Category Archives: TV

Twilight Zone – The Storyteller (10/11/86)

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Dorothy Livingston and her daughter are coming out of the Robert Byrd Library.  The sign tells us the hours are 9 to 5 thus guaranteeing no students or working people will ever soil its stacks.  Dorothy recognizes a man getting into a cab.  She drags her perplexed daughter into the next car and says, “Follow that cab!” although figuratively, not literally.

She believes she knew the man 50 years ago when he was a kid and she was the new school teacher.  She flashes back to 1933 West Virginia where she arrove on the Robert Byrd Bus Line with a suitcase full of books.  She passes the former teacher as she leaves on the same bus,  As the bus pulls away, she yells out the window that Dorothy must be sure Micah Frost has full access to the library.

The next morning at Robert Byrd Elementary School, she faces her rowdy class full of flannel, bib-overalls, suspenders, and small humans.  As she begins her first history lesson, she notices Micah is not paying attention to her.  He is writing furiously in his notebook, although I’m not sure how she knew he wasn’t just aggressively taking notes.

Like all government employees, Dorothy works late her first day.  Micah also stays, looking at some books in the classroom bookcase which, I guess, is what represents a library in West Virginia.

As she is walking home, she passes Micah’s house.  Through the window, she can see him reading from his notebook to an old man.  The next day, Dorothy asks Micah if she can set up a parent-teacher conference.  He says his parents are dead and he lives with his grandfather.  When Dorothy suggests a grandparent-teacher conference, Micah gets very upset and runs away.

Despite Micah’s insistence that she stay away, Dorothy goes to his house that night.  Through a window, she hears Micah again reading the old man a story.  When Micah catches her, she asks him what is going on.  He says the old man is actually his great-great-great-grandfather, born in 1793.  Micah keeps him alive like his father before him, by reading him a story every night with a cliffhanger.  He would stop each night before the end, so the old man had to stay alive to hear the resolution.

The next day, Micah falls out of a tree and breaks his arm.  The doctor keeps Micah overnight, so Dorothy goes to his house.  She lets herself in, lights a lamp in the old man’s room, and gives him something to live for.

The next morning, Micah returns home and is happy to see his GGGGF still alive.  He doesn’t understand how he survived without hearing a story.  He turns and sees Dorothy is there — she read him a story from Micah’s notebook.  Presumably with no spoilers as they would kill him.

Back in the present, Dorothy tells her daughter that she thinks the man they are following is Micah.  She always wondered what happened to him, and if the old man is still alive, approaching his bi-centennial.  Or, at her age, maybe she wants him to read her a story.  They follow the man into a building, then to his apartment.

Strangely, the version posted on You Tube stops there, before the twist.  Being a good citizen, I have the DVDs.  Turns out this episode was just a story being told by Dorothy to keep her mother alive.

Despite TZ’s usual efforts to undermine the episode —  Charles Aidman’s terrible narration, the insipid score, the maudlin tone, the complete lack of any edge — there is a lot to like here.  Glynnis O’Connor is excellent as the new teacher.  The script didn’t give her much room to exercise the skepticism I would hope for from a teacher, but she transcended the words.

It also introduced a moral dilemma, although it spent about 5 seconds on it.  Not much, you say, but dang near a record for network TV.  Why is the old man being kept alive?  Is it enough just to breathe?  He seems to have no quality of life.  He never leaves his bed, has no friends, has a scraggly beard and is — just a hunch — not a regular bather.  Maybe Micah is keeping him alive as a guardian since his parents were killed.  But why did his father take on this task?  What happened to Micah’s grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather?  And sorry ladies, men-only.

The ending is kind of beautiful.  The reveal that this has been a story told by Dorothy is well played as opening a door into a room which fades to white.  When cut to Dorothy and her mother, it is intriguing beyond the simple twist.  Was there actually a Micah from whom she learned this cliffhanger technique?  Why did she let her mother get to be 90 years old before she began practicing it?

But most of all, is the old man — real or fictional — still alive and pushing 200?  Even after watching the episode and writing this, my mind keeps snapping back to that question.  They have physically involved me in the mechanics of the story in a way that has very rarely happened to me before from TV or a movie.  Yeah, I want to live to see what happened.

