Category Archives: TV

Twilight Zone – The Library (03/28/86)

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Beware any TZ segment that begins with that little pixie-dust musical flourish.  It does not bode well for your next 20 minutes.

Aspiring writer Ellie Pendleton is excited about her first day on her new job at the library.  The head librarian Gloria cautions her that this is a private library and “the books are not for reading by you, me or anyone.  The owners are very strict about that.”

They enter the library which contains endless shelves of books, down to the vanishing point and that’s just the James Patterson section.  Gloria says, to save space, they are going to be converting the books to holograms — which makes no sense. Understand-ably in 1986, the producers didn’t know what a Kindle was; but they did know what a hologram was.

Seeing that the books are titled with people’s names and birth dates, she leaps to the conclusion that they contain people’s lives rather than that she might just be in the ##0.#09 section.  Gloria admits there is a book there for everyone alive.  “Each is an up to the minute record of the person’s life, changing with each moment.”  When a person dies, her employer uses the book to determine their final destination, although Zeno’s Paradox would suggest the book will never get that far.

As is frequently the case with this TZ series, the insipid score undermines any suspense that this scene promised.  Ellie finds herself in the P section.  After she zips up [1], she pulls out the volume titled Ellen Pendleton.  It gives an account of her life including pulling the book off the shelf and opening it.

Back at the apartment she shares with her sister the nurse, she says her day was enormously unbelievable.  After dinner, she tries to work on her novel, but noise from the adjoining apartment is disturbing her.  She confronts her neighbor Mr. Kelleher who is laughing it up with his gal Carla . . . . . I don’t know if I can go on.

Ellie has had a mind-blowing experience at work, she is stood up by her sister, she has writer’s block, she is frustrated at the “cheapest drywall in the world”, she is angry at her inconsiderate neighbor, she confronts him and he is an obnoxious jerk.  So naturally the score sounds like public domain music that would play under two young lovers having a picnic lunch at a lake watching the sailboats.  It is inconceivable to me that this selection wasn’t drawn out of a hat.  OK, looking again, I guess this is the music on the neighbor’s stereo, but it is still a poor choice.

The next day, Ellie uses White-Out and a pen to edit Kelleher’s volume so he is a eunuch priest.  The segment regains its footing with Ellie’s entrance into her apartment after work.  The butterfly effect has changed the past, present and furniture which she trips over; and her sister is now a waitress — it is a good moment.  Note to Hollywood: Played with no score.

Ellie’s sister is consoling her crying friend Carla who was Kelleher’s gal in the original timeline.  She whines, “I’m 37 years old. [2]  I have no kids, no husband, not even a boyfriend.  My life is a complete and utter waste.” [3] The next day, Ellie writes her into “a relationship with that nice Mr. DeWitt in 304.”

After work, Carla is sporting a full length fur coat.  When Ellie enters her apartment, it is much more homey for one thing.  Her sister is now a lawyer helping Mr. DeWitt who, in this timeline, has been bankrupted by Carla’s spending.  Wow, nurse to waitress to lawyer — what a decline!

Ellie edits his volume so he is a successful real estate developer.  She sees de wealthy DeWitts as she is coming home from work. Mr. DeWitt tells her not to be late with the rent, and “and whatever your sister is trying to pull in that tea party upstairs, it’s not gonna work.”  Her sister is organizing the tenants in a rent strike against the over-bearing, do-nothing criminal landlord.  Heh, Tea Party indeed.

Ellie has had it with apartment living, so edits her volume for a nice beach house and bigger boobs, although I might have imagined that last part.  She gets home and finds her sister has died while rescuing a little boy from drowning.  D’oh!

She immediately returns to the library to erase the beach house.  And, by the way, probably condemns the little boy to die in the new timeline.

She tells them to keep CPRing while she runs back to the library, but her sister’s book has already been pulled.  Gloria finally realizes Ellie has been editing the books, so throws her out of the library like a 50 year old dude browsing in the Young Adult section.  She finds her sister in her nursing uniform waiting by the car, so all is as it was.

