Category Archives: TV

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Insomnia (05/08/60)

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Cheers to Dennis Weaver!  He is like the TV Gene Hackman — if he is in a show, you can trust it will probably be pretty good.  He was in a couple of a long-running series [1] and a ton of other stuff.  Somehow he managed to do it without overdosing, beating up his wife, or condescendingly mouthing off about issues he didn’t understand.  Best of all, at some point, he just went away.  Whatever happened to actors like that?  Oh yeah, they went away. [2]

Tonight at 3:50 am, Weaver is having trouble sleeping.  Sitting here typing at 12:50 am, I can tell him what has worked for me the past three years as long as you don’t mind being called a moron occasionally.  He is suffering from acute insomnia.  He turns on the light and reaches for a cigarette, neither of which seems like it would help.

Maybe his room is too cold.  He sits up, puts on his slippers for a 2-step journey, slips into his robe and sashes it, then walks to an old heater a few feet away.  Frankly, bundling up like the dude in To Build a Fire took more time than just going to the heater.  Unfortunately, when he lights the heater, it belches a yuge flame at him.  Frustrated and exhausted, he flops on the bed.  On the plus side, he is not on fire.

Weaver finally decides to see a psychiatrist.  He reveals that his wife died in a fire a year ago.  He tells the doctor of a recurring dream — wait, I thought he never slept.  He dreams of his wife Linda in their old house.

She is standing by the stairs, seemingly unaware of the fire approaching her rear from the rear.  Weaver screams to warn her, but he doesn’t actually, you know, make any effort to rescue her.  The flames engulf her.

Weaver is quick to point out this is not what happened.  They were in bed when the real fire reached their bedroom.  Blinded by the smoke, he screamed for Linda but she did not answer — in the bed might have been a good place to start feeling around (as it usually is).  He was able to get to the bathroom and jump out the window.  The doctor suggests guilt is keeping him awake, but Weaver disagrees.

He does admit to being bothered by the accusations of Linda’s brother Jack Fletcher that he did nothing to save her.  Oh, I guess Mr. Tough Guy would have run right into the fire to save her!  Easy to say, safely after-the-fact from some comfy . . . “military hospital in Maryland”.  Oh.

Weaver realizes that his insomnia did not begin until Fletcher was released from the military hospital in Maryland (oh why the hell can’t they just say Walter Reed?).  Despite making 20 years of progress in their first session, Weaver is not cured.  That night he is tossing and turning in bed again.  He picks up a paperback but the phone interrupts him.  It is Fletcher, saying he is in town.  He menacingly says, “You know why I’m here, don’t you Charlie?”

That night in his pajamas, Weaver calls the military hospital [3] to get Fletcher’s new address.  What the hospital lacks in HIPAA privacy rules, it makes up in 24-hour service.  They happily give him Fletcher’s new address in Manhattan.  Weaver goes to visit Fletcher.  BTW, Weaver pays Fletcher the respect of dressing up, but this is the 3rd day he has worn that same necktie.  Oh well, maybe his others were lost in the fire; and it is a snappy number.

When Fletcher opens the door, Weaver sees that he is in a wheelchair.  He begins threatening Weaver about letting his sister die.  They begin fighting — yeah, Weaver vs a guy in a wheelchair.  It’s a closer match than you would expect unless you’ve ever seen Weaver.  Fletcher pulls out a gun, evening the odds quite a bit.  Fletcher is no rocket scientist despite the resemblance to Stephen Hawking.  Weaver gets his hands on the gun and they struggle over it.  Weaver manages to point the barrel toward Fletcher’s noggin and shoots him in the face.

Weaver goes home, has a beer, kicks off his shoes, lights the heater and falls into the deepest sleep he has had in a year.  He even sleeps right through the sirens and roar of the fire engines.  Although, he was probably long dead by that time from the smoke the heater put out.

