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Outer Limits – Essence of Life (07/23/99)

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Daniel Baldwin’s partner

Dr. Nathan Seward has invented a drug which, when inhaled, gives people the illusion that they are being visited by dead loved ones.  Elderly Mrs. Westbrook takes a snort and imagines her husband is there in the room with her.  He appears to her at the advanced age he was when he died; which suggests to me that men and women will use this drug very differently.  Seward peeks in and sees Mrs. Westbrook happily dancing, but there is no one in her arms; she is all alone.

A newspaper tells us that in the impossibly far-off year of 2014, the world’s population is just recovering from a great plague.  The headline credits the rebound to “The Code” which outlawed this drug.  The idea is that by banning the drug, people will “look forward, not back” but I don’t think Mrs. Westbrook was going to be popping out any more kids at age 69 anyway.  But then, who knows?  By 2014, people might be living to be 200 years old!  Sadly, the drug OD has left her as ancient and incoherent as Nancy Pelosi.

Detectives Stephanie Sawyer [1] and Dan Kagan [2] are on the case.  Dan is such a believer in The Code that he did not even use the drug after his young wife died.  He notices that there have been 4 overdoses of this drug tied to Meadow Pines Funeral Home, so he and Stephanie head over there.  They pose as brother and sister, and tell the owner that Mrs. Westbrook referred them.  He agrees to help Dan see his wife again.  Having a dead wife finally has a bright side as he can exploit Juliette’s death in their sting operation.

Daniel Baldwin’s late wife

Dan provides a scarf that belonged to Juliette (for them to harvest DNA), then is summoned to meet Seward in a graveyard at midnight.  Seward hands over a vial of the drug, called Ess, and warns Dan to just use “one drop”.   Dan only pretends to take a whiff (and how do you whiff one drop?) to see Juliette, as Stephanie monitors the sting from the car.  Then they inexplicably let Seward just leave.  What?  They had the inventor, the kingpin, alone, unguarded, on tape, with the drug in his hand!  And they let him go?

Dan dutifully seals the vial up in an evidence bag, puts it in his pocket, and takes it home.  He can’t resist taking a snort and it is clear why when we see his dead wife is Daphne Zuniga — hot-cha-cha!  Sadly, the drug wears off and she disappears like a $500 hooker at midnight.  Dan immediately hooks up with Seward for another batch.  Seward again warns him not to overdo it because “they have an agenda.”  He says the government is working to sanitize emotion and turn people into drones.

Well, it really becomes a slog from there.  The story, though melodramatic, had potential, but this was not the place for it.  A very dull score, a weak performance by Daniel Baldwin, and way more close-ups than were necessary just strangled the episode.

Daniel Baldwin’s apartment

However, it did perk me up a little when the G-men were shooting at Dan in the cemetery and the bullets made sparks as the hit the granite tombstones.  It’s laughable unless it’s, you know, accurate; like flint and steel?  I’m no metallurgist.

I was also amused at how the director missed an obvious shot that was needed as Seward was killed.  As the G-Men were closing in, he snorted from two vials containing the essences of his wife and sons (the sons apparently shared a vial).  Seward extended his arms which allowed a Christ-like death, but there should have been an insert showing his family in his arms briefly before he was blown away.  He wasn’t the bad guy; he deserved a moment of happiness.

Hulu is losing Outer Limits.  I’m trying to power through the rest of the season watching back-to-back episodes.  Outings like this will not make it easy.

To be fair, it is still better than The I-Land on Netflix.  I’m only 27 minutes into the first episode and it is dreadful.  It is, in an astounding number of ways, a complete rip off of Lost.  People find themselves on a mysterious beach, the characters love to keep secrets, one in particular clearly knows more than she is telling, the first shot is a person opening her eye, other shots are also exact lifts from Lost (especially a pan, and shots of women against the surf), two characters — the main chick (an Anna Lucia / Kate hybrid) and a jerk (Sawyer-lite) — find a waterfall, there is an early death in the water, and I just got to — no joke –a flashback.  This is just sad.