There is so much to like here.  The structure is pretty well-worn, but that’s OK — there is a reason why classics are classics.  This basically is the same genie/devil wish-and-consequence seen since The Monkey’s Paw.  In fact, a month ago we just had the same concept on TZ with a Leprechaun.  The 15 minute segment was well-constructed to work in minor changes in the timelines and interweave the characters.

I guess my only complaint is the score.  It is not unusual for the overly-syruppy scores the undermine TZ segments.  I am just baffled by how this was allowed.  I know they were going for a kindler, gentler, not-your-father’s TZ — misguidedly, in my opinion — but at least the sappy music often accompanies a sappy scene.  Here, it just made no sense.  I’m not going back to check, but it seems to me the most effective scenes in this segment were the ones played with no score.  The occasional heavenly choir bit worked, so I am not advocating silence.  Just don’t have the score at odds with the tone of the scene.

Just the slightest dark edge could have made this great.

Post-Post:

  • [1] She wasn’t wearing pants, but I couldn’t think of another way to say it.  See, like she was urinating in the P section.  Just urinating and urinating and urinating. Cuz it’s the P section.  Where Pendleton would be.
  • [2] The actress is 41.  F’in actors, man.
  • [3] C’mon this was already being mocked in 1980.
  • Classic TZ Legacy:  Take yer pick of genie and time-travel episodes.
  • Written by Anne Collins who also wrote the dreadful Ye Gods.  I’m willing to bet that one also had the pixie dust flourish.  She has a huge resume; maybe she is just not getting a fair shake on TZ.
  • Skipped Segment:  Take My Life . . . Please.  I like the premise, but it was just about unwatchable.  Many others seem to like it, so maybe I will get up on the wrong side of the bed in a couple of hours.
  • Skipped Segment:  Devil’s Alphabet.  No one seems to like this one.  The whole time, I kept thinking it seemed like a segment that could have easily fit in on Night Gallery.

Science Fiction Theatre – The Stones Began to Move (08/09/55)

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Truman Bradley points out a coil of rope and a pyramid, saying “both are unsolved mysteries of the ages.” He demonstrates how a fakir does the ol’ Indian Rope Trick.  Well, he does the rope trick, but disgracefully leaves it open whether it is science or magic. In suggesting the Rope Trick is a legitimate scientific mystery, he says this kind of anti-gravity trick is nothing new — that may be how the pyramids were built.  I love Ancient Aliens and love young perky aliens even more, but this is just wrong.

In New York City, scientist Paul Kincaid leaves his lab late one night.  Wandering down a deserted street near the waterfront, he ducks into a phone-booth.  He tells the operator to connect him with Dr. Berensen at the United States Scientific Research Commission in DC.  Expecting the government employee to be there after 5 pm, he is clearly not a rocket scientist.

Getting no answer, he goes across the street to an arcade.  For $.25, enters a booth to make a record for Dr. Berensen, telling him he is being followed.  He recently returned from Egypt where he opened the tomb of Ahmed III without knocking.  He stumbled onto a miraculous “property entirely unknown to modern science.”  As he begins to describe the “staggering concept” he is shot and killed.  Maybe the miracle is a bullet that can kill a man in a glass booth and not break the glass, because that’s what happens.

The police take the record to Dr. Berensen.  He says Kincaid had a “very impressive bee in his bonnet” about the pyramids.  While Detective Crenshaw is grilling Berensen, he gets a phone call — Kincaid’s lab has been ransacked like Ahmed III’s tomb.  They go to question Kincaid’s boss.  It must be getting close to 5 pm as Crenshaw bails after getting no info, leaving Berensen to further question the man.[1]

They find a photo from inside the tomb.  A sword appears to be hovering in the air over III’s sarcophagus.  Notes on the back suggest a force field and mention Seja Dih who Kincaid saw perform the Indian Rope Trick in Benares and make a lady disappear at The Sands.[2]

Berensen goes to see Kincaid’s wife Virginia who was also his partner.  He is greeted at the door by a maid who might be the worst actress I’ve ever seen.  She says Ms. Kincaid’s bed hasn’t been slept in, so Berensen immediately calls the police.