Despite the great performance by Weaver, I’m a little ambivalent on this one.  Despite him being so twitchy, I still didn’t think of him as a coward who abandoned his wife.  The first fire just seemed like a tough circumstance that he was lucky to live through himself. It even works out that his guilt and self-loathing were tied more to a fear of Fletcher than to his inability to save Linda.

Shooting his brother-in-law might have been extreme, and illegal in most states, but Fletcher really was a threatening dick.  Sure he was in a wheelchair, but he had pointed a pistol at Weaver and literally said, “Here’s my legs!”  It’s hard for me to get too upset about his murder.

Ultimately, it was a nice set-up and spike of brutal cosmic justice.  Ya hear that, yesterday’s Twilight Zone!

Other Stuff:

  • [1] For example, he was in 290 episodes of Gunsmoke.  What amuses me is that isn’t even half the run of the series.  Maybe that was an early example of him knowing when to get out.
  • [2] Actually, I see one reason he slowed down is that he died in 2006.  He still seems like a reg’lar guy, though.
  • [3] Now referred to as Dover Veteran’s Hospital, but they’re not fooling anyone.
  • Weaver was also in a sleep-centric episode of the original Twilight Zone one year and 3 days after this aired.  In that story, he was trying not to go to sleep.  It was remade into a 1986 TZ episode where I was trying not to go to sleep. [4]
  • [4] To be fair, I think it was actually one of their better episodes.
  • For more info on the episode head over to Bare*Bones Ezine.

Twilight Zone – Stranger in Possum Meadows (01/14/89)

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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.

Takes from the Crypt – Only Skin Deep (10/31/94)

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Carl goes to a Halloween party thrown by his friend Bob.  He is quickly busted by Bob because he was not invited.  Seems Carl just got a divorce and Bob’s wife decided Carl should not be invited.  Bob might be costumed as Lincoln, but he sure lacks Abe’s backbone.

Bob is clearly not a historian, though.  While his get-up does, admirably, include a bullet wound, it is in the center of his forehead.  Hey, Bob, John Wilkes Booth wasn’t firing from the stage, you know!  Every school kid knows Lincoln was shot in the temple. [1]

Carl’s ex Linda sees him at the party.  She quite reasonably asks if she needs to get a restraining order.  Then she tells Carl that you can’t make someone love you no matter how much you hit them.  Zing!  I hope they aren’t setting Carl up to be the protagonist here.  By the time he says he should have killed her and threatens his host, I speak for the audience in saying, what an asshole!

Carl goes into the kitchen and hurls a pumpkin against the wall.  He is witnessed by another guest in leather thigh-highs, platinum hair, and a plain white cat-like mask.  She overheard Bob & Linda, and sides with Team-Bob, which is a warning sign right there.  Bob asks what she is dressed as.  She answers, “a body-bag . . . a synthetic shell with a corpse inside.”  It might not read like much, but it is a beautiful response in context.  Kudos.

Carl goes back to Molly’s apartment.  She peels off the gear to reveal underwear that is much less leathery, and a lot of skin which is not leathery at all.  The cat-face stays on, though.  Carl jokingly — which is far out of character for this dullard — asks if she is making sexual overtures.  She replies, “I don’t do overtures.  The curtain goes up or it stays down.”  Again, kudos!

They have the sex.  At Carl’s suggestion, they leave the masks on.  There is gratuitous nudity of Carl’s butt and appropriate nudity of Molly’s boobs.  She tells him to really go at it and take his aggression out on her, but all he really does is some enhanced humping.  That’s enough for Carl to get a little girly, remove his mask and blurt out his real name and occupation.  It only takes about 2 minutes before he is his old violent self.  Granted, in those 2 minutes, he did find her collection of sawed-off human faces, so maybe this time he is justified.

He tries to remove her mask, but just claws her face.  She cries, “It was never a mask, Carl!  It’s the way  I was born!”  He is immobilized thanks to the drink she gave him earlier . . . hour earlier.

