I was really torn whether to invest the time in a 3rd season of RBT.  At least they seem to be filming in the USA again, and they are doing A Sound of Thunder this season — so, one more chance.  Although I’ll miss bitching about Europe.

Ralph the bald carny man at the Mirror Maze drags his co-worker Aimee to his place to see Mr. Big.  She is clearly out of his league in looks and also because she has the more manly concession — the pellet guns.  He tells her to hide, for reasons I can’t figure, because Mr. Big is coming.  Turns out that Mr. Big is a midget.  His name is actually revealed later to be Bigalow, but I don’t think Mirror-boy know that.

As he does every night, he has come to the Mirror Maze and bought a ticket.  Ralph tells Aimee she ain’t seen nothing yet.  He leads her to spy on Mr. Big checking himself out in the mirror, admiring his tall thin reflection.  Ralph thinks this is quite a hoot.  Maybe if there was a mirror that showed him with hair, he would understand his cruelty.

Mr. Big hears them hiding behind a wall and bolts.  Aimee worries that they have humiliated him and that he might never come back.  But the next night he is there again.  Aimee follows him to a newsstand and discovers he’s a writer of . . . er, short stories.  No, really.  He sees her following him and takes her home with him.  She sees that he lives in a tiny little scaled down house in a warehouse.

Attack of the 5’3″ Woman.

She returns to the Mirror Maze and admires herself in the same stretchy mirror, which makes no sense.  It’s not like she is a dwarf or even fat.  The stretchy mirror just makes her look anorexic.  Aimee catches Ralph staring at her.

Ralph goes in to break the mirror, but has a better idea.  He replaces the stretchy mirror with one that scrunches the midget down even more.  Ralph gets a laugh out of the midget’s anguish.  Aimee smacks him up side his bald noggin.

From somewhere, the midget has gotten a gun and starts deliberately shooting Ralph’s reflections one by one.  When only the real Ralph is left, Aimee stops him, saying Ralph has been dead for years.

I really wanted to like it.  The girl was cute.  The midget being a writer reminded me of The Smoking Man’s literary aspirations.  And quite the snappy dresser.  His tiny house and her peeking in were intriguing.  It just didn’t come together.

As usual, the short story was better especially if you grade it on a 60 year old curve.  The Dwarf was a little more fleshed out on TV, and the ending was more clearly presented.  In the short story, Ralph and Aimee both see Ralph as a small dark monster in one of the mirrors.  There is a gunshot, but whether it is Ralph or the Dwarf being shot is left to the reader.

Post-Post:

• Megan Follows was previously seen in The Outer Limits, and Miguel Fernandes was in Trancers.
• Really misnamed episode as it features a midget not a dwarf.
• I’m sure it was some 6 foot tall douche-bag who came up with “Little Person” as the PC word.  Midget was a perfectly respectable word.  Why replace it with a word that specifically points out the person is not a person, he is a little person?
• Same thing with cripple which was eventually deemed offensive, replaced by handicapped which was also eventually deemed offensive.  Then disabled.  Now I guess it is the absurd handicapable or even worse, differently-abled.  Gee, it’s almost like it isn’t the words that bothers these do-gooders.

Again with the European cast.  This is turning into Masterpiece Theater.  Except for the Masterpiece part.

Minerva Halliday is on the Orient Express heading north.  She spots a sickly man and graciously dubs him The Ghastly Passenger.

As she leaves the dining car, she puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “I believe.”  Later that night, a conductor is looking for a doctor for TGP, and Minerva volunteers her services as a nurse.  She diagnoses him as being dead.  But only mostly dead, so she begins speaking to him.

She met someone like TGP when she was 6 years old in Ireland and understands that he is a ghost.  Relieved that someone finally recognizes his plight, he laughs and gains strength from her belief.

She offers to escort him to London.   During a layover in Paris, she takes him to Père Lachaise Cemetary.   Sadly, they do not stop by the ol’ Jim Morrison place.  They do stop at Frédéric Chopin’s grave where he is surprisingly listed as Fred.

Back on the train, Minerva gives TGP several books featuring ghostly characters.  Being pre-Kindle, just lugging them around will probably kill him.

In Calais, a group of children gather around the couple.  Being believers in ghosts (i.e. young and stupid), they strengthen TGP.  Feeling particularly chirpy, he levitates as he tells them his ghost story.

In Dover, TGP is looking full of life.   But, darn the luck, Minerva drops dead on the dock.  Now they can go off and find a nice castle to haunt together.

The episode is very faithful to the story, even reusing much of the dialog, although the print version is largely levitation-free.  The story really works better in print, however, in no small part because it does not have the dreadful electronic score behind it.  TGP wears his ashen make-up well, although he does seem miscast.  Minerva brings a nice European MILFy vibe to her role as caretaker.

Can’t recommend, but it did have a certain charm to it, especially on the printed back-lit Kindle screen.

Post-Post:

• In Roman mythology, Minerva is the Goddess of Wisdom, but has minors in medicine and magic.
• TGP is corporeal, others acknowledge his presence, he can’t move through walls, he rattles no chains; in what sense is he a ghost?  In their new home, they will not be haunting, but more like squatting.

Note to self:  Do not make “fine mess” reference as it is only 50% accurate.

This is not quite a twin spin.  There is a story in the Bradbury book called The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair which tracks the first few minutes of this episode fairly well.  However, the short story becomes a traditional melodrama like early Vonnegut, while the episode veers into horror.

Strangers John and Alicia attend the same costume party as singles.  Improbably, they have independently elected to attend dressed as characters who individually have absolutely no identity without the other.