Berensen’s secretary calls to tell him that Seja Dih is dead but that his granddaughter lives in New York, working as a chemist.  I have to give SFT credit — they did feature a lot of female scientists when that was probably a rarity.  Diversity has its limits though — the Indian guru’s granddaughter is played by an Irish actress in a cute little pixie hair-do, and she doesn’t even get a name.  Oh well, baby steps.

She says Kincaid had contacted her to buy some emerald rings which had belonged to her grandfather.  He believed them to possess the power of anti-gravity.  One of the artifacts recovered looted from Ahmed’s tomb has the same mineral.  Well, would have had it, but the minerals were removed from the artifact before it was shipped to New York.

When Berensen gets home, he finds Virginia Kincaid there.  Before saying a word, he offers her a cigarette.  She says she ran away because after her husband’s death, the house was scary.  She says the minerals weren’t stolen, they were given to her husband by the Egyptian government for research.

Yada yada, there is a boring confrontation.  Then Berensen demonstrates the power of the stones to the government.  The government seizes them under the PATRIOT Act and gives some senator’s brother a $10 million contract to research them.  Although that is just speculation on my part — the $10 million figure, I mean.  The rest sounds about right.

Post-Post:

  • [1] He is played by Basil Rathbone, the most iconic and the 2nd most humorously-monikered portrayer of Sherlock Holmes.
  • [2] Coincidentally, this episode aired the same year Moe Greene got whacked.  On second thought, there’s nothing coincidental about it.  There is no connection.

Outer Limits – The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson (06/06/97)

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The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson is based on a story by Stephen King that appeared in Rolling Stone.  I am unable to determine whether they printed it as fiction.

We start out with the titular ‘Becka Paulson unpacking her Christmas decorations.  She even takes time to kiss baby Jesus from the nativity scene.  Oh great, Stephen King is going to lecture us on how crazy Christians are again.

In one of the boxes, she finds her husband’s pistol which, like all gun owners, he keeps loaded and unsecured in the closet.  Oh great, Stephen King is going to lecture us on how terrible guns are again.

She stares down the barrel of the gun.  When she loses her balance, she falls and shoots herself right in the forehead.  Oh great, Stephen King is going to lecture us on . . . what, having a spotter?  Oh, who the hell knows with that guy anymore.  Although, that is a good safety tip.  Cheers for having her apply the smallest band-aid in the official Band-Aid brand box to her head-wound. Jeers for it being flesh-colored.

She feels well-enough to go right back to watching her “stories” which, to be honest, don’t require a full noggin.  She might have done some real damage as the dude in a picture frame on top of the TV winks at her.  Strangely, though, he does it after she turns away, implying it is a real phenomenon.
She microwaves two Swanson Hungry-Rube Dinners and starts eating before her husband Joe gets home from his job as a mailman.  He is only mildly miffed as he wolfs down the meal and reclines in his La-Z-Boy to check out the “Sports for Sports” Swimsuit Edition like a Horn-E-Boy.  Becka is bored with her husband and her life as he doesn’t care about the Christmas decorations, isn’t much for conversation, and gives her a pretty listless rogering in bed.  She even turns picture-frame model guy down so he doesn’t have to see this.

The next morning, looking in the mirror, she peels off the Band-Aid to reveal the bloody hole in her skull.  It is indeed cringe-worthy as she decides the proper course of action is to slowly insert a pencil a few inches into the hole rather than, say, go to a doctor. This triggers a series of flashbacks, but she is able to pull it back out with little harm.

She puts a tiny fresh Band-Aid on the wound, because you can’t be too careful.  Her husband, who still thinks it’s just a bump, suggests she go to Doc Fink.  She replies that he is a veterinarian, but he says he only charges $9 for a visit.  This new comedic tone is the most alien thing I’ve seen yet on The Outer Limits.  While not as dour as The Hitchhiker, Outer Limits has always been pretty humor-free.  This episode has an unprecedented fun weirdness to it.  It is only partially due to the script.  Catherine O’Hara and John Diehl give performances that sell it perfectly.  She had years of comedy experience on SCTV, and he learned to be a straight man on Miami Vice by not laughing at Don Johnson’s wardrobe.