Everything does not need to be explained, but it just feels like too much is left unanswered:

  • What caused her to be this way?
  • How does her deformity lead to cutting dudes’ faces off?
  • She was at Bob’s party; does he know her?  He seemed to be enforcing the guest list pretty ruthlessly.
  • Carl has 3 separate visions of one of Molly’s previous victims.  Why just that guy?  Budget issues?

This could have been overcome stylistically.  There are a few interesting choices and compositions, but it is not sustained.  It really feels like one of those Hitchhiker episodes where something happens,  but for no descernable reason. We’re just supposed to accept that oddity in place of plot.

The “mask” is more off-putting than intriguing.  And Carl is so buff for a 40 year old dude that it is creepy.

I can see a good episode buried in here, but there were some iffy choices.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Even this is not accurate as he was shot behind the ear.  I guess it just worked for the old joke.  But the better joke is the one about Mrs. Lincoln.  Best ever, maybe.
  • Title Analysis:  Appropriate, but that’s it, no awful pun?  Plus we had Only Sin Deep in season one.

 

Outer Limits – Alien Radio (01/22/99)

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C’mon, who doesn’t love Joe Pantoliano?  Cypher! Ralphie Cifaretto!  Guido the Killer Pimp!  Cosmo!  Who doesn’t love Cynthia Nixon?   Oh, everybody.

However your mileage varies, ya better really like both of them because this is a close-up-palooza.

Stan Harbinger is the latest in a long line of radio people on TV that no one would ever listen to.  He is the anti-Art Bell in that he does not believe in conspiracies and UFOs; also, he is breathing.  There is a certain entertainment value in a maniac who buys into all that baloney (I’m lookin’ at you, Alex Jones; but not on You-Tube).  However, a skeptic as abusive and abrasive as Stan just comes off as a bully.

Stan wraps up tonight’s show by talking to a regular caller who is having a breakdown.  The man is distraught over his body being occupied by a parasitic alien.  Stan advises the caller to put himself out of his misery.  The man misunderstands and temporarily puts himself in more misery as he pulls out a lighter and goes up like a Vietnamese monk in the radio station parking lot.  As he dies, Stan witnesses a glowing alien emerge from the body and zoom off.

Fans of Stan’s show complain that he should have intervened.  He seeks a little self-medication in a bar and a woman buys him a drink.  He ends up having sex with Teri Bauer, which can have disastrous consequences.

When Stan invites a couple of “believers” onto his show to pacify the haters, it turns out that Teri is one of them (the other is a dude with an almost alien look).  They accuse Stan of knowing the truth — having witnessed it first-hand — yet refusing to warn the listeners of his show.  BTW, Stan describes Teri as the other guest’s cohort.  Cohort doesn’t mean an individual.  C’mon dude, you’re a professional — you use words for a living!  Your words go out to millions of people! [1]

Sloppy camerawork actually got some shoulder in this one.

Stan begins civilly, but quickly devolves to his nasty, abusive self.  His producer Trudy does her part by adding a laugh-track to his guests’ warning of a literal alien colonization; I mean, literally in the colon.

The man warns that humans could be acting as hosts for the aliens without even knowing it or preparing amuse-bouches.  The man who torched himself became aware of the parasite and freaked out.  Stan gets fed up with their insistence that he stop spreading fake news.  He physically attacks them and is fired — or de-platformed as the kids fascists say today.

Stan sees so much more evidence of the aliens that he eventually becomes a believer and wants to warn others.  He recruits Trudy to produce a new show that would be the worthy successor that Art Bell never had.  He even wants Teri Bauer and her “cohort” to be on the new show.  Unfortunately, they now think he’s a pariah and Trudy thinks he’s nuts.  And then some other stuff happens.

Not a lot going on here.  OK, some humans are possessed by aliens.  Where’s the suspense like in The Thing?  Where is the mystery like Invasion of the Body Snatchers?  Where is the futile chase like The Invaders?  It just feels like they kept add scenes until they had enough to syndicate the episode.

