The sponsor is still Kreisler Watch bands. Their new jeweled band will be popular with the ladies because ladies “love jewels from their forehead to their fingertips.” What? But on to the show . . . .
Dateline Las Palmas, New Mexico — population 860. At Mother Walker’s Boarding House, Vic Russo finds an old geezer playing with himself — or to clarify, playing a game of chess against himself. Vic asks for a room and the geezer says they are particular about strangers, which seems like a problem in the booming field of hotel / motel management.
Luckily, a woman who must be Daughter Walker comes into the lobby wearing a bathing suit. At $25/week, this must be a Motel .06. Ginny Walker guesses that Vic is a newspaperman looking into the flying saucer reported in their little town.
Vic finds the locals afraid to discuss the reported flying saucer. He comes back to his room to find the old geezer going through his stuff. He has learned Vic’s true identity — an army pilot who was grounded for talking too much about flying saucers.
Trivia: it was only four years earlier that the Air Force was split off from the Army in order to more efficiently execute missions and distribute congressional graft.
Ginny figures out that Vic is not a reporter because he doesn’t have a typewriter with him. Also because he doesn’t smell like whiskey and has an “I Like Ike” bumper sticker on his car. The geezer enters the lobby carrying a hunk of metal that he says is from a saucer. The old man tries to tell his story, but Ginny cuts him off. She is a champion debunker.
At 1 am, Ginny comes to Vic’s room. They had apparently had a 1950’s hook-up. Vic admits that he is a grounded pilot and not a reporter. She still refuses to accept his stories of flying saucers. He lists off witness who have seen saucers, but she will not believe.
He goes with the geezer to see a flying saucer. The geezer takes him to a shack, but the occupant disappeared after seeing the saucer. After he goes to look for the saucer, Ginny tells a confidant that there are too many people on their literal alien tails.
He decides it is time for them to leave earth. Ginny breaks down in tears sobbing, “They didn’t send me here to fall in love.”
The performances were good — Jack Carter and Olive Deering were especially good. Jack Carter was a nightclub comedian at the time, and not known as an actor. Despite this being only his third IMDb credit, he seemed more natural and competent than many veterans on this early live series.
I had high hopes just based on the title. Sadly, this is just an utter nothing of a story. Most UFO reports hold more water than this story. This is swamp gas.
Post-Post:
- Written by Mel Goldberg who also gave us The Crystal Egg, Test Flight and Sneak Attack.
- Olive Deering went on to play Moses’ sister in The Ten Commandments. If it wasn’t so late, I’d work in the ancient aliens building the pyramids.
- 63 years after this aired, Jack Carter (Vic Russo) was a guest on Norm MacDonald’s podcast.
- The episode is available on YouTube, but why would ya?
Our introduction to Lucius Winton is quick and to the point. His house-keeper comes into his estate and sees that the vast lighting system he has installed is out. She turns the lights back on and we see only Winton’s withered, radiated arm drooped from a chair streaming blood to the floor. The end.
As he settles in for his first night, he begins putting away his clothes. There are even bright lights in each drawer Winton opens. One of them brightly illuminates a dead radiated rat. When he turns off the light, he hears creepy sounds so sleeps with the lights on like a child. Imagine if he had actually seen the menacing shadows that crept along the walls — he might have made a wittle pillow-fort.
Sadly Matson rings the doorbell before the creeping shadows reach Winton. He again stresses how Lucius Winton exploited the townspeople. He suggests that Winton is profiting from this and might like to donate the house to the city to ease his conscience. Winton quite appropriately tells him to buzz off. The idea might not seem so crazy when a few minutes later Winton actually sees the creepy shadows fry a rat.
Andy Harris (Chad Lowe) is walking and talking, but sadly this was not written by 
The tuxedoed Miles Farnham walks in carrying two snifters of brandy. He hands one to similarly tuxedoed Bill Pryor. Only one of them will be getting his deposit back.
She tells her story to Assistant DA 
Industrialist — and has anyone outside of a Hollywood production ever been called that? And have they ever once been the economy-driving, job-creating, philanthropic good guy? — Deidrich walks down a long hallway filled with secretaries who will soon be replaced by computers, Mr. Coffees and younger, hotter secretaries. He is going to see his former protege William Feathersmith.
Having ruthlessly achieved every-thing he ever wanted, he tells the janitor he is thinking about his youth in Cliffordville. By coincidence, the janitor also grew up in Cliffordville. They apparently had a pretty good school system because he tells Feathersmith he is like Alexander the Great who wept because he had no more worlds to conquer. Though a janitor, like 
Of course, being TZ, things don’t work out the way he planned. He blows the $1,400 immediately on land that turns out to be worthless at the time. He woos the banker’s daughter and finds that she is er, not the beauty that he remembered. Everywhere he turns he just misses opportunities, misremembers details, and realizes that he doesn’t know how anything works so he can’t preemptively invent anything. He tells people repeatedly that he is “not a crummy draftsman, or a two-bit 
Feathersmith begs Ms. Devlin to send him back to the future. His last act before leaving 1910 starts the wheels in motion for another well-played twist. The execution is slightly bungled, but it is still very satisfying. Unfortunately, Serling is not finished typing. He has to insert one last jab at capitalism. In his world, it is impossible to have money without being an asshole (although, I suspect, he excepted himself).