If it were well-done, I would love it regardless of its lack of originality.  Unfortunately, this is the bizarro-Lost where they do everything wrong that Lost got right.  The characters are diverse, but only racially.  Where is the old guy like Locke?  Where is the gravitationally challenged guy like Hurley?  Pregnant lady?  Asian people?  An Arab?  Southern accent?  English accent?  A freakin’ dog?  No, this group is young and perfect and I will not remember any of them tomorrow (actually, the women are distinguishable, but the men are fairly homogenous).

On top of that, the dialogue is merely functional, conveying nothing but words.  Too early to tell about the story arc.  Acting ranges from good to terrible.  The score is the usual bland TV noise, but it is almost unfair to compare it to Lost’s incredible music.  Occasionally I read about a Lost prequel or sequel.  This is why I hope it never gets made.

[UPDATE] Oh God, they’re having a debate whether to stay on the beach or move inland near the fresh water.

[UPDATE 2]  Great, they seem to have decided 39 is their version of 4-8-15-16-23-42.  The way they get to it is laughably subjective, though.  Kudos for the scene of them pacing it off — that was fun.  But their explanation completely contradicts the geometry of how they were actually distributed on the beach.  The star actually woke up far from the others — hey, just like Jack Shephard!  The guy who figured it out is a little twitchy, like Daniel Faraday.  Con: another rip-off.  Pro: an actual character trait!

[UPDATE 3] This is a trainwreck.  It’s 1 am but I had to start another episode.  I always thought Sawyer was not a fully developed character in the Lost pilot, or just poorly portrayed.  He quickly became a classic character, though, and it was a great performance.  His doppleganger here does not even rise to the level of pilot-Sawyer.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] It’s the lovely Jessica Steen, not seen since way back in Season 3’s The Refuge.  Great to have Jessica back, her beauty and talent are always welcome!  Hey, I’ve loved your work since Earth 2!
  • [2] Oh, Daniel Baldwin.
  • Seward’s first name is Nathan on IMDb, but is given as Neil in the episode.

Science Fiction Theatre – Beam of Fire (07/27/56)

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Narrator:  “This is where it started and ended.  In the top secret laboratory of world famed scientist Dr. John Bellow.”

Being conspicuously on top of a hill with a 300 foot tower on its roof, I’m not sure how top secret it is.  But it is, at least, secure as there are fences and guards, and history has shown us that no one can cross that kind of border.

Security Chief Steve Conway enters and says he has finished his assignment here.  He will be going on to set up similar security for Dr. Hayes.  Dr. Bellow is sorry for “what I got Hayes into” and “all this blasted secrecy”.  Conway says their work is more important than the H-Bomb.  Bellow still wonders why Conway won’t allow  Hayes and him to at least work together.  I guess it’s like not letting the guys with the formula for Coke fly on the same plane, or the guys who invented New Coke being booked together on Malaysia Airlines 370.

Hmmmm, the telephone that should never ring rings.  Washington had agreed to communicate only by courier, and no one else has the number.  Conway picks it up.  The caller asks if this is 727J [1] and Conway says it is.  The caller asks to speak to Bellow, but says he would not know his name.  What the heck — we cut to a guy recording the call on a reel-to-reel tape recorder.  Where’s our security chief?

Conway hands Bellow the phone and runs to an adjoining room.  Oh, the recording guy works there for Conway.  Wait, that phone is never supposed to ring.  WTF does this guy do all day?  Anyhoo, excited at finally having a purpose, he traces the call.  The caller asks if Bellow will be there in 30 minutes.  He says yes, but Conway tells him he will have to leave for his own safety.  The soldier traces the call to a hotel occupied by the government.  The lab bursts into flames, killing Bellow.

The investigation begins at the hotel.  The Communications Chief tells Colonel Davis that Conway came in at 4:30 and asked how to contact Bellow.  The Chief gave him the phone number to the lab — wait, I thought no one had that number!  Conway — at least according to four witnesses, it looked like Conway — made the call to Bellow then left the hotel.

Conway says Bellow was working on a new rocket propellant capable of inter-planetary travel.  Davis says it is workable and could be finished in a few years.  He orders Conway to fly to Dr. Hayes’ lab as he is “the 2nd most important man on this project.”  Uh, they did hear about the 1st most important guy getting blowed up, didn’t they?  Hayes gets a call similar to the one Bellows got, and he too is soon dead.

