't terrible but it loses something in the tension it tries to build because there's no mystery to what's going to happen. The ship is going to be sunk by a submarine. Why everybody isn't as paranoid as the German guy is the bigger mystery! They should be running around flipping the fuck out the way everybody does in Airplane when they realize they're out of coffee and the "Okay, panic" light goes on. And the tacked on explanation at the end just seems like a CBS executive saw Serling's episode and was all, "What the fuck was that?" And Serling was all, "Pretty evocative, right? So crazy! What's going on?!" And the producer was all, "In your show notes, you wrote, 'German U-boat commander punished for all eternity to be victim of his own surprise murder.' Can you just stick that in there at the end explaining it?"
Maybe I'm being too hard on television executives and not hard enough on Serling! He just didn't work the script long enough to come up with a natural way of portraying that this night was just one of an endless string of identical nights in the U-boat commander's eternal Hell. He probably had a few packs of cigarettes to smoke and couldn't be bothered with it.
Friday, November 29, 2019
Review of The Twilight Zone, S1, E9, "To Be or Not To Be"
In this episode, "Perchance to Dream," a man barges into a psychiatrist's office, lies down, and dies. That's it! That's everything that happens! At least to the people who are not Edward Hall, the man who dies. He manages to have a minor Jacob's Ladder episode before he dies. Or, more aptly I should say he has "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" moment. The majority of the episode is just the man's last dream before he dies from "a romantic heart." I think that means syphilis.
I would love to say this fits perfectly in the "Rod Serling just made a list of ideas to turn into stories" theory that I mentioned in an earlier review except this is the first episode that wasn't either an original work by Rod Serling or a teleplay by Rod Serling from another person's story. This story was written by Charles Beaumont who is not the actor who played Beaver's dad. That was Hugh! But this story idea is so simple I could see Rod jotting down "dying in your sleep ain't as cool as people seem to think it is" for his list of The Twilight Zone story ideas. Stupid reality not making my theory perfect.
I really enjoyed this episode because there was a sexy lady in it named Maya the Cat Lady. She even does a 1959 striptease which isn't as sexy as a 1960 striptease although they're probably pretty close. I don't think stripteases got really sexy until around 1973. I mean stripteases put to film for mass consumption! Real stripteases in 1959 were probably disgusting and humiliating and ended with loads of semen stained Dacron or wool flannel pants.
Edward Hall, the main character, explains to the psychiatrist what's been happening to him and why he won't let himself fall asleep. Remember though, that explanation is just given in the dream before he dies. We never really know the real reason why he went to see this psychiatrist! Sure, Edward explains it in the dream but why should the audience take dream Edward at his word? If he were speaking the truth about how his dreams continue a linear story from night to night then this dream is an aberration that disproves his theory! His next dream is supposed to be jumping from a roller coaster but instead he jumps from the window of a skyscraper. Anyway, Edward explains that if he goes to sleep, he knows he'll die because the dream story is getting really scary and less sexy than when it started. And since his dreams keep telling the same story, the next chapter was going to be so scary that his "romantic heart" couldn't take the strain. Of course, staying up for four days straight is also putting a strain on his heart so, basically, he's a dead man either way.
Or is he? Did he die in the psychiatrist's office because he strained his heart by staying awake for four days even though he probably would have been fine if he just got some fucking sleep? Who knows?! We don't even really know if he'd been awake for four days straight when he entered the office because that was just information from Dream Edward! Maybe he just had really bad gas pains when we see him stumbling into the office at the beginning of the episode.
I love the conceit of this episode because I've thought about this for decades. People always seem consoled by the idea of peacefully dying in their sleep. But I've always thought, "Have you forgotten about dreams?! I bet the dream you have when you die in your sleep is fucking terrifying!" Apparently Charles Beaumont thought so too!
Fifteen years ago, I worked at a place called Academic Book Center. We had a new employee named Kara Zander whom I was training. She was working out really well (which was the opposite of what usually happened with new hires there) until she suddenly didn't show up for work the day before Thanksgiving. My manager, who was mostly a selfish narcissist, was getting pretty upset (because, remember, most new employees turned out to suck and suddenly it seemed maybe Kara sucked (spoiler: she didn't. She was just dead)). And then, suddenly, my manager was super fucking upset because she found out Kara had died overnight from carbon monoxide poisoning. Mostly she was upset that she was being such a fucking jerk judging Kara and then realized she was judging a poor dead woman who never gave my manager any reason to suspect she wasn't anything but a bright and caring and upbeat and competent employee. Right up until she died and didn't phone in to tell my manager, "Hey! I'm dead! Won't be coming in today!" Fucking Barb. I mean, fucking anonymous Academic Book Center manager!
Being that I've always had this thought in my head about how fucking terrifying dying in your sleep probably actually is, I couldn't get Kara out of my head. People said the comforting things about her death and how she probably drifted off and I held my tongue because nobody wants to hear somebody, at that moment, say, "Can you imagine what it must have been like? As the carbon monoxide filled her system, she probably began dreaming she was drowning, unable to breathe. Gasping and struggling to claw her way back to the surface but sinking ever downward, choking with fear. Until finally, just as she was thinking, 'It's all a dream! It must be a dream! I'll wake up any second now!', she simply winked out of existence." Then, jaws agape and tears frozen on their faces, half of the people I'd just spoken to would wander off to kill themselves while the others simply began their new hobby of cutting.
Since Thanksgiving was yesterday, and I watched this episode a few days before that, I suppose I couldn't help but think of Kara. I quit the job fairly soon after that, partly because the whole incident just made me lose any lasting respect I had of my manager (which wasn't much seeing as how she treated some of her work "friends" so shittily while at work and also because she cried during one of my performance reviews because I wasn't "being her friend" and then denied me a raise. I could have complained to HR but her sister was head of HR so why the fuck would I even bother?!) and partly because I couldn't stop thinking, "I don't want to fucking die at this job." Kara, at least, seemed to have an upbeat and joyous attitude about life (while also comforted by her religion), so she probably wouldn't have minded dying at that job. That sounds like I'm being critical but it's a compliment! I'm saying, "I'm a miserable and cynical beast who can't fucking cope with life or death or work," and Kara was somebody who seemed to look on the bright side of everything. Hell, maybe her dying dream was of her running joyously down a dark tunnel to the light of Jesus and his open arms! Man, maybe I need to suck it up and just force myself to believe in all that religious bullshit!
