Category Archives: TV

Tales from the Crypt – Television Terror (S2E16)

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tftctvterror01This is the point where I think I can safely say the IMDb ratings are a crock — this episode is rated 3rd best in the series.

What I imagine happened was that Morton Downey Jr. maybe had a kid that was a fan of the show and he offered his services to HBO during the 2 weeks in his career where he was a hot commodity.

HBO seized the opportunity, however only had a half-written script available for production — only 21 minutes long and no twist.  “What the hell,” they decided.  “This guy’s career is on fire!  His personality can carry the show!”

And here we are.

Morton Downey Jr. hosts a Ghosthunters-esque reality show.  He goes into a haunted house, some things happen, his production crew looks on with bug-eyes, he dies.  That’s really all there is to it.

Post-Post:

  • I got nuthin’, they got nuthin’.

The Outer Limits – A Stitch in Time (S2E1)

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olstitchintime01In 1966, an old man stumbles into a hotel room.  He crumples up some voyeuristic photos he has taken of young women on the street, jogging, etc.  In a dark corner is a woman with a gun.  As she is played by the frequently crazy Amanda Plummer, I don’t like his odds.

She clicks a lamp on and tells him — in a scathing indictment of our judicial system — that in 1994 he was executed for the willful murder of 8 women.  Then she does the right thing.  After shooting him in the melon, she opens up a portal and returns to the future.

Back in the present, FBI Agent Pratt (Michelle Forbes) is baffled by 17 deaths, all caused by the same gun since 1956.  Strangely, they have just found a set of 30-year old prints on a lamp that match Dr. Theresa Givens (Plummer), however, she was in kindergarten at the time of the murder.

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If there is trouble on the set of American Horror Story, they’ve got it covered.

Pratt is at home when she gets the news.  We get a complete role reversal where, instead of the standard nagging TV wife, her boyfriend does not see how solving a murder might be more important than necking on the couch.

Pratt attends a lecture by Givens and interviews her afterwards in her office.  This tips off Givens so she goes back in time, cleans her prints of the lamp, and returns to the future.

Even with the fingerprint evidence erased from this timeline, there is further evidence implicating Givens.  A gun that was issued to Givens by the NSA in 1988 was used in the 17 murders which date to 32 years before the gun was manufactured.

Pratt hears on the news that Jerome Horowitz, a man she had sent away for 17 murders, including her best friend Allison, was just executed.  Givens hears the same report and uses the Wayback Machine to go back to 1980 and kill him.  It is interesting that she points out that she waited for the “just and legal” sentence to be carried out in the future before she kills him in the past.  She also gives him an awesome triple-tap.

olstitchintime05Back in the future, Pratt goes to see Givens again, but for the first time as far as she knows in this timeline.  Also, with Horowitz killed before he committed the murders, her friend Allison is still alive.  Givens slips up and admits her connection to the murders. She proudly shows her time machine to Pratt.  Sadly the time travel is giving her brain damage.

Givens travels back to when she was kidnapped and raped as a child 15 years earlier, the event that motivates her vengeance.  The man holds young Givens as a human shield and tells old Givens to drop her gun.  Unfortunately for him, Pratt followed Givens through the portal and uses her practice at killing two-headed freaks to drop him. Sadly, not before he got off a shot and killed older Givens.

Young Givens witnesses Pratt going back through the portal.  Once back in the present, all the equipment begins to disappear as Givens no longer had the motive to pursue her vengeance.

Back in the FBI office, she realizes the impact of that last execution — since it took away Given’s motivation for vengeance, it has undone all the other pre-murders so all the 80+ victims are dead again including her friend Allison.

Pratt finds present day, clearly less crazy Givens, who recognizes her as the one who saved her 15 years ago.  This Givens also created a time machine, but simply put it in storage after her funding was cut.  Pratt goes back to re-kill Horowitz (his 3rd death in the episode).