After Joe leaves for work, she sits down to watch her stories.  She hears the picture-frame guy (credited as 8 x 10 Man [2]) start speaking to her.  She says, “Pictures don’t talk” . . . to the guy sitting on top of the TV.  Well, granted, they don’t usually tell you your husband is having an affair.  After she gets a call from her dead father, she takes Joe’s advice and goes to see Doc Fink.

In another good comic performance, Fink checks out her wound.  Being a vet, he doesn’t really do much for her, but at least doesn’t give her a cone to wear around her head.  There is some fun dialogue and I got a laugh out of the occupational hazard scratches on his head that are never mentioned.

After some weirdness at the store, she returns home to her stories.  Today’s episode is about surgery on a woman who was shot in the head.  Somehow, Doc Fink is in the scene.  The TV-woman survived the shot because the bullet excised a tumor that was already there.  It also increased her intelligence, creativity and sex drive.

Sure enough, Becka discovers the Pythagorean Theorem [1] just weeks before Amy Schumer.  She invents The Roomba just days before Amy Schumer.  Then she drags Joe to bed for a wild ride, just before . . . I don’t even want to think about that one.

Yada yada, some other stuff happens and we come to a cheerfully dark end.  This was just a shock, like if out of nowhere the next episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents were a musical.  They tried something different and they pulled it off masterfully.

Post-Post:

  • [1] I was disappointed that she mispronounced hypotenuse.  Joe got it right, so I think it was just a mistake.
  • [2] Or maybe she was saying “ate by tinman”.
  • There is something unseemly about director Steven Weber casting himself as the 8 x 10 model.  The man in the frame was Jesus in the short story, so I guess he did show some restraint.
  • Some bits of King’s short story were used in The Tommyknockers.

The Hitchhiker – True Believer (03/11/86)

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The episode opens with carefully composed shots of a priest killing himself.  The shots call attention to themselves, but in a good way.  They don’t take you out of the story, but they do let you know the director isn’t just a point-and-shoot guy — hey, it’s TV’s Carl Schenkel, director of the great Homebodies.

Tom Skerritt is playing the role he was born to play — Tom Skerritt.  The mustached, stoic, competent, weary everyman / manlyman he is portraying this time is Detective Frank Sheen.  He goes to the scene of the crime — an abandoned convent — but no one answers his knocks.  As he looks for another way in, a POV shot from inside the house begins shaking, a plastic tarp over the window melts and reveals Sheen standing in the snow below through the hole.  Way to go, Carl! [4]

He finds a way in and sees a nun sitting alone surrounded by a hundred candles.  He knocks on the glass door of the chapel, but she does not respond.  We do see that, like most TV nuns, she is a beautiful young woman.  He goes to the church to get a key and is a complete dick to the priest.

The priest tells him the house is infested by demons.  Years ago “a young nun desecrated the blessed sacrament by committing suicide on the holy altar.”  After hearing sounds of howling and banging on walls, and finding excrement smeared on the walls, the convent was shut down.

After that blatant bit of exposition, Sheen returns to the convent with the key.  He sees the young nun.  She says she was a novice here.  The dialogue is a little dry, but it is intriguingly shot.  Schenkel shoots her very close so that the entire frame is her cowl tented over her lovely face like she is peeking up from under the sheets.  If that was the intent, more kudos to Carl; if not, I really need to get some help.  She says she knows Sheen is a cop “by the bulge . . . of your gun.”  She tells him to watch out for the demon and walks away.

Sheen walks upstairs and finds the usual haunted house stuff — shaking, noises, being pushed down by an invisible demon.  He goes back to Father Exposition [1] for more info.  He tells Sheen there is no nun there, the convent has been closed since 1910.

He goes back — whew — to the convent, drinking from a liquor bottle he got from a diner.  Hitting the hooch in the room where the suicide occurred, he has a B&W flashback to an argument with his ex-wife and ex-daughter.  He lost his temper and smacked his daughter.  She ran out onto a fire escape and fell to her death.

Back in the abandoned convent, he hears a noise — his ex-wife Linda walks in.  Well, he seems to see Linda, but we see the young nun.  She says she doesn’t care about her new husband’s big house or big car — she mercifully ends the big list there.  She tells Sheen she wants him back.