Other Stuff:

  • Classic TZ Legacy:  Nothing really, it was a pretty original premise.  It did remind me of One for the Angels.  Ed Wynn had to filibuster a sales pitch to keep Mr. Death from taking a little girl.
  • Dorothy is said to be 22, but Glynnis O’Conner was 31 at the time.  F’ing actors, man!
  • Directed by the ubiquitous Paul Lynch (Prom Night, Ray Bradbury Theater, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits).
  • Micah was played by an unrecognizably young Bud Bundy.
  • Skipped Segment:  Nightsong.  Unwatchable, Lifetime movie caliber.  It has the standard TZ shortcomings discussed above, but with no redeeming features.  I thought the lead actor was a dick when he had 4 shirt buttons open, then he later came back with 5 unbuttoned.  Actually, there is one well-done aspect to the episode.  I have often commented how awful DJs are on TV.  Here, Lisa Eilbacher and Kip Gilman both struck me as pretty authentic.

Outer Limits – The Hunt (01/30/98)

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Four people are taken out to the woods for a nice weekend of hunting.  The other four, that is. These four are going to be hunted for sport.[1]

They wisely take off running immediately.  Clute Nichols, his brother George, and nephew Eric pursue them with a guide.  George nails one, literally, with a steel arrow.  I don’t what kind of iBow he is using — it has a red light, but doesn’t seem to have any technology built into it.

When they arrive at the body, their guide Pete skins the victim, revealing him to be an android.  I can see no point to the skinning.  Yes, they are trying to emulate an actual hunt, but this is just crazy.  It is traditional in these hunts to keep the CPU as a trophy. Wouldn’t most dudes rather keep the head, though?  A moose-head is pretty sad, but a row of shiny terminator noggins on the mantle — awesome!

While they are taking pictures beside their skinned trophy, Clute’s nephew Eric is clearly not on board with the concept.  George explains the robots are destined for the scrap-heap anyway.  Environmentalists made sure animals couldn’t be hunted.  Clute tells Eric his grandfather killed polar bears on the tundra and lions on the Serengeti, like that’s a good thing.

George showing off the CPU of which he could only remember 2/3 of the name. Kudos for putting his cap on the dead android.  “Hey, look at me — I’m a hunter, I’m a hunter!”

I don’t know what these robots were used for, but they’re not very bright.  After running away from the hunters, and even after the hunters take time to pose with the corpse, somehow Pete is right on top of them.  He fires a warning arrow to get their attention, and explains the rules.  He says they will have a fair chance . . . although giving them the rules before killing the first contestant would have been a little more sporting.

If any of them make it to the final marker, they will be given their freedom.  They are given a 15 minute head-start, but the next scene is the hunting party enjoying a luxurious gourmet meal in a tent. [2]

We learn that there is a $40,000 fine for hunting androids, but a 1 year fine for hunting actual animals.  The androids have an inhibitor chip which prevents them from harming humans or each other; but they were programmed with a survival instinct.

At the android camp, Doc is working on Tara’s robot hand.  She regards humans as sadistic savages, but Kel defends them.  He says they can’t be sadists because they know androids can’t feel the pain they inflict.

The next morning, the hunters catch up to the androids.  George tells his son to take the shot.  He reluctantly lines it up, then purposely misses.  When George smacks Eric, Clute tells him that better not happen again.

The androids find a cabin in the woods.  There are weapons in the cabin, but the androids are powerless to use them.  Then they find schematics for their systems.  Doc reprograms Tara to be a killer then instructs her how to reprogram him.  Kel is having none of this.  He continues to take the human’s side.

The androids pound sharpened stakes into a log and hoist it above the trail,  When George breaks the trip wire, it swings down, one of the spikes slicing his stomach.  They go to the same cabin to bandage George. When they find the plans, Clute explains that they could be used to remove the inhibitor chip.  Clute left the plans and weapons there for the androids.  He says he is just giving George what he asked for — “to go on a real hunt.  Like the days before they were outlawed.”  Back when polar bears and lions had weapons, I guess.