Kara has a fancy grave with one of her journal entries carved into the back of her gravestone (I know this because I looked her up online and found her grave at FindaGrave.com which isn't morbid at all). The quote is this (and I promise not to make fun of it because she's being earnest and vulnerable and young and religious and I should be so lucky to be any of those things): "Knocking on doors before entering is always a smart thing to do. This is not just for the privacy of the owner of the room, but also for the person who wants to enter. What if someone was creating a surprise for another person and 'hid' in a room to prepare it, and the other one barged in? The surprise and fun would be ruined. God is preparing a room for me up in heaven. The door is shut now, but when it is time for my soul to move, I will knock and discover a glorious surprise beyond description. Lord, thank you for surprises and the fun associated with them. I am faithfully sure that yours will be awesome beyond words...like they always are. Amen."
If there is a fucking God, fuck Him. Did you think he read this entry and chuckled and rubbed his hands together and muttered, "Oh, have I got an awesome beyond words surprise for you, Kara. Do I! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" God's maniacal laugh then rings throughout eternity, both ways, forever. What a prick.
I would love to say this fits perfectly in the "Rod Serling just made a list of ideas to turn into stories" theory that I mentioned in an earlier review except this is the first episode that wasn't either an original work by Rod Serling or a teleplay by Rod Serling from another person's story. This story was written by Charles Beaumont who is not the actor who played Beaver's dad. That was Hugh! But this story idea is so simple I could see Rod jotting down "dying in your sleep ain't as cool as people seem to think it is" for his list of The Twilight Zone story ideas. Stupid reality not making my theory perfect.
I really enjoyed this episode because there was a sexy lady in it named Maya the Cat Lady. She even does a 1959 striptease which isn't as sexy as a 1960 striptease although they're probably pretty close. I don't think stripteases got really sexy until around 1973. I mean stripteases put to film for mass consumption! Real stripteases in 1959 were probably disgusting and humiliating and ended with loads of semen stained Dacron or wool flannel pants.
Edward Hall, the main character, explains to the psychiatrist what's been happening to him and why he won't let himself fall asleep. Remember though, that explanation is just given in the dream before he dies. We never really know the real reason why he went to see this psychiatrist! Sure, Edward explains it in the dream but why should the audience take dream Edward at his word? If he were speaking the truth about how his dreams continue a linear story from night to night then this dream is an aberration that disproves his theory! His next dream is supposed to be jumping from a roller coaster but instead he jumps from the window of a skyscraper. Anyway, Edward explains that if he goes to sleep, he knows he'll die because the dream story is getting really scary and less sexy than when it started. And since his dreams keep telling the same story, the next chapter was going to be so scary that his "romantic heart" couldn't take the strain. Of course, staying up for four days straight is also putting a strain on his heart so, basically, he's a dead man either way.
Or is he? Did he die in the psychiatrist's office because he strained his heart by staying awake for four days even though he probably would have been fine if he just got some fucking sleep? Who knows?! We don't even really know if he'd been awake for four days straight when he entered the office because that was just information from Dream Edward! Maybe he just had really bad gas pains when we see him stumbling into the office at the beginning of the episode.
I love the conceit of this episode because I've thought about this for decades. People always seem consoled by the idea of peacefully dying in their sleep. But I've always thought, "Have you forgotten about dreams?! I bet the dream you have when you die in your sleep is fucking terrifying!" Apparently Charles Beaumont thought so too!
Fifteen years ago, I worked at a place called Academic Book Center. We had a new employee named Kara Zander whom I was training. She was working out really well (which was the opposite of what usually happened with new hires there) until she suddenly didn't show up for work the day before Thanksgiving. My manager, who was mostly a selfish narcissist, was getting pretty upset (because, remember, most new employees turned out to suck and suddenly it seemed maybe Kara sucked (spoiler: she didn't. She was just dead)). And then, suddenly, my manager was super fucking upset because she found out Kara had died overnight from carbon monoxide poisoning. Mostly she was upset that she was being such a fucking jerk judging Kara and then realized she was judging a poor dead woman who never gave my manager any reason to suspect she wasn't anything but a bright and caring and upbeat and competent employee. Right up until she died and didn't phone in to tell my manager, "Hey! I'm dead! Won't be coming in today!" Fucking Barb. I mean, fucking anonymous Academic Book Center manager!
Being that I've always had this thought in my head about how fucking terrifying dying in your sleep probably actually is, I couldn't get Kara out of my head. People said the comforting things about her death and how she probably drifted off and I held my tongue because nobody wants to hear somebody, at that moment, say, "Can you imagine what it must have been like? As the carbon monoxide filled her system, she probably began dreaming she was drowning, unable to breathe. Gasping and struggling to claw her way back to the surface but sinking ever downward, choking with fear. Until finally, just as she was thinking, 'It's all a dream! It must be a dream! I'll wake up any second now!', she simply winked out of existence." Then, jaws agape and tears frozen on their faces, half of the people I'd just spoken to would wander off to kill themselves while the others simply began their new hobby of cutting.
