Dramatis Personae

Martha  Brockman

Selena  Brockman

Diane  Brockman

Debra Brockman

Kent  Brockman

What a mess!  Maybe there’s a reason this original story from Rod Serling never got produced.  At least in Number Twelve Looks Just Like You we didn’t have to meet all twelve; and they were hot!

Why would they start out with this shot of a girl in a B&W photo?  We don’t know who she is, and won’t know the significance until 2/3rds into the episode.  It sets us up for nothing.  Did any viewers really recognize the bandage on her arm that appears to be a sleeve?  Benedict Cumberbatch wouldn’t have noticed it.  I mean, Sherlock Holmes would have.  I just assume Cumberbatch is an average Joe (with occasional superhero tendancies) like me and probably would not have.

Young Doctor Burrell is making a house-call to check on elderly Selena Brockman, which might be the single most fantastic premise in this entire series.  But such personal care is why he went into medicine.  He quickly regresses to the medical mean by giving the old woman a fistful of pills.  Her niece Diane Brockman uses the opportunity to hit on the doctor.  No, wait, that’s why he went into medicine.

Another niece, Debra Brockman, has received a phone call asking her to come see Selena whom she has never met.  Diane greets her and introduces her to Orville the Handyman.  Diane calls him the village idiot but says it is OK because he is deaf and she had her head turned.  Debra sees another woman staring catatonically out the window.  Diane says that is her mother which I guess makes her Martha Brockman.

Diane takes Debra upstairs to meet Selena.  Debra tells the old woman she will be helping to take care of her.  Selena takes her hand so firmly it hurts.  It leaves a mark which the doctor later tells Debra is a liverspot, but he might have just been flirting.  When the doctor next visits Selena, he is surprised she is dressed and sitting up alert in bed.

That night, however, the doctor gets a call from Debra who asks him to come to the house.  When he arrives, she is sitting in the dark.  He takes her to the hospital, but they can find no reason for her apparent premature aging. You know what I can find no reason for?  Not showing her aged face.  At the house, her face is kept in the shadows.  She is not shown at the hospital at all.  This is the point where her older self should have been revealed.  We know what is happening, and Debra thought it was severe enough to call the doctor.  Instead, we see her a few minutes later, after we have gotten used to the idea.  And she is not hideous enough to warrant any suspense that might have built up.

Back at the house again, the doctor is taking Diane’s blood pressure.  She says she is fine and her mother Martha is fine also.  He notices a nasty burn scar, which she says is from an accident when she was a child.  Selena rolls her wheelchair in and says they are both fine.  Dr. Burrell notes the irony that Debra is aging as Selena is getting younger.  She tells him his services are no longer needed.

Orville catches Burrell outside and shows him a diary.  There is the photo inside of the girl wearing wearing a bandage in the same spot as Diane’s scar, and it is dated 1940.   But the entry says it is her mother Martha in the picture.  The camera pans away from them in a textbook camera move guaranteed to create suspense — who is around the corner . . . did they overhear the doctor . . . is Orville in danger for ratting the Brockwomen out?  But no . . . yawn . . . the pan stops on a statue.  Hunh?  There’s actually a good gag to be had there, but I don’t think they realized it.  Also, it was aleady sorta used on the original TZ’s A Penny for your Thoughts.

Back at the hospital, we finally get our first look at the prematurely aged Debra.  That night, Burrell sneaks back to the house.  He rolls up the catatonic Martha’s sleeve and sees no scar.  He says, “You’re Diane!  You’re the daughter!”  Diane walks in and Burrell accuses her, pointing out that Martha has no scar.  Also that she had green eyes like Diane did.  “How old are you really, Martha?”

He busts into Selena’s bedroom and shouts, “It’s not right!  Give Debra back her years!”  His pleas fall on deaf ears.  Literally.  Heh heh.

Selena says, “What do you know about it doctor?  The game is longevity.  You play at it with your medicine and your stethoscopes, but we’ve won.  There’s one rule doctor.  It has nothing to do with morality or love.  When illness approaches, the trade takes place.”

Diane tries to brain him with a fireplace poker, but they get into a struggle.  While they wrestle, Martha enters with a oil lamp and cries, “Mommy”  Diane backs away from her saying, “Get away from me!”  the lamp falls and breaks and the wild fire spreads like . . . er, wildfire.  Only Burrell gets out alive.  Maybe.

The police say that neighbors saw one woman escape, clothes on fire.  Debra returns to the house looking young and cute again.  Meanwhile at the hospital, an old indigent woman with massive burns has been admitted.  A nurse notes that Jane Doe’s left arm seems to be healing quickly.  Another nurse in the hall shows a friend a burn mark on her left arm that she doesn’t remember getting.  Well gee, it couldn’t have been from Jane Doe — her hands are shown completely bandaged over.

The old greedily leaching youth from the young is nothing original, but that’s OK.  It’s one of those tropes that are too good to leave alone; especially as I get older.  This production, however, just seems a little busy.  I think dropping one of the Brockmans would have tightened the story up nicely.

Maybe it would have made this crazy family less dysfunctional.  Debra has never met her aunt Selena or her aunt Martha?  OK, I guess families move away or split up.  Why is Martha being abused by her mother as the walking fountain of youth?  It is demonstrated at the end that it need not be a blood relative.  For that matter, why did they recruit cousin Debra at all?  Couldn’t they just have placed an ad for “Hot nurse wanted.  Must provide uniform” like I do?

Other Stuff:

• Sweet Jeebus, I haven’t watched a TZ episode in weeks.  Was the new guy’s narration this insipid before, or is he going a new way?  Why do they try to make this show so . . . what, normal?  Melodramatic?  This is the MFing TZ, bitches!  Where is the edge, where is the menace?