Dull story short, they figure out the scientists were fried by high frequency sound beams which makes the title of the episode a complete non-sequitur.  They figure out how to reflect the beam back to the source and kill people who shot it.  But were they people or aliens?  How did they imitate Conway?  Why did they call first?

Other Stuff:

  • [1] What is 727J?  Is this a secret code name?  The Base designation?  Is he confirming he dialed the correct phone number?  I get the KLondike5-#### format, but why does this switch back to a letter at the end?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Johnny Cash . . .

 

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – O Youth and Beauty! (11/22/60)

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Cash Bentley stumbles through the Riverview Country Club just as I suspect he has many times before.  He says to his friend Jim, “The Hudson River is flowing backwards, From New York to Albany.  Time’s flowing right along with it.”  Save it for The New Yorker, pal!  Oh, Mr. Cheever, sorry sir! [1]

His wife Louise stops dancing long enough to come out on the veranda to nag and humiliate her husband.  Sadly, they do not come close enough to the railing to make this the shortest AHP in history.  As they argue, Jim and some other lushes come out and ask Cash, “Hey Champ!  What time’s the race, boy?”  This is a thoroughly unpleasant bunch of people.  Jim patronizingly mussed Cash’s hair earlier, but I was willing to let it go.  The guys try to goad him into having a few drinks.  When he refuses, Jim dips his fingers into his Gin and Tonic and again runs his fingers through Cash’s hair saying, “You know what I mean, pure hair tonic!”  [pause for laughter]

Cash grabs him and says. “So you make three times the money I do!  So you can pay your bills and I can’t!  You can’t stand the fact that I was once a champ, that I’m not getting soft like the rest of you!”  Jim says he just wanted a hurdle race.  Cash inexplicably says he will give them a hurdle race.

The crowd enthusiastically creates make-shift hurdles out of chairs, tables, music stands, broomsticks, velvet ropes, etc.  Clearly this is humiliating for Cash, but he does love the attention, and the opportunity to show he is still good at something he was once great at.  Cash tells someone to get his gun from the car, by which I hope he means a starter’s pistol.  Some boozehound fires the pistol; Cash does 2 impressive laps around the club and everyone cheers him.  Then he slugs Jim.  The guy who fired the pistol, hands it back to him, “Don’t forget your gun, Cash.”  Christ, good timing, bub!  Panting, sweaty, humiliated, drunk, angry, just decked a dude — this guy is a mass murder waiting to happen and you hand him a gun!

Back at the Bentley home, we see Cash has a projector set up in his living room  to view old films of his glory days as a champion hurdler — this must have been 20 years ago!  Well, maybe the projector is there because their babysitter’s boyfriend was just watching them that evening.  But why does the screen seem to be a permanent installation in their living room?  This ain’t no white-square-on-a-tripod (my nickname in college).  Cash reaches up and pulls down a huge theater-quality screen on rollers.

He starts the film, but runs from the room like me at an Amy Schumer movie.  In his case, he has set up hurdles out of furniture, much to the despair of Louise.  He clears the hurdles and runs out the patio door.  When he loops back into the living room, he crashes into the furniture and breaks his leg.

Just awful. Was he on the GI Bill after serving 20 years in the Army? Also, the insert of him is laughable: He is a geezer, there is no background, and it is oddly framed.  Very disappointing work from the pros at AHP.

His doctor tells him he’ll be able to run again, but no hurdles.  Back at home, his young neighbors are having a party.  Cash is jealous of their dancing and partying at this shindig.  Is this Cheever being clever with a dig at his injured shin?  [Comment timesaver:  No, you’re an idiot].  Amusingly, he looks out his window and the party seems be happening about 6 feet from his window.  Cash gets into the classic sprinter stance: crouched, one hand touching the ground, cocktail in the other.  He complains about the teenagers, but his wife says they’re entitled to some fun.