This was the one kill that would return Allison to the timeline, but I suspect we are meant to viscerally feel that Pratt will continue as a bad-ass killing all the others.  That is unlikely, though, as she saw the brain damage suffered by Givens for her repeated trips.

A great episode.

Post-Post:

  • Guns don’t kill people; crazy physicists kill people.
  • Pointless Duplication: The 17 murders by the gun and the 17 murders by Horowitz seems to be a coincidence, but it is just bizarre the writer would use that confusing stat for two separate investigations.
  • Amanda Plummer won an Emmy for her role, which doesn’t seem right.  She’s a great character, but not much of an actress.
  • Hulu sucks.
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Optical Illusion: Is this a Soda machine or a KY machine?

Ray Bradbury Theater – Hail and Farewell (S3E10)

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rbthailfarewell01Young Willie is chased down the street by some older boys.  Turns out it was a race, but they are mad when Willie beats them, just like he always beats them, just like he gets all A’s in school.

He walks away from the bully when he sees a little girl walking home from school.  The actor playing Willie was 13, and this girl looks pretty 10-ish, so it seems a little creepy. But the creepiness ain’t even started yet.

When they arrive at the girl’s house, he sees her mother and their eyes are locked on each other in breathless recognition.  Willie sees her as the grown up little girl Charlotte he loved 25 years ago, and she recognizes him as the same boy she loved back then. So clearly she is a lot sharper than Lorraine McFly.

rbthailfarewell02Cut to Willie writing a letter to his adopted parents.  He periodically tracks down parents who have lost a child and allows himself to be informally adopted as a replacement.

It is time for him to move on to another family because Willie never gets any older.  After 2-3 years, people start noticing he never ages, and he must disappear before the government kidnaps him and dissects him to make super-soldiers in a richly funded program run by some senator’s brother-in-law.  That last part is not in the episode, just speculation on my part.

When Willie first realized that he was not aging, he ran away from the orphanage where he was picked on as a runt.  He ran away to the circus to be a freak as “The World’s Oldest Kid.”  But it doesn’t really work out as he just looks like a normal kid.  The rubes would have to wait around for 3 years to really get the effect, which makes me wonder how the Hunger Artist got away with his shtick.

He recalls meeting an old woman in the park who lost her young son 30 years ago, and her husband just recently.  He stays with the old woman for 2 years until she croaks.

As he is leaving town, he has one last confrontation with a bully, but he seems to have grown a little — he is able to throw a baseball faster to the bully’s surprise, and to more adeptly handle a bare-handed catch.  This scene makes no sense as he is still not aging, yet he seemed stronger.  Hearing the train whistle in the distance, Willie heads out leaving the bully even more baffled than me.

rbthailfarewell03He passes by Charlotte’s house and she is outside trimming the hedges.  Again, their eyes meet in recognition.  We hear her thoughts, “I was in love with you.”

We hear his thoughts, “Was?”

“Willie,” the 40 year old woman says.

“Charlotte,” the 12 year old boy says.

We immediately cut to a whistling train barreling down the track.  Bradbury seemed like too much of a good egg to have the train go into a tunnel.  Can’t say it was just a simpler time because Hitchcock used that same gag 30 years earlier.

Willie has found another obituary and heads to the house to use his old “I think I’m lost” spiel to insinuate himself into their home.  He has been a kid for 40 years now and thinks to himself that this is his “job” as he heads up the new family’s steps with his suitcase in his hand like Willie Loman.

This is a good episode after one iffy and one god-awful episode.  Maybe it helps that they are back in the USA and are using directors that actually have other credits.  Josh Saviano (The Wonder Years) doesn’t have as much of the trademark Bradbury flowery writing to sell, but he has been one of the better actors in pulling it off.

rbthailfarewell06Post-Post:

  • This is the 3rd highest rated episode on IMDb’s always-suspect user rating list.
  • Saviano has done virtually nothing in the last 20 years.  I hope he’s enjoying his Wonder Years loot.  Or doing something productive that wouldn’t show up on IMDb.
  • Wearing the same hat for 40 years might not have helped him keep a low profile,

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Martha Mason, Movie Star (S2E34)

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Mabel shuts the alarm off at 7:30 am and yells for Henry to bring her coffee. When Henry asks what’s for breakfast, she instructs him to see what’s in the kitchen.  Mabel is just the latest in a long line of shrewish wives on this show.