This is especially strange for Alicia.  At least John has the gut, the black suit, the bowler, and the mustache to sell himself as Oliver Hardy.  In a pinch, he could also claim to be a fat Charlie Chaplin or Hitler.  Alicia really just has the hat.  Never-the-less, once they meet-cute, she does exhibit a pretty good Stan Laurel vibe.

Alicia takes him to a staircase famous from one of L&H’s movies.  She had been filming a commercial there earlier in the day.  Inexplicably, the crew left a piano case there, but nothing comes of it.

Then they go to a diner and and commence one of the longest, least erotic public displays of affection in movie history.  It is even more uncomfortable when done by a couple role-playing 2 dudes.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  However, that is followed by a really nice montage of their courtship.

Then things get weird.  Alicia takes John to a fleabag hotel promising to play the titular Gotcha! game.

She gives John white pajamas to wear, lights a bunch of candles and tells him to remain completely silent until the alarm clock goes off.  There is a nice shot where she is standing at the end of the bed, and we are seeing John’s POV.  Alicia says “Gotcha” and sinks as if through the floor, although the bed blocks our view.

After several largely pointless shots of the candles, John, the alarm clock, and the shower head, Alicia suddenly reappears with a pasty face and puts her bony fingers on John’s face.  “Gotcha!”

The alarm goes off and she is her cute self again.  “Gotcha.”  John is terrified, in tears, and she apologizes.  For reasons unknown, he goes with her back to the same diner.  He seems to be PTSDing pretty hard.  She asks if everything is OK, if he would like to play the game again tomorrow with the roles reversed.

He says no, but as she is leaving dejectedly he says, “Gotcha.”  He says it with the blankest possible face, and it is impossible to attach any valid analysis to the ending.  Sadly, botched endings are becoming the hallmark of this series.

Post-Post Leftovers:

• Alicia says that the original scene with the piano case was filmed 4,000 miles away in Los Angeles.  Unless this episode takes place in Ecuador, that is just about impossible.
• It is weird that they made the effort to have the crate be so similar to L&H’s in some ways (placement of the THIS END UP stencil), but not in others (placement of the cross beam).
• Brad Turner went on to direct 46 episodes of 24 — almost 2 full days — so he is forgiven.
• The Laurel and Hardy theme song, used way too much in this episode, is Dance of the Cuckoos.

A Ray Bradbury twin-spin!

A few months ago I picked up the entire series of Ray Bradbury Theater on DVD for under 10 bucks.  The price should have been warning enough, but I did have dim memories of enjoying a few of them way back when.  Last year, I bailed after the first season, but have decided to soldier on to see if I was too hasty.

As luck would have it, the first episode I watched is based on a short story that appears in Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, which I recently downloaded to my Kindle.   So finally, I can brush off my mad compare & contrast skillz from freshman English.

No, seriously . . .

And I got an A every quarter . . .

Do I have to get my transcripts?

No one is going to watch this episode and recommend the series to their friends.  The synthy 80’s score is off-putting, and the whole thing looks like it was filmed through gauze of the same thread-count they use to film Barbara Walters (although that could just be the lousy DVD transfer of this dirt-cheap set).  However, in the context of an anthology series, and given when it was made, it interested me enough to at least try another episode.

The first surprise was Michael Ironside.  He has made a nice career out of playing tough guys, always in control.  This is the first time I remember seeing him in panic mode, sweating profusely, and always a step behind.  He completely pulls it off, having an anxiety attack that lasts most of the whole episode. He is assisted by some good make-up, costuming, and fish-eye shots, but major kudos to him for playing so believably against type.

His adversary is Robert Vaughn, who I don’t see much anymore.  I can only assume Superman III killed his career.  Geez, Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, Margot Kidder — and people think Poltergeist was cursed.  Jackie Cooper is gone too, but at 88, he had a pretty good run.

Vaughn is a publisher who has rejected Ironside’s work.  He is, however, very accepting of Ironside’s girlfriend Mary.  Through a series of flashbacks that make LOST look like a linear narrative, we follow Ironside as he attempts to remove his fingerprints after killing Vaughn.

As he descends into madness, the fingerprints begin appearing everywhere, taunting him like a visual Tell-Tale Heart. As he frantically cleans his fingerprints, both real and imagined, he realizes that Vaughn had been leading him on, luring him into touching object after object from a cocktail glass to pre-Columbian art.

Finally, after a night of frantic cleaning that would give Felix Unger the willies, that would sent the CSI crew to the nut-hut, that would have him polish more knobs than Jenna Jameson, the police arrive.  They lead him out in handcuffs which, come to think of it, would not have been possible for him at the end of Total Recall.

I’m not sure I follow the ending.  A neighbor, who is also Vaughn’s doctor, who happens to be at the crime scene, who conveniently forgets about doctor-patient confidentiality, spills the garbanzos that Vaughn only had less than a month to live due to cancer.  In fact, he says Ironside probably did Vaughn a favor.

OK, so Vaughn goaded Ironside into killing him and also made sure that plenty of evidence was left to incriminate him.  But to what end?  No mention is made of insurance.  And how does the mere presence of fingerprints incriminate Ironside?  And why set him up anyway?

The short story is a little different.  Very minor point, the girlfriend’s name is Lily, which is a better name than Mary (sorry, Mom).  And there is no mention of any terminal disease.  If the cancer twist had been worked into the show more elegantly, it might have worked.  As is, the short story was probably better off without it.

Post-Post Leftovers:

I saw Jenna Jameson on an episode of Family Guy this morning, so she was fresh in my mind.

Yeah, that’s where I know her from.