Clute remembers when hunting involved skill and danger.  Just as George thinks his son is a wimp for not wanting to kill androids, Clute thinks his brother is soft for wanting to shoot “fish in a barrel”.  Hunting means “going after your prey on a level playing field.”

Now that the androids have a chance, however, Mr Level Playing Field  breaks out rifles with digital scopes.  Clute and Pete go scout around, telling George to stay put.  Naturally he drags Eric off into the woods, enabling Tara to steal some rifles.  Clute wings Doc, but Tara and Kel are able to help him escape.

After Clute sees the rifles have been stolen, he gets serious.  He again sees Doc and this time kills him, giving a big laugh.  They pursue Kel and Tara with mini-rocket launchers.  Tara is able to corner Pete and Eric.  Kel convinces her not to kill them, but to use them to negotiate a truce.

Kel suspects Pete is a android and slices him open.  He is an android who was once hunted.  He made it to the final marker and won his freedom.  They let Eric go, but the idiot George ends up shooting his son by accident.

Yada, yada, Clute and Tara end up dead also.  Pete and Kel get to the final marker and a game warden says Kel is free because he survived an illegal hunt.  He says he’d rather go back to the mines than live around humans.  So he is neutered and becomes a guide.

Another fine episode.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] That would have made more sense if I had grabbed the right picture.
  • [2] It is explained that the robots run on solar power, so they aren’t going to get very far at night. They are still moving around, though, so they could have made it a few miles.

The Hitchhiker – The Curse (02/25/86)

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Local douche-bag Jerry Macklin takes an ancestral mask off his wall to show his party guests.  He shouts to his business manager, “What did I pay for this one, Mike?”  $4,000.  “I took this to an appraiser and he valued it at what?”  $16,000.  He figures to donate it to a museum, take a tax write-off and double his money.  He sees a another woman giving him the eye across the room and goes to her.

He asks if he knows her and she says no.  This is where being a woman is handy; his next question to a dude would be “WTF are you doing in my apartment?”  Her name is Tanya. Mike interrupts while Jerry is hitting on her.  Someone fell through a rotten railing at one of his properties and plummeted a couple of stories.  Since Tanya has disappeared, Jerry goes to check it out.

The place is definitely a fixer-upper, has character, is a slum.  He goes in and checks out the crumbling building.  He sees a snake slither into an apartment and, inexplicably, follows it.  The old woman living there knows his name.  She thinks it is strange that he owns the building but has never been there. He says he owns stock in General Motors but has never been to Detroit.

She asks what he is going to do about people being hurt in his building.  He says, “I’m going to make repairs.”  As she is stroking the snake, he says he will fix the railing, and fix the heat, “all kinds of stuff”.

He tells Mike about the building as they are working out at a gym.  There are 2 easily mockable things in this scene. First, Mike is wearing insanely short shorts.  Second, Jerry is only lifting 2 plates on his machine.  What is that, 23 pounds, sport?

Jerry wants to do the right thing.  He asks Mike how much it would take to fix the place up.  Mike says it would cost him the beach house he had been dreaming of.

Back at home, Jerry stares wistfully at a model of his dream-house.  There is a very creepy shot of a snake crawling around a hanging plant basket.[1]  Jerry carefully carries it to the bathroom and cleverly puts it in the shower stall.  He calls the super and says, “This is Mr. Macklin in 7-B.”  There is a knock at the door.  He abandons the call and opens the door to reveal 1) Tanya, and 2) that he lives in apartment 7-5, not 7-B.

Nice work with those 2 plates, he-man!

Tanya gives him a massage as he tells his favorite story, how he got rich.  Mike calls.  While Tanya slips into a negligible negligee, Jerry tells him to sell the building.  Tanya unbuckles Jerry’s belt — hey, she’s a snake handler, too!  Wait, you don’t think . . .

Tanya rubs him down with oil, then they have the sex.[2]  Jerry wakes up alone in the morning.   He sees a spot of blood, then more, then way more.  His right leg is a bloody mess.  He goes to the emergency room.  They clean off the leg and reveal a fresh tattoo of a huge snake from his ankle up to his thigh.

