Unwatchable.
The first segment of the episode, If She Dies, was sappy and maudlin and sticked the landing. Or is it stuck? OK, it stunk the landing — the ending was botched [1]. I rolled with it, though, because I make my own fun; I just don’t make enough for everyone. Many people seemed to hate that first segment, but the second one makes the first one easier on the eyes than a Carl’s Jr. commercial.
If you take all the awful show-biz tropes from the 80’s (plus one from the 60s) and mix them into one of the dreaded TZ humorous episodes, this is what you end up with.
The lead actor is a soulless, deal-making yuppie typical of the 1980s, although not quite the coke-snorting asshole from Die Hard. The woman is frequently back-lit and shot through more gauze than Elly May Clampett in Eye of the Beholder. I’m not sure if the music is purely synth, but I’m pretty sure no strings or woodwinds were injured in the making of this score. The whole thing comes off as one of those lousy Cinemax melodramas if they tried to go for laughs instead of nudity; which might explain why they never go for laughs. There are some primitive CGI effects that were all the rage at the time, but I’m sure they will never catch on.
The performances are geared to make this a romantic comedic rom-com romp; or maybe I’ve just invented the “romp-com.”[2] So maybe they should be graded on a curve. David Dukes is a tolerable yet exceedingly dull lead. The performance which sinks the episode, however, comes from Robert Morse.
In the incredibly unlikely event that Bill Paxton ever took an acting class, it must have been taught by Robert Morse. Like Paxton, he is apparently incapable of a single frame where he is not hamming it up. You have to act in order to over-act, so I don’t think that is it. It is just relentless mugging and unfunny funny faces. He was never a huge star, but has been around forever.
His skills were no better 25 years later when he played Bert Cooper on Mad Men — same utter lack of characterization. He does have a certain unique “presence” but you better like it, because that is all you are going to get. At least age rounded some of the edges.
Actually, his role in Mad Men kind of parallels his acting. I get that he is a senior partner at Sterling Cooper, the firm where the show begins. But as they moved on to Sterling Cooper Draper Price and Sterling Cooper & Partners why did they keep dragging him along and putting his name on the letterhead? Did he ever produce one worthwhile idea in the entire series? In both worlds, why is he here? [3]
So Dukes spots a woman, and Morse — playing Cupid — sets them up. But Dukes does not follow through. Somehow this leads to him setting up Cupid with the former Mrs. Cupid. At the end, Dukes and the woman and Mr. & Mrs. Cupid are happy couples. The Cupids drive by in an ancient Dusenberg and wave at Dukes. Final question: Why would they be in a Dusenberg? Cupid has been around for 2,000 years — why would his knowledge of cars start or stop in the 1930s?
Post-Post:
- [1] Hmmm, I always thought “stick the landing” meant you blew it. Turns out I had this completely wrong — even in thinking this was clever.
- [2] It appears I did invent it.
- [3] Equally baffling to me is Roger Sterling. His father was one of the founders of the original firm, but has he ever generated a single fee large enough to cover his bar tab? I think he did finally land a big one later on, but why did they keep him around all that time?
- Directed by Peter Medak, who should know better (The Changeling, many TV shows including The Wire and Breaking Bad).
- Available on YouTube, but why would ya?
Nine year old Cathy is making her father one of those breakfasts that only a parent would find edible. I must admit she is pretty adorable as she presents him with a crudely wrapped birthday present — a wallet that she made. He opens it to find a family picture of Cathy, himself and his dead wife. For Father’s Day she got him a mug with his prostate exam results on it. Dammit, this is not what I want from the Twilight Zone! But it is heartbreaking.
nuns are just wrapping up a rummage sale. A nun tells him that is impossible because all of the children have been adopted. No wait, they just moved to a new building. As he is leaving, he sees the girl on a swing. She points to a large lump under a tarp. When he looks at it, then back at the swing, she is gone.
That night, the little girl comes walking into Dad’s bedroom. She says she wants Toby, and that the Sisters will be mad if they find her out of bed. She leads him back to the bed he just bought and climbs in. She introduces herself as Sarah and asks Paul to tuck her in. He looks away for a second — at nothing! — then back at the bed to see that she has just disappeared. 
He is, of course, overjoyed to see his little girl awake. However, he is a little taken aback when she asks for Toby. But then she smiles and nothing else matters — like, what happened to Cathy’s soul.
Stephen has just rented a new house, and his girlfriend stops by. He immediately gets the feeling that “there should be an art deco chair and an oriental rug right there.” His deja vu brings on several jarringly edited, awfully-lit flashes to the past — exactly the motif that undercut New Year’s Day.
The next day, Stephen has more flashes of a man holding a knife to a woman’s throat. He later hears a woman’s voice calling for Maxie. He goes upstairs and in the same god-awful lighting sees a woman in the bathroom stripping down. I try not to purposely be negative in these posts, so I am being honest when I say the woman is singing one of the most annoying, terrible, tuneless songs I have every heard — it doesn’t even make up for the stripping [1]. A few seconds later, he sees her pop to the surface in a bathtub of bloody water. A hand forces her head back down.[2]
That night, Stephen awakens to jazz music and sees Max and Zelda bathed in the awful amber lighting. They are playing cards just as Stephen and Karen had played Scrabble [3] moments before. Once again, Max pulls a knife on her. Stephen tells this to his psychiatrist who hypnotizes him again . . . Max is at a party with Zelda. She is dressed as a flapper and flirting with some of the other guests as she dances to a song that is almost, but not quite, 
This is surely a waste of words but: In a featurette, the director made a point of saying that the walls were painted green in the present, but painted red in the past to reflect the passion of that era. So why is Zelda’s dress green in the past, and Karen’s dress red in the present? So she did not blend into the back-ground under the awful lighting?
aka 
Turns out the men are astronauts, but not from NASA. Their trip was subsidized by Standard Motors (a division of Average Mechanical, a wholly owned subsidiary of Just OK, Inc). The evil corporation will get half of anything they find, and any wallets they make. Bart is disappointed that they did not find any people on Mars. He suggests that since there is plant life similar to earth’s, that there should be intelligent life.
After Robbie leaves, Bart realizes his rabbit’s foot is missing and accuses Jack. Bart says it “didn’t just walk away by itself” which is a pretty god gag that I don’t think they even realized. Bart goes after Jack with a hammer and they start wrestling as we go to commercial. Robbie breaks it up and demands that they hand over their guns.
Frenchies Edmond Valier and Marie are have a tête-à-tête, french for sucking face big time. Valier says, “What would I do without you?” and Marie tells him he’ll have to figure that out because she is getting married. If that isn’t bad enough, she is marring his publisher / employer Charles Montcour because he is rich. This couldn’t have come up a little earlier?
Andre comes again to visit Valier who is exhausted and unshaven. He has brought the crystal ball into the house. He is concerned that he is going insane because he can see Marie in the crystal ball. He is so busy that he never gets around to visiting Marie before Montcour returns to town.
That night, Valier smashes the crystal ball. The end.