Since Thanksgiving was yesterday, and I watched this episode a few days before that, I suppose I couldn't help but think of Kara. I quit the job fairly soon after that, partly because the whole incident just made me lose any lasting respect I had of my manager (which wasn't much seeing as how she treated some of her work "friends" so shittily while at work and also because she cried during one of my performance reviews because I wasn't "being her friend" and then denied me a raise. I could have complained to HR but her sister was head of HR so why the fuck would I even bother?!) and partly because I couldn't stop thinking, "I don't want to fucking die at this job." Kara, at least, seemed to have an upbeat and joyous attitude about life (while also comforted by her religion), so she probably wouldn't have minded dying at that job. That sounds like I'm being critical but it's a compliment! I'm saying, "I'm a miserable and cynical beast who can't fucking cope with life or death or work," and Kara was somebody who seemed to look on the bright side of everything. Hell, maybe her dying dream was of her running joyously down a dark tunnel to the light of Jesus and his open arms! Man, maybe I need to suck it up and just force myself to believe in all that religious bullshit!
Kara has a fancy grave with one of her journal entries carved into the back of her gravestone (I know this because I looked her up online and found her grave at FindaGrave.com which isn't morbid at all). The quote is this (and I promise not to make fun of it because she's being earnest and vulnerable and young and religious and I should be so lucky to be any of those things): "Knocking on doors before entering is always a smart thing to do. This is not just for the privacy of the owner of the room, but also for the person who wants to enter. What if someone was creating a surprise for another person and 'hid' in a room to prepare it, and the other one barged in? The surprise and fun would be ruined. God is preparing a room for me up in heaven. The door is shut now, but when it is time for my soul to move, I will knock and discover a glorious surprise beyond description. Lord, thank you for surprises and the fun associated with them. I am faithfully sure that yours will be awesome beyond words...like they always are. Amen."
If there is a fucking God, fuck Him. Did you think he read this entry and chuckled and rubbed his hands together and muttered, "Oh, have I got an awesome beyond words surprise for you, Kara. Do I! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" God's maniacal laugh then rings throughout eternity, both ways, forever. What a prick.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Review of The Twilight Zone, S1, E8: "The One with Burgess Meredith that Everybody Knows"
This is the first episode that wasn't an original story by Rod Serling. He wrote the teleplay based on a story by Lynn Venable. But, once again, the idea of loneliness as the most crippling aspect of our existence looms over the entire story. It's almost as if loneliness were an incurable disease which caused an eventual death so terribly painful that a person with the disease always tries to end it all as quickly as possible once they realize they've contracted it. Henry Bemis lasts maybe a day after the world ends and he finds he's the only survivor before he's ready to pick up a gun and shoot himself in the face (possibly exposing that he was a sex robot all along!). Bemis makes sure to mention that he'd be fine except for the loneliness. But he doesn't really go on and on about the other people he hated not being there. He does go on and on about how boring everything has become. So I think he's more willing to murder himself out of boredom than loneliness.
"Time Enough At Last" begins with poor Henry Bemis distracted at his job because he's trying to read David Copperfield while also counting out money at his place of employment, the bank. Everybody hates him because he's a reader. They all despise his love of reading. I guess in the Fifties, reading was worse than showing off. "Oh, look at the smart jerk without the buzz cut! What a fancy boy! Knows words like...like...well, you know 'em when you hear 'em even if you can't think 'em up!" It's also possible they despise him because he doesn't do anything but read. His boss hates that he can't do his job well. His wife hates that he can't do his marital duties well. She says, "I won't let you lose the art of conversation," (or something like that) but I know what she really meant. You had to use a lot of euphemisms in the Fifties or else somebody would call you a communist.
But all Henry wants to do is read. Too bad real life always gets in the way! Stupid jobs and wives and customers and responsibilities. I get that nobody ever has enough time to do all the things that you want to do once you find them. But some of us organize our lives in such a way that we can do the things we love as often as possible, like working jobs below our capabilities and not marrying vicious shrews who mangle our poetry books. But Henry didn't think about that when he was getting his life together so he had to wait until the world was destroyed during his lunch break.
Henry eats in the vault so when the world blows up, he's safe in his makeshift bunker. Being television in the Fifties, he only sees evidence of one person dead (his boss, crushed beneath rubble) instead of walking around the city seeing the gory remains of everybody he ever knew. He manages to find plenty of food and cigarettes to get him through as many days as he has left (especially if those days are just a couple which is about all he can stomach). But he doesn't have any entertainment. So what's the point, really? Without distractions (or a sex robot), what is life?! That's Henry's point of view anyway so when he finds a gun, he instantly sticks it to his head to end the boredom.
I used to think Rod Serling had some kind of a phobia regarding loneliness but now I think it was just a phobia of boredom. The immortal guy spends five minutes in jail after realizing he's going to spend his entire mortal life in jail and he's ready to end it all. He's definitely not lonely! He's just so bored that he'd rather die. Well, Henry's got some of that attitude in him as well. But luckily for Henry and for all the people who love the twist ending that they all remember, Henry sees the library just before blowing his brains out. Whew! That was a close one! Although that would be a good twist ending too, right? He puts the gun to his head instead of in his mouth and winds up blowing his eyes out and surviving. Then Nelson Muntz pops up and points and says, "Ha ha!" But remember! This was from 1959. That's more of a modern twist!
Henry Bemis, despicable low-life reader (please be sure to read the word reader dripping with disdain), finds all the books he can ever read. And he even gets to say the title of the episode when faced with all the time in the world to read as much as he wants: "The One with Burgess Meredith that Everybody Knows," he says. Then he drops his glasses and they break and he whines, "It's not fair! It's not fair!" Meanwhile all the ghosts of all the people all over the world incinerated by the H-Bomb begin making jerking off motions and thinking, "Oh, why don't you tell us about fair, Henry!" The worst part is that now he won't even be able to find that gun! Also, Nelson Muntz could have popped up and pointed and said, "Ha ha!", for this ending too but that might have been too cruel. Although isn't that why everybody loves this episode so much? Because the fucking reader gets whats coming to him! Fucking readers. PTUI!
The moral of this episode is to always carry an extra pair of glasses with you when you rely on them so heavily. Or maybe,after the world ends, to first find the pharmacy or the opticians before you begin climbing around a dangerous world full of rubble. Unless the moral is reading will always get you into trouble so maybe listen to your wife when she says you're a big dumb homo poetry reader and just go give it to her good already!