Their Saturday night takes a turn for the better when Jim calls and invites them back to the club.  Naturally, Cash gets liquored up.  He hits on a younger woman.  And I don’t just mean younger than him, I mean younger than his wife who is already 16 years younger than him.  Wait, why is Louise with with this dumbbell anyway?  I doubt she was that swept away by his track prowess as she would have been six when he graduated from college.  The guys try to goad Cash into another race, but he runs into Louise’s arms and they leave.

Back at casa de Bentley, Cash is still liquored up.  He fires up the old projector to replay the best 53 seconds of his life (2nd best accord to Louise).  He hands her the pistol and says, “I’m a hurdler, I’m going to hurdle.  Now you fire.”  He tells her he will say, “On your mark, get set, go” and she should fire.  When she protests, he slugs her.

Cash again assumes the position.  He says, “On your mark, get set” and she blows him away.  Was it on purpose?  That is for the jury to decide.  She does give him a kiss and looks guiltily at the projector, which baffles me.

Meh.  I liked it better than many people, but maybe that’s because we finally had a murder after several bloodless episodes.  Or maybe as I get older, I identify with living through past glories, except for the part about having past glories.  Gary Merrill (Cash) does make it hard to like the episode.  He is at least 10 years too old for the role; and, frankly, it is not great criticism, but I just don’t like his face.  There, I said it.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  The episode is indeed based on a short story by John Cheever.
  • Jack at Bare*Bones notes that Patricia Breslin (Louise) was on AHP and an episode of The Twilight Zone in the same week.   Her parents must have been busting!

 

If pie-eating directing were an olympic sport.

One Step Beyond – Emergency Only (02/03/59)

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Ellen Larabee, not only telling the future, but balancing a tray of cookies on her head at the same time.  C’mon, Newland, just because Hitchcock never looked through the camera doesn’t mean you can get away with it.

Like thousands of other couples in New York City, Jim and Betty Hennessey are giving a cocktail party . . .

The guests are trying to get Ellen Larabee to make some of her famous predictions.  Like the time she told Marie Cooper her house was going to burn down 3 days before it happened.  Or how she predicted Betty and Jim would get married.  Arthur is skeptical of her ability to foresee such catastrophes.  After much prodding from her friends, she agrees to tell Arthur’s future.

Ellen goes into a trance and describes Arthur’s upcoming train trip.  He is immediately skeptical as he has a reservation to take a plane that night.  However, it is a Delta flight so this one could easily come true.  She drops several other tidbits before she finally “sees” Arthur with a woman holding a knife.  This kind of kills the party.

That night, Arthur comes back to the Hennessey’s apartment.  He says Idlewild is fogged in and he is going to take a train.  I guess he doesn’t want to wait for a flight the next morning, so he’s taking a 2 am train?  Nice of him to drop by the Hennessey’s and tell them.

When Arthur gets to the train station, the cabbie tells him he dropped his keys, just as Ellen predicted.  Then the conductor tries to give him room 102B just as Ellen predicted.  He breaks the cycle by insisting on a different room.  Minutes after settling in, the conductor says this room was actually booked and he will have to move to 102B.  After some argument, he relinquishes the room to the woman who had booked it.

They meet up in the club car and both order a scotch (presumably Canadian Club) and club soda and a club sandwich.  Several more of Ellen’s predictions come true.  Arthur has a great opportunity when he realizes Ellen foresaw the inscription inside a ring the woman is wearing:  To thee for whose love I rise and fall. [1]  Man, if he had played his cards right, maybe he would not have been sleeping in 102B after all.  But no, he blows it and lets her read it to him.

Arthur then panics and angrily demands to know if the woman knows him or Ellen.  She — by the way, Ms. Big Shot psychic predicted every stitch and accessory this woman was wearing, but did not mention her name — insists that she does not.  Arthur bolts out of the club car.  Inexplicably, the woman runs after him; maybe he didn’t pay for the drinks.  After a chase through several cars, she closes in on him.  In a panic, he pulls the Emergency Stop cable.

He wakes up with his head bandaged and the woman holding a knife.  Seems that by pulling the Emergency Stop, Arthur prevented the train from slamming into a stalled freighter.  She says she is a nurse, but that doesn’t really explain the knife.  She also asks how he knew to stop the train when it was clear that this sweaty maniac running through the halls really had no idea what he was doing.