After he is cleaned up, he goes back to the building.  He accuses the old woman of siccing Tanya on him.  She says she didn’t sic anyone on him . . . wink, wink.  He shows her the tattoo (and the most precious little anklet sock — seriously dudes, there is no acceptable style where a guy wears less than a full sock).  She says he brought it on himself — literally on himself — by not making the repairs.

He says he will make the repairs and give the building to the tenants.  He asks if that will satisfy her.  She says, “It is not me you have to satisfy.”   He rips open his shirt and sees the tattoo has moved up around his chest.

Later at his apartment, he sees the tattoo has advanced over his shoulder and is up to his neck.  Tanya comes in.  She gives him a knife and tells him to cut off the head of the serpent before it strikes.  He sees the snake around his ankle begins to ripple.  His skin bulges.  We can see something running beneath the tattoo, working its way up to his neck.  A snake bursts its head through the skin near his neck.  He screams and falls to the floor.

When he gets back up, the snake and the tattoos are gone.  He throws the model of his beach-house out the window.  He looks out the window.  He sees the old woman walking away.

This is an example of what The Hitchhiker should be.  It is an interesting story, well-shot, an genuinely creepy.  Well-done.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] This is worth the price of admission for me.  There was a scene in the old movie Frogs which had a snake in a chandelier.  The question of how that snake got into the chandelier was a conundrum that still boggles my mind.
  • [2] In the commentary, Harry Hamlin says he got the idea of their sex scene from a copy of an old nudie magazine called Eros.  Really, no one could independently come up with the idea of inter-racial sex?

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Coyote Moon (10/18/59)

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Julie is stuffing the failing Sentinel Mesa Times newspaper into her shoe to compensate for a hole in her soul sole when a disguised VW Bus rolls into the Desert Hawk Service Station.

Things increasingly rare in 2017: Phone-booth, Real Boobs, Newspaper, General Store . . .

The Professor has rescued a baby coyote that was hit on the road while it was installing a giant Acme spring. The proprietor laughs at the thought of rescuing the animal. “Mister, we pay a bounty on coyotes in this part of the state!”  Inexplicably the Professor does not ask how much.

The gas-jockey says they are the most useless animal God created [insert political reference of your choice here; any answer will be correct].  The Professor says without coyotes, within a year they would be overrun with a plague of squirrels and rabbits; and presumably road runners. [1]

Julie hits him up for a lift to Sentinel Mesa.  The service station owner calls a vet, but the vet refuses to come work on a coyote.  When he comes back to tell the Professor, they find the coyote has ingeniously escaped from the cardboard box he was kept in.

On the way to Sentinel Mesa, Julie spots a man sleeping under a tree by the side of the road.  She yells, “Pops!” and tells the professor to pull over.  Pops jumps in the car and helps himself to the Professor’s cigarettes, and lighter.  The Professor is next railroaded into picking up Julie’s brother Harry, who is kind of a thug.

The rest of the episode is very, er, episodic.  That is not to demean the episode — far from it.  This is a fun episode which is well-performed and looks great.  It just gets tedious to document every scene; for you, I mean.

Throughout the episode, the Professor is constantly taken advantage of and scammed.  Edgar Buchanan is perfect as Pops.  He has an old-timer, country-bumpkin charm to him that masks what a snake he is.  You really want to like him.  Collin Wilcox Paxton as Julie is a paradox.  She seems to be a terrible actress, but she might have out-smarted me.  She comes off as such a sexy, feral maniac that you can’t help but like her.  Maybe Harry was adopted.

They descend on the Professor like a swarm of three locusts.  When they are done with him, they quickly ditch him by the side of the road and jump into a passing truck with their next victim.  The Professor isn’t done with them, though.

Not pictured: The Professor.

Excellent.  I rate it a full moon.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Actually, the coyote did not do much to suppress the road-runner population. But then, running down the road was his idea of having fun, so maybe there weren’t going to be a lot of little road-runners anyway.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
  • Title Analysis:  Meh.  I guess the family was predatory like a coyote.  Not sure what the moon has to do with it.