Now I'm thinking about a rewrite of the previous episode, "The Lonely Man," but renaming it "The Lonely Woman" and have the hotshot female space pilot bring the prisoner a sentient vibrator to keep her company over the long nights. But when she's told that there's no room aboard the ship when it comes to save her, she just tosses the vibrator as far away as she can and says, "Thank God. One more night of that Goddamn thing telling me about the novel it's working on and I'd have blown my face off." Then the hot shot space pilot would be all, "Well, now that your sentence has been overturned, I can finally see you as a real person and stick my face between your legs." Then they'd make out and the story would end with a big sex scene and I'd be fucking rich.
"Time Enough At Last" begins with poor Henry Bemis distracted at his job because he's trying to read David Copperfield while also counting out money at his place of employment, the bank. Everybody hates him because he's a reader. They all despise his love of reading. I guess in the Fifties, reading was worse than showing off. "Oh, look at the smart jerk without the buzz cut! What a fancy boy! Knows words like...like...well, you know 'em when you hear 'em even if you can't think 'em up!" It's also possible they despise him because he doesn't do anything but read. His boss hates that he can't do his job well. His wife hates that he can't do his marital duties well. She says, "I won't let you lose the art of conversation," (or something like that) but I know what she really meant. You had to use a lot of euphemisms in the Fifties or else somebody would call you a communist.
But all Henry wants to do is read. Too bad real life always gets in the way! Stupid jobs and wives and customers and responsibilities. I get that nobody ever has enough time to do all the things that you want to do once you find them. But some of us organize our lives in such a way that we can do the things we love as often as possible, like working jobs below our capabilities and not marrying vicious shrews who mangle our poetry books. But Henry didn't think about that when he was getting his life together so he had to wait until the world was destroyed during his lunch break.
Henry eats in the vault so when the world blows up, he's safe in his makeshift bunker. Being television in the Fifties, he only sees evidence of one person dead (his boss, crushed beneath rubble) instead of walking around the city seeing the gory remains of everybody he ever knew. He manages to find plenty of food and cigarettes to get him through as many days as he has left (especially if those days are just a couple which is about all he can stomach). But he doesn't have any entertainment. So what's the point, really? Without distractions (or a sex robot), what is life?! That's Henry's point of view anyway so when he finds a gun, he instantly sticks it to his head to end the boredom.
I used to think Rod Serling had some kind of a phobia regarding loneliness but now I think it was just a phobia of boredom. The immortal guy spends five minutes in jail after realizing he's going to spend his entire mortal life in jail and he's ready to end it all. He's definitely not lonely! He's just so bored that he'd rather die. Well, Henry's got some of that attitude in him as well. But luckily for Henry and for all the people who love the twist ending that they all remember, Henry sees the library just before blowing his brains out. Whew! That was a close one! Although that would be a good twist ending too, right? He puts the gun to his head instead of in his mouth and winds up blowing his eyes out and surviving. Then Nelson Muntz pops up and points and says, "Ha ha!" But remember! This was from 1959. That's more of a modern twist!
Henry Bemis, despicable low-life reader (please be sure to read the word reader dripping with disdain), finds all the books he can ever read. And he even gets to say the title of the episode when faced with all the time in the world to read as much as he wants: "The One with Burgess Meredith that Everybody Knows," he says. Then he drops his glasses and they break and he whines, "It's not fair! It's not fair!" Meanwhile all the ghosts of all the people all over the world incinerated by the H-Bomb begin making jerking off motions and thinking, "Oh, why don't you tell us about fair, Henry!" The worst part is that now he won't even be able to find that gun! Also, Nelson Muntz could have popped up and pointed and said, "Ha ha!", for this ending too but that might have been too cruel. Although isn't that why everybody loves this episode so much? Because the fucking reader gets whats coming to him! Fucking readers. PTUI!
The moral of this episode is to always carry an extra pair of glasses with you when you rely on them so heavily. Or maybe,after the world ends, to first find the pharmacy or the opticians before you begin climbing around a dangerous world full of rubble. Unless the moral is reading will always get you into trouble so maybe listen to your wife when she says you're a big dumb homo poetry reader and just go give it to her good already!
Now I'm thinking about a rewrite of the previous episode, "The Lonely Man," but renaming it "The Lonely Woman" and have the hotshot female space pilot bring the prisoner a sentient vibrator to keep her company over the long nights. But when she's told that there's no room aboard the ship when it comes to save her, she just tosses the vibrator as far away as she can and says, "Thank God. One more night of that Goddamn thing telling me about the novel it's working on and I'd have blown my face off." Then the hot shot space pilot would be all, "Well, now that your sentence has been overturned, I can finally see you as a real person and stick my face between your legs." Then they'd make out and the story would end with a big sex scene and I'd be fucking rich.
Friday, November 22, 2019
Review of The Twilight Zone, Episode Seven, "I'm So Lonely. So, So, So, So, So Fucking Lonely. Version 2."
Being forty-eight and watching a television show from 1959, I'm often familiar with the protagonist of each episode but not often familiar enough to know their name or where I've seen them before. Jack Warden stars in this episode, "The Lonely Man," and nobody my age would be surprised to hear that I recognized him. His voice alone is enough to make a viewer think, "How much of my life have I wasted watching television that this old fart is as familiar to me as one of my own grandparents?" In my head, I kept thinking, "I know him from something where he yells a lot. At little kids even!" My initial thought was The Bad News Bears even though that's one of my all time favorite movies and I know Buttermaker was played by Walter Matthau. But my brain kept giving me that image anyway. So I went to IMDB, as often we all do in this day and age because we have to know everything immediately and, because we have a machine that does it for us, nobody ever retains any information what-so-ever because what the fuck do I look like? A pledge for Lambda Lambda Lambda? An actor's credits go from most current projects to older projects so the first thing he was in with which I really connected was Dirty Work. Oh yeah! He was Pops! And he yells a lot in that so maybe that's why I think of him as yelling a lot! But then, lo and behold, there it was. He played Buttermaker in the television series of The Bad News Bears! I don't even have any actual memories about the show but I don't doubt for a second that I watched every episode when it aired. And my brain remembered even if my stupid stubborn brain decided to keep it as privileged information. For whom?! Doesn't my brain know I am my brain? What a fucking jerk.