Stan discovers the truth before the titles.  He sleeps with a woman in the bar.  Why — what plot or character point does that advance?  Then she is one of his guests the next day.  Again, what does this revelation do for either character?

Luckily, Joe Pantoliano is such a great presence, he can make anything interesting.  And, to be fair, I unfairly pre-judged Cynthia Nixon.  She wasn’t given much to do, but she was competent and charming.  Just, for the love of God, stay out of politics.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Talking to the writer of the episode there, not Stan.
  • But seriously, what was with all the close-ups?

Science Fiction Theatre – Before the Beginning (12/10/55)

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Host Truman Bradley opens the bible to Genesis 1:1, although this must be the September issue as there appears to be about a hundred pages of ads before it. He reads, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and every living creature that moveth” thus proving my theory that Brussels sprouts are the devil’s work.  This introduces this evening’s theme: What caused the first spark of life?

Wow, now this is a fascinating subject!  How can they possibly do it justice in just 22 minutes?  I mean, the physics, the biology, the religious implications, the philosophical theories, not to mention the ethics of trying to create life in a lab.  Probably the best way to begin is to spend literally the first 1/3 of the episode establishing that Dr. Donaldson works too hard.

After a rare good night’s sleep, he is up at the crack of dawn.  His associate Dr. Heller helps him with a piece of equipment, but is shot in the hand by a stream of photons.  His hand goes numb, so Donaldson takes him to the infirmary which is surely equipped for such an injury.  The doctor says the muscle structure has been destroyed and can’t be regenerated.

Back at home, Dr. Donaldson’s father, credited at IMDb as Dr. Donaldson Sr., tells him maybe man was not meant to explore such things as how to create life.  Junior tells Senior, “You’re acting like a comic book father-in-law.”  Well, wait a minute, that’s his father-in-law?  Why do they have the same last name?  But then he tells his wife Kate that the man is “my parent” so I guess . . . oh, who cares?  Donaldson feels like Kate and this older gentleman are ganging up on him so he goes back to work for some peace.

After the commercial, Truman tells us, “In the course of the following month, Kate Donaldson experienced another attack.”  Another one?  When was the first one?  Donaldson Sr. takes Kate to see Dr. Heineman.  For some reason, her father-in-law is in the examination room while she is getting dressed — to be fair, she is behind a screen.  Dr. Heineman says the results “are a little technical”.  Since Kate is apparently the only person in the city without a doctorate, she is sent out of the room so the men can have an important discussion.  Discussion about her.  About her life.  And boobs.

As the door closes, with almost comical bluntness, Heineman blurts out, “She’s dying.”  The examination revealed “a disproportion of the body chemistry” and “it is due to the malfunction of some gland.”  How do you even mock something like that?

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Heller says Donaldson has created “something from nothing, matter from energy.”  Isn’t energy something?  When it is Donaldson Sr’s turn to look through the microscope, the little crystal buggers have stopped moving.  More importantly, Kate has another episode and her oblivious husband is too wrapped in his work to notice.  She collapses.  Donaldson finally notices her and says, “What’s wrong with her, Dad?”  Dad’s reply to him is, “Mostly your blindness.”  Oh, and also a fatal disease caused by some gland.

Kate lapses into a coma and Donaldson hates himself for being so absorbed in his work.  After an unprecedented 3 days away from the lab, he returns.  He is shocked to find Heller purposely firing more photons through his hand.  Heller had tried firing photons through the crystalline entities and they were reanimated.  The next logical step was his hand, which is showing some signs of feeling again.

Since Heller was able to revive his lover, Donaldson wants to try it on Kate.  They bring her to the lab and begin firing photons at her.  Yada yada, her condition is upgraded — seriously — from coma to regular sleep.  The doctors feel she’ll be snoozing within 24 hours and catnapping by the end of the week.

Donaldson Sr. might have his own issues.  Rather than just acknowledging his son has discovered the secret of life, he suggests that it was partly Donaldson Jr. saying he loved her that revived Kate.

With such a massive premise, this is what they came up with.

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