Did I forget what the original Twilight Zone was like? Are my memories of loneliness, terror, cruel irony and remorseless cosmic comeuppance just romanticizing an old TV show? Because this series is becoming more predictably lame than the dark days of Ray Bradbury Theater. I thought it was impossible for the narrator to be more miscast than Charles Aidman. This new guy, though, has the edgy menace of an NPR host.
I like them french fried potaters.
The insufferably twee narrator introduces us to young Danny who lives in a trailer with his mother. There is a glimmer of hope as Danny puts a toy boat in a stream “and follows a trail just to see where it goes. But today that trail will lead Danny through a private reserve which lies just inside the borders of the twilight zone.”
Unfortunately, the narrator foreshadows the utter banality to come by speaking in the chirpy tones usually reserved for giddily introducing yet another goddamn segment on cowboy poets.
They even jerk us off — sorry, this has taken an ugly turn — by having the toy boat go through a strange white mist. Is anything done with this? Of course not.
Danny encounters a man walking though the woods dressed like Sling Blade. The immaculate long pants and fully buttoned shirt should be a little disconcerting. However, the man’s gentleness and the insipid score ensure no suspense is created.
After a sad conversation about Danny and his mother, Danny invites the man to dinner. We get an idea what the man — named Scout — is up to when he mesmerizes a deer and makes it disappear. They have a nice dinner where the scariest thing is a spilled glass of water. Danny has a new friend, Mom is starting to take a liking to this new fella, and all is right with the world.
I’m not sure if this happiness was to set up the next scene, or if I’m just getting tired. It is pretty creepy, though. The next day, Scout meets Danny at the trailer. Scout invites Danny to go exploring. Danny says his mother told him to stay there until she got home. Scout says, “I talked to your mother” and Danny skeptically says “You did?” Scout says they’re all going to have dinner at his house, and they walk off onto the woods. In fact, it is so chillingly creepy that I’m not sure that was their intention.
Dull story short, Scout is an alien (and based on that last scene, should be on To Catch a Predator) collecting specimens of earth life. He is going to take Danny, but the thought of his own family makes him change his mind.
After a brief detour last week where TZ knocked off a teenage girl, it is back to the sappy vibe that sank this run of the series. It’s like if Henry Bemis remembered the spare glasses in his coat pocket.
Despite the episode being a stain on the TZ franchise, I must say the performances were all very good. There was nothing wrong with the script that a different script couldn’t fix.[1] Just the tone was entirely wrong.
Pfft:
[1] The script was fine for what it wanted to do; I just mean, a different story.