I know that's a pretty piss poor review of a television show. But have you read my reviews for Friends? At least I didn't say Jack Warden was played by a literal sack of potatoes.
Just reread all of this again but skip the previous stuff and start at the next paragraph if you're actually interested in The Twilight Zone and aren't interested in my brain damage. That's different than just continuing to read from this point on because...well, just trust me. I can't explain everything!
In this episode, a man has been convicted of murder and sent to life on an asteroid. You think the current prison industrial complex is expensive well just wait until Rod Serling's future version! Every felon serving a life sentence must be shot into space and gets their own asteroid all to themselves while getting constant resupplies of free goods every three months. And you know it's a private firm being paid with government money. What a waste of taxes! But at least everybody back on Earth can feel safe knowing that terrible criminals can't escape prison to rape their VCRs in the dead of night.
Believe it or not, this fucked up new penal system isn't the point of the show. It's just the excuse to showcase a man in an environment where he's driven so mad from loneliness that he winds up fucking a machine and falling in love with it. The space pilot who brings him the fuck machine is horrified to find out that the prisoner thought it was for more than just fucking. Sure, the machine looked and acted just like a real woman and not like a toaster with a lubed hole. So maybe it's a little bit understandable that a lonely man would be driven so crazy by loneliness that he might actually find comfort in the arms of a woman. I mean a machine. You have to remember it's a machine or else you'd be all, "What is this episode about? It's about a lonely man finding comfort in another person's intimacy? Is that weird?" But then when the ace space pilot shoots the face off of the robot, you, as the viewer, are reminded that what you were witnessing was a man driven to perversion by the ultimate existential monster: loneliness!
After Jack Warden unboxed the robot, I was all, "Oh yeah! That's pretty hot!" But then the robot cried when Jack Warden kept refusing her advances and screaming at her, "What kind of a man fucks a toaster oven?!" That made me think the situation was more complex than I first thought (which was "Oh! A fuck robot! Nice!"). And once she cries, you wind up thinking, "Maybe the pilot messed up and brought an actual woman in a box! That's quite a twist. I guess it's okay if Jack fucks her now. That's not weird. Maybe she was convicted of murder too!" So then when her face is shot off, casually, at point blank range and the asteroid isn't painted with brains and bone but nuts and bolts, you're left thinking, "Maybe I should have waited until the end before I stuck my dick in this old VCR."
Was this a love story? I think maybe? I think the moral of the story is either "You can find true love with anything as long as nobody else is around to judge you and depending on how good looking you can dress up your air conditioner" or "Loneliness can lead even the most ethically ambiguous man into the delusional dark recesses of perversion!" Or maybe it's just "Cars and chess boards can't replace a good woman. But someday soon, they'll get pretty fucking close! Yee-haw!"
I know that's a pretty piss poor review of a television show. But have you read my reviews for Friends? At least I didn't say Jack Warden was played by a literal sack of potatoes.
Just reread all of this again but skip the previous stuff and start at the next paragraph if you're actually interested in The Twilight Zone and aren't interested in my brain damage. That's different than just continuing to read from this point on because...well, just trust me. I can't explain everything!
In this episode, a man has been convicted of murder and sent to life on an asteroid. You think the current prison industrial complex is expensive well just wait until Rod Serling's future version! Every felon serving a life sentence must be shot into space and gets their own asteroid all to themselves while getting constant resupplies of free goods every three months. And you know it's a private firm being paid with government money. What a waste of taxes! But at least everybody back on Earth can feel safe knowing that terrible criminals can't escape prison to rape their VCRs in the dead of night.
Believe it or not, this fucked up new penal system isn't the point of the show. It's just the excuse to showcase a man in an environment where he's driven so mad from loneliness that he winds up fucking a machine and falling in love with it. The space pilot who brings him the fuck machine is horrified to find out that the prisoner thought it was for more than just fucking. Sure, the machine looked and acted just like a real woman and not like a toaster with a lubed hole. So maybe it's a little bit understandable that a lonely man would be driven so crazy by loneliness that he might actually find comfort in the arms of a woman. I mean a machine. You have to remember it's a machine or else you'd be all, "What is this episode about? It's about a lonely man finding comfort in another person's intimacy? Is that weird?" But then when the ace space pilot shoots the face off of the robot, you, as the viewer, are reminded that what you were witnessing was a man driven to perversion by the ultimate existential monster: loneliness!
After Jack Warden unboxed the robot, I was all, "Oh yeah! That's pretty hot!" But then the robot cried when Jack Warden kept refusing her advances and screaming at her, "What kind of a man fucks a toaster oven?!" That made me think the situation was more complex than I first thought (which was "Oh! A fuck robot! Nice!"). And once she cries, you wind up thinking, "Maybe the pilot messed up and brought an actual woman in a box! That's quite a twist. I guess it's okay if Jack fucks her now. That's not weird. Maybe she was convicted of murder too!" So then when her face is shot off, casually, at point blank range and the asteroid isn't painted with brains and bone but nuts and bolts, you're left thinking, "Maybe I should have waited until the end before I stuck my dick in this old VCR."
Was this a love story? I think maybe? I think the moral of the story is either "You can find true love with anything as long as nobody else is around to judge you and depending on how good looking you can dress up your air conditioner" or "Loneliness can lead even the most ethically ambiguous man into the delusional dark recesses of perversion!" Or maybe it's just "Cars and chess boards can't replace a good woman. But someday soon, they'll get pretty fucking close! Yee-haw!"