Also, cool as it was to know the mystery lady would be wearing a fur collar and a snake ring, maybe Ellen could have also let someone know that a passenger train was going to slam into a freight train that night and possibly kill dozens.

There is not a lot of story here.  The dominoes are set up one by one, then they are knocked down one by one (not even in one of those mass falls).  The predictions weren’t particularly cryptic which might make you wonder how they could possibly occur.  The final one with the knife is dismissed anticlimactically.  Still, I appreciated the things that were well-done.

So, another quality episode, but there is a certain sameness to all of them so far.  And a certain sameness to me saying that every week.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] That’s pretty salacious when you think about it.

Tales from the Crypt – A Slight Case of Murder (05/03/96)

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This might be the worst opening I’ve ever seen to a TV episode.  It begins with 83 seconds of Sharon Bannister typing.  That’s it.  There is no suspense, we can’t read what she is typing, she isn’t topless.  It is just typing for 83 seconds. [1]

Sharon removes the last page of her new book from the typewriter and we see the title, Death by Love.  This will be an ironic capper to her series sitting on the bookshelf: Death by Greed, Death by Pride, Death by Envy, Death by Lust, Death by Remorse, Death by Revenge, Death by Hate.  She seemed to have a 7 Deadly Sins thing going there (if you count Revenge as Wrath (any Trekkie can explain the connection)), but what is Remorse doing there? [2]

Her neighbor Mrs. Trask has come by to borrow a cup of sugar although, frankly, that’s the last thing she needs.  She has also asks Sharon to read a story that she has written.  Sharon’s review is, “In the pantheon of mystery writers, there’s the greats, there’s everyone else who’s ever written a book, and then there’s you.  Agatha Christie can rest in peace.”  The actors are well cast, the line is fabulous, but this is painful.  I like some good dry British humor, but this is just death.  The lethargy — which seems like a good English word, but I guess they all are — is stifling.

She hustles Mrs. Trask out, and the cycle begins again.   She hears noises, then gets a call from her ex-husband Larry.  She hears the door and tells Larry, “They’re coming in.”  She picks up a fireplace poker and advances toward the noises.  Again, this is so flatly staged that it creates zero suspense or tension.  Of course, it turns out to be Larry playing a trick on her.  As he enters the room, she calls him a bastard.  He replies, “You used to call me biscuit” which is just cringe-inducing.  Yada yada, he kills her, which in a good episode would have been one of the yadas.

This awful tone is sad, because there are some great bits here.  The two women are great in their roles, or could have been.  There is a nice scene where Mrs. Trask comes back after Larry has killed Sharon.  He has propped her up at her typewriter with a ruler in a way which is just awesome.  After Mrs. Trask leaves, Sharon falls over, and that is used to transition to a shot of Larry dumping her body on the floor of the basement.  Great stuff, although I’m not sure a famous author would live in a house with a dirt floor in the basement.

Well, Mrs. Trask’s loser son Joey has a crush on Sharon, there is a bit over some missing keys, Sharon is maybe not as dead as suspected, Joey gets a gun and Larry finds some hedge-clippers.  This plays out nicely, but is just so deadly dull that it is hard to care.  As if to really punish the audience, the return of Mrs. Trask is literally in slow motion.

This strikes me as the greatest misfire in 7 years of TFTC.  There have been some awful episodes, but none that had so many great assets totally squandered.  Amp up the energy, give it a decent score, and this story could have been a classic.  How this got to air is puzzling.  The writer can’t blame the director because he is the same guy.  And that guy was responsible for L.A. Confidential and a lot of other fine work.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Just the opening credits, you are thinking.  No, only the Producer and Writer/Director overlap with this scene.  And I only started the clock when she was visible, not at the sound of the typewriter.  To be fair, some of it is hand-held, indicating a voyeur, but that soon gives way to a more standard shot.  It’s a lot of typing is all I’m saying.
  • [2] Seven books (or eight with the Love capper) seems to indicate a lack of confidence.  Maybe she learned a lesson from Sue Grafton who just missed finishing the series.  If Stephen King’s titles followed a formula, he could have probably made it through the Periodic Table of Elements by now.