While Henry is toiling away at work, Mabel does pry her butt out of bed to go see the latest film of her idol Martha Mason.

ahpmarthamason01Leaving the theater, she admires the poster of Martha Mason and imitates the actress fainting into a policeman’s arms.

She returns home, nearly running Henry down in the garage as he hoists a bag of fertilizer, and tells him to look where he’s going.

She then mocks his interest in gardening and berates his previous efforts to grow anything. When he begins building a wooden frame for his garden, she is effusive in her lack in interest.  In fact, she scolds him for generally being such a dullard.  But there is a hole in the ground and we know one of them is going to end up in it.

Henry seems like a good egg, so it is unfortunate that he ends up in the hole after Mabel whacks him on the head with a hammer.

The next morning, she shuts the alarm off at the crack of eleven.  Henry’s boss calls looking for him, and Mabel makes up a tale story that Henry ran off with another woman — a perfectly believable scenario.  Well, believable that he would leave, less so that he could persuade another woman would go with him.

His boss comes to the house to see for himself. He doesn’t believe that Henry ran off; or if he did, it is just a “fling normal for a 47 year old man.”  He suggests Mabel buy a new hat to raise her spirits.  Now, here’s a man that knows people.

ahpmarthamason02Mabel is called to the police station to answer some questions.  She sticks to her story that Henry ran off with another woman.  Her story takes a hit when a woman in the station says, he didn’t run off with another woman “because I’m the other woman!”

Mabel once again assumes the fainting pose from the poster, this time for real.

It would have been nice for the ending scene to be staged exactly like the movie poster, but in 1957, who knew that such comparisons could be easily made.  After 25 minutes, the 2nd pose probably seemed exactly like the poster.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
  • Not to be confused with Martha Marcy May Marlene.
  • Or Marsh Mason.

Night Gallery – Class of ’99 (S2E2)

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classof9903We pan across harsh concrete architecture which suggests correctly that it is a future college campus. The few students present and the shadows forming little cages suggest a totalitarian future (or perhaps the totalitarian mind-think of current college faculty).

Inside, students assemble in a classroom made of Krameresque levels, humanity having evolved out of the need for chairs.  Vincent Price enters and reminds the students that this is the day of their final oral exams.

classof9905He begins randomly selecting students and quizzing them on propulsion and behavioral sciences — what freakin’ class is this?  In his questions, be pits white against black, hottie against nottie, Caucasian against Chinese.

It plays out almost completely in that one classroom, and there is a lot of talking.  Never the less, this is one of the best so far.  The story is compelling, and Vincent Price is excellent as the professor.

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Of course there is a twist and the standard Serling hectoring about how awful humanity is; but really it is the story and the performances that make the episode — which is preferable to dumping all the weight on a twist ending.

 

 

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  None.
  • Strangely, this is the second segment in this episode which requires live actors to play corpses / frozen people.  It is similarly off-putting here (in a good way).
  • Skipped Segment 1:  The Merciful is a twist on The Cask of the Amontillado.  For a change, it is one of the short sketches that actually works.  The title is a mystery as it would have made more sense to somehow reference the original story title.  Once you see the bricks being laid in the first shot, either it’s spoiled or it’s not, anyway.
  • Skipped Segment 2:  Satisfaction Guaranteed also works better than most.  The payoff is a little strange, even pornographic if you’re of the mind.  But Victor Buono’s performance and a few cute 70’s babes save the day.  Due to a switcheroo by NBC, IMDb has this segment replaced with Witch’s Feast,
  • Hulu sucks.