Monday, November 11, 2019
Review of The Twilight Zone, Episode Four, "Kick the Can, Rough Draft"
Rod Serling sat in his leather chair in the den, fingers poised above the keys on his IBM 286 or whatever was available in the late fifties. Probably an IBM 86! What am I, a historian? He sucked on his cigarette and then sucked on another cigarette that was in his other hand and then sighed, "Man, I love smoking! Maybe I should write a story about smoking?" He looked up at the corner of the room in thought and did not think about corners of rooms the way H.P. Lovecraft thought about corners of rooms. Serling didn't even think about the corner of the room at all. He just looked through it the way a person in the late eighties tried looking through stereoscopic pictures to see the 3D image hidden within. "Let's see. I've written about loneliness and the fear of death and the fear of death in the Old West. What should I write about now?" He took another hit from his cigarette and then another hit from his other cigarette and then shouted, "A-ha! I'll write about the longing for lost youth which is totally different than the fear of death!" He then preceded to click and clack at his IBM typewriter invented by Sir Reginald IBM while each cigarette bobbed and weaved, still gripped between the middle and index finger of each hand. But backwards or something so he didn't burn the pages he was writing.
Those asterisks mean I'm exiting the story about Rod "The Rodster" Serling and now I'm speaking in my own voice! I just wanted to say something about this episode that sounds super smart and potentially sexy. I guess the moral of this story (since we have to examine morals in all episodes of The Twilight Zone, don't we?) is that wishes probably don't often come true but maybe if you waste your entire life wishing for more life, maye your wish will come true! You never know unless you try! So forget about living the thirty years after your 25th birthday which are all just garbage because you're getting older and fatter and grosser. Instead, sit in the dark and wish to be 25 again! But don't wish to be 25 so that you'll start aging again! That would be dumb because then you'll just have to waste your new life wishing to be young again! No, you have to become either super young by playing Kick the Can so you can live it all over again (and don't be the dumb jerk who doesn't believe in wishes or you'll die lonely and bitter and soon!) or you have to become 25 forever by wishing yourself onto a movie screen. I don't know if your life only then plays when somebody runs the movie or what happens to your consciousness when the movie stops. But according to the dirty underwear left behind, I guess you're living in some alternate timeless dimension in the same place or something? With all of your imaginative young friends? Anyway, the moral is to believe in wishes and not to believe in actually doing shit before you die. Keep wishing for things to be better while everything falls apart around you! Hey, it might work! Baby!
The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine
By Rod "The Rodster" Serling
SCENE: AN OLD BROAD'S PERSONAL VIEWING ROOM
Old Broad: "Oh, how I love the movies I made twenty-five years ago! I was so young and beautiful! And my costar was so beautiful and exactly the age that I am now! Why oh why do women ripen so quickly and then over-ripen even quicklier?! Twenty years later, I am still vibrant and beautiful but I have a few crows feet around my eyes and thus my career is over even though I'm now the age of my favorite leading man whom I will meet with later, revealing that he's now like seventy or eighty years old which is the age men finally become unattractive! Also he'll have terrible glasses that make him look like a nerd or Batman's butler."
Older Broad (if you can believe it!): "Miss Trenton? Miss Trenton! I've brought you some tea! Where are you? Oh! OH! Are you in the movie screen?! OH MY GOD! Oh, no. Not yet. You were just behind the movie screen. My, you gave me a fright! Oh, I'd better get the door now!"
Colonel Cathcart: "Hey, baby! Where's Barbie? Hey Barbie, baby! Have I got an audition for you! You're not old news at all! Don't live in the past! Don't worship at the teat of nostalgia! Don't mix your petit fours, baby! It's the part you were born to play!"
Old Broad: "Is it a mother? I won't play a mother!"
Colonel Cathcart: "Oh. Well then forget it, baby! That head of the studio probably wouldn't like your feminist attitude anyway!"
Old Broad: "Well, he's twenty years older than I am now. But just wait until another twenty years and people stop taking him seriously because he's become an old dried up fig too!"
Colonel Cathcart: "Youth is cool! But you should get some sun because you can't get youth! Especially not by sitting in the dark watching your old movies 24/7! Um, baby!"
Old Broad: "Oh yeah? I'm gonna wish and wish and wish and I'll become young again! And I won't even have to run around the stupid yard kicking stupid cans in a story that used this theme way better! Probably because The Rodster got so much better at writing stories after all of the cigarettes he lovingly smoked. Smoke Chesterfields!"
Older Broad: "Now that Archie Bunker's friend has left, I'd better get Miss Trenton more tea! Miss Trenton, Miss Trenton! Where are you? Not in the chair. Not on the couch. OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! I MUST SCREAM AS IF A BEAR WERE ATTACKING ME NOW!"
SCENE: SAME PLACE BUT LATER OR SOMETHING
Colonel Cathcart: "She's young and in the movie with all her young friends now? By golly, baby! Wishes! Way to go wishes! They work, I guess? You know what I'm wishing for now, older broad?"
OLDER BROAD BLUSHES EXTRAVAGANTLY
Colonel Cathcart: "Let's go fuck with my huge penis now, older broad! Oh wait! What's this?! Look! Look here! The underwear she kissed and threw at me in the picture! It is on the floor here! In reality! What is going on?!"
Narrator: "THE TWILIGHT ZONE!"
**********By Rod "The Rodster" Serling
SCENE: AN OLD BROAD'S PERSONAL VIEWING ROOM
Old Broad: "Oh, how I love the movies I made twenty-five years ago! I was so young and beautiful! And my costar was so beautiful and exactly the age that I am now! Why oh why do women ripen so quickly and then over-ripen even quicklier?! Twenty years later, I am still vibrant and beautiful but I have a few crows feet around my eyes and thus my career is over even though I'm now the age of my favorite leading man whom I will meet with later, revealing that he's now like seventy or eighty years old which is the age men finally become unattractive! Also he'll have terrible glasses that make him look like a nerd or Batman's butler."
Older Broad (if you can believe it!): "Miss Trenton? Miss Trenton! I've brought you some tea! Where are you? Oh! OH! Are you in the movie screen?! OH MY GOD! Oh, no. Not yet. You were just behind the movie screen. My, you gave me a fright! Oh, I'd better get the door now!"
Colonel Cathcart: "Hey, baby! Where's Barbie? Hey Barbie, baby! Have I got an audition for you! You're not old news at all! Don't live in the past! Don't worship at the teat of nostalgia! Don't mix your petit fours, baby! It's the part you were born to play!"
Old Broad: "Is it a mother? I won't play a mother!"
Colonel Cathcart: "Oh. Well then forget it, baby! That head of the studio probably wouldn't like your feminist attitude anyway!"
Old Broad: "Well, he's twenty years older than I am now. But just wait until another twenty years and people stop taking him seriously because he's become an old dried up fig too!"
Colonel Cathcart: "Youth is cool! But you should get some sun because you can't get youth! Especially not by sitting in the dark watching your old movies 24/7! Um, baby!"
Old Broad: "Oh yeah? I'm gonna wish and wish and wish and I'll become young again! And I won't even have to run around the stupid yard kicking stupid cans in a story that used this theme way better! Probably because The Rodster got so much better at writing stories after all of the cigarettes he lovingly smoked. Smoke Chesterfields!"
Older Broad: "Now that Archie Bunker's friend has left, I'd better get Miss Trenton more tea! Miss Trenton, Miss Trenton! Where are you? Not in the chair. Not on the couch. OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! I MUST SCREAM AS IF A BEAR WERE ATTACKING ME NOW!"
SCENE: SAME PLACE BUT LATER OR SOMETHING
Colonel Cathcart: "She's young and in the movie with all her young friends now? By golly, baby! Wishes! Way to go wishes! They work, I guess? You know what I'm wishing for now, older broad?"
OLDER BROAD BLUSHES EXTRAVAGANTLY
Colonel Cathcart: "Let's go fuck with my huge penis now, older broad! Oh wait! What's this?! Look! Look here! The underwear she kissed and threw at me in the picture! It is on the floor here! In reality! What is going on?!"
Narrator: "THE TWILIGHT ZONE!"
Those asterisks mean I'm exiting the story about Rod "The Rodster" Serling and now I'm speaking in my own voice! I just wanted to say something about this episode that sounds super smart and potentially sexy. I guess the moral of this story (since we have to examine morals in all episodes of The Twilight Zone, don't we?) is that wishes probably don't often come true but maybe if you waste your entire life wishing for more life, maye your wish will come true! You never know unless you try! So forget about living the thirty years after your 25th birthday which are all just garbage because you're getting older and fatter and grosser. Instead, sit in the dark and wish to be 25 again! But don't wish to be 25 so that you'll start aging again! That would be dumb because then you'll just have to waste your new life wishing to be young again! No, you have to become either super young by playing Kick the Can so you can live it all over again (and don't be the dumb jerk who doesn't believe in wishes or you'll die lonely and bitter and soon!) or you have to become 25 forever by wishing yourself onto a movie screen. I don't know if your life only then plays when somebody runs the movie or what happens to your consciousness when the movie stops. But according to the dirty underwear left behind, I guess you're living in some alternate timeless dimension in the same place or something? With all of your imaginative young friends? Anyway, the moral is to believe in wishes and not to believe in actually doing shit before you die. Keep wishing for things to be better while everything falls apart around you! Hey, it might work! Baby!
Monday, November 4, 2019
Review of The Twilight Zone, Episode Three, "Guns Don't Kill People. But Then, Apparently, People Don't Kill People Either."
Look, Rod. If I'm going to sound smart talking about your stupid little science fiction show, you're going to have to meet me halfway by writing smart episodes. If I have to sit through another rambling episode that doesn't know where it's going like "Mr. Denton On Doomsday," I'll be forced to pretend I know what I'm talking about so I don't sound stupid writing another review of another episode I didn't understand! And I hate pretending that I know what I'm talking about! I'd rather just know! I'm not too bright but my imagination is fucking dreadful! Don't worry though! I'm going to give you a fair shake and try to figure out what the fuck you were trying to do with this episode aside from make your version of a western.
The first thing to assume when figuring out what an episode of The Twilight Zone was about is that it's a morality tale. They're all going to have some sort of message for the viewer to ponder and take with them as they travel through life, like maybe listen to the crazy person on the plane or perhaps don't worry too much about death because while you're hanging from the bridge dying, you'll actually think you're having a grand adventure (it's a lesson Fred Madison learned well in Lost Highway! If you're about to die in the electric chair, just turn into Balthazar Getty!). Anyway, the easiest way to figure out the moral is to start backwards. Rod usually tries to help with a few closing words about how things are in The Twilight Zone. In this one, he's all, "Whoa, Nellie! Giddyup, I reckon! Pardners, lissen ta whut I gots ta say! Sometimes fate can pull a man outta some pit while also keeping some other young buck from fallin' in! Yee haw!" So that's the lesson, I guess. Sometimes an old person is pretty darn useless but they can still be a good example to the young. Maybe. I don't fucking know!
The next thing to consider is the actors. Did I recognize any 1950s actors from this episode? If so, then it must have been an important episode. I won't get into the weeds on the logic of that statement; you'll just have to trust that it's as factual as I can get. The only person I recognized, and he wasn't even the main guy, was Martin Landau. He played a huge dick whose role in the episode was to, um, be a huge dick, I guess? One thing I'll say for Martin Landau: I think he could fit a cantaloupe in his mouth.
Thirdly, you have to consider the paranormal aspects. In this one, some salesman named Fate drops by to give Mr. Denton a gun. The gun symbolizes his fight against alcohol and his struggle to regain control of his life. Except maybe it only symbolizes that in the first half. Because after Mr. Denton humiliates Martin and decides to stop being the town drunk, he realizes his life is now over. Why? Because Rod Serling has a weird idea about the Old West. Apparently in Rod's Old West, every gunslinger was constantly going from town to town fighting to the death with other gunslingers they heard were the best in that town. Why the fuck would anybody do that?! If I was a pretty good gunslinger, I'd only want to fight mediocre gunslingers! What am I going around risking my own neck for?! But Mr. Denton realizes people are going to come around challenging him now that he's not a drunk anymore and he's good with the iron! Is that a gun reference? I think it might be a golf reference!
So now we've got one story that kind of finished up and moved on to another one. Mr. Denton fought off his demons with a gun but now that gun threatens his life. Salesman Fate convinces Mr. Denton not to flee by giving him a potion that makes him the fastest draw in the west. Well, what a deal! Of course Mr. Denton is going to accept that deal even if he told that prostitute the story about killing the sixteen year old gunslinger that challenged him and how all the death led him to drink the rest of his life away. Why run away to save your life and stay sober when you're assured of being able to kill another jerk coming for you?!
Lastly, you need to think about how the big twist relates to the rest of the story (if there is a twist. In this one, there is! I think!). In this one, right before the final gunfight, Mr. Denton swigs his potion. But then he sees his young challenger swig the same potion! Oh no! Now they're both the fastest draw in the West! But they've gone too far to stop now. Besides, maybe one of those potions was to make the guy harder so he could fuck a prostitute after the gun battle. But neither was! Both were Dr. Fate's Super Fancy Speed-em Up Potions! So each gunslinger fires and shoots the other in the hand. The doctor rushes up and says, "Oh no! Now neither of you can ever fire a gun again!" And Mr. Denton says, "Yippee!" And the young guy says, "Aw, shucks!" But then Mr. Denton is all, "Be thankful, kid! You're life is going to be great now! Especially since we're in the Old West and there are prostitutes all over the place that can jerk you off since you can't even hold your tallywacker anymore!"
So that's the lesson, I guess. Violence is never the answer? And also drinking isn't the answer? And maybe running from a fight is also not the answer? But I bet smoking and fucking is still okay! Yippee ki ay!
The first thing to assume when figuring out what an episode of The Twilight Zone was about is that it's a morality tale. They're all going to have some sort of message for the viewer to ponder and take with them as they travel through life, like maybe listen to the crazy person on the plane or perhaps don't worry too much about death because while you're hanging from the bridge dying, you'll actually think you're having a grand adventure (it's a lesson Fred Madison learned well in Lost Highway! If you're about to die in the electric chair, just turn into Balthazar Getty!). Anyway, the easiest way to figure out the moral is to start backwards. Rod usually tries to help with a few closing words about how things are in The Twilight Zone. In this one, he's all, "Whoa, Nellie! Giddyup, I reckon! Pardners, lissen ta whut I gots ta say! Sometimes fate can pull a man outta some pit while also keeping some other young buck from fallin' in! Yee haw!" So that's the lesson, I guess. Sometimes an old person is pretty darn useless but they can still be a good example to the young. Maybe. I don't fucking know!
The next thing to consider is the actors. Did I recognize any 1950s actors from this episode? If so, then it must have been an important episode. I won't get into the weeds on the logic of that statement; you'll just have to trust that it's as factual as I can get. The only person I recognized, and he wasn't even the main guy, was Martin Landau. He played a huge dick whose role in the episode was to, um, be a huge dick, I guess? One thing I'll say for Martin Landau: I think he could fit a cantaloupe in his mouth.
Thirdly, you have to consider the paranormal aspects. In this one, some salesman named Fate drops by to give Mr. Denton a gun. The gun symbolizes his fight against alcohol and his struggle to regain control of his life. Except maybe it only symbolizes that in the first half. Because after Mr. Denton humiliates Martin and decides to stop being the town drunk, he realizes his life is now over. Why? Because Rod Serling has a weird idea about the Old West. Apparently in Rod's Old West, every gunslinger was constantly going from town to town fighting to the death with other gunslingers they heard were the best in that town. Why the fuck would anybody do that?! If I was a pretty good gunslinger, I'd only want to fight mediocre gunslingers! What am I going around risking my own neck for?! But Mr. Denton realizes people are going to come around challenging him now that he's not a drunk anymore and he's good with the iron! Is that a gun reference? I think it might be a golf reference!
So now we've got one story that kind of finished up and moved on to another one. Mr. Denton fought off his demons with a gun but now that gun threatens his life. Salesman Fate convinces Mr. Denton not to flee by giving him a potion that makes him the fastest draw in the west. Well, what a deal! Of course Mr. Denton is going to accept that deal even if he told that prostitute the story about killing the sixteen year old gunslinger that challenged him and how all the death led him to drink the rest of his life away. Why run away to save your life and stay sober when you're assured of being able to kill another jerk coming for you?!
Lastly, you need to think about how the big twist relates to the rest of the story (if there is a twist. In this one, there is! I think!). In this one, right before the final gunfight, Mr. Denton swigs his potion. But then he sees his young challenger swig the same potion! Oh no! Now they're both the fastest draw in the West! But they've gone too far to stop now. Besides, maybe one of those potions was to make the guy harder so he could fuck a prostitute after the gun battle. But neither was! Both were Dr. Fate's Super Fancy Speed-em Up Potions! So each gunslinger fires and shoots the other in the hand. The doctor rushes up and says, "Oh no! Now neither of you can ever fire a gun again!" And Mr. Denton says, "Yippee!" And the young guy says, "Aw, shucks!" But then Mr. Denton is all, "Be thankful, kid! You're life is going to be great now! Especially since we're in the Old West and there are prostitutes all over the place that can jerk you off since you can't even hold your tallywacker anymore!"
So that's the lesson, I guess. Violence is never the answer? And also drinking isn't the answer? And maybe running from a fight is also not the answer? But I bet smoking and fucking is still okay! Yippee ki ay!
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