I won’t even mention the doggie-style chalk outline of the the priest’s suicide. However, I did like that Schenkel had Sheen collapse in that pattern after getting drunk.

Meanwhile, Father Exposition finds an old newspaper about the novice who committed suicide at the convent.  The headline says February 19, 1912, but he said the convent had been abandoned since 1910.  Of course, the newspaper banner also says February 19th was a Thursday when it was actually a Monday, so it is clearly fake news.  The picture is of the nun. [3]  Even though this provides no useful information that he did not already know, he speeds out to the convent to see Sheen.  Spoiler: Sheen shoots him.

Sheen and Linda/Nun have just made out.  From behind, he says he loves her (no, I mean orally verbally).  She turns around and says, “I love you too, Daddy.”  He screams his daughter’s name.  The police find him in a corner blankly clicking empty chamber after empty chamber into his mouth.  The cops just let him click away, but how do they know he isn’t just Russian-Rouletting his way to the money-shot?

This is another one you don’t want to think about too much.  It is always complicated when a character sees someone different than the audience.  They were wise to cast an actress that had a small birthmark on her nose.  Even at that, I was not positive who I was seeing at least one time.   I believe it was the same actress at all times in the convent scenes. [5]  It was just jarring then that he screams his daughter’s name when we have a close-up of the woman we met as the nun.  Yeah, that was the jarring aspect.

We are never told what the first priest did that caused the nun/demon to drive him to suicide, but I think we can all make up our own story.  Also, another pair of hands give him the pistol he uses to kill himself.  I guess we can assume that was the nun/demon.  I suppose a priest was not as likely to be packing his own heat as a cop.

So maybe a little over-written with the jumping back and forth between the priest and the convent; and a little under-written on the characters and story.  This is a case where cell-phones would have actually improved a story.  Still, Schenkel keeps things moving along and gives us some good visuals.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Yeah, like Basil.
  • [2] Father Exposition then calls the diner looking for Sheen.  He asks if they have a customer about 40 — Tom Skerritt was 53 at the time.  F’in actors, man!
  • [3] Not unusual in the days before HD and dumbbell bloggers, but the story does not match the headline.  It is, at least, religion-related.  It is about church leaders publishing a guide “which will include sections on homosexuality.”  Probably not a how-to.  I thought the article was being a little harsh referring to the “Anglican Primate Archbishop,” but apparently Primates are a thing in the church.
  • [4] It would just be churlish to point out the inconsistency.  In in the DVD commentary, Schenkel points out in a future room-quake that the contents are not moving; it is just in Sheen’s mind.  If that is the case, who is imagining this room-quake?
  • [5] I take it as confirmation that the wife and daughter are not credited.  Because for flashbacks, you don’t need actors or sets.  It’s not real, right?
  • This is the second consecutive post to feature an incestuous relationship.
  • As Sheen is first driving to the convent, he has Reverend Nolan Powers from WGOD on the radio.  I appreciate the call-back even if it doesn’t make much sense.  1) Sheen is not a believer, so would not be listening to a Christian station, 2) this case is unrelated to Nolan Powers, so he is not doing research, 3) Powers died in the episode that which aired four months earlier (or maybe would be in an asylum).
  • The only IMDb credit for writer William Kelly.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Touché (06/14/59)

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With this episode, AHP puts the grave in accent grave.

Unfortunately, it is an acute accent. That’s not all that goes wrong here. This might be the most deadly dull episode so far.  This is surprising as it features Robert Morse.  He might be obnoxious and a terrible actor, but he ain’t dull.

Bill Fleming and his young friend Phil enter the hunting lodge and hang up their jackets, revealing their manly-man plaid flannel shirts.  They order a couple of Bourbon Sours.  After a strangely jarring edit, Phil tells Bill he was pretty talkative last night after a few too many Glenlivet Glen Rosses.  It was just the usual AHP guy-talk; you know, about killing a man.

Bill remembers talking about his cheating wife who “makes up to every man she meets except her husband” whatever that means.  Part of the problem might be that when they got married, she was “a cute, freewheeling little 22 year old cupcake” and Bill was fifty. She is currently fooling around with Bill’s former friend Baxter.  That actor is only four years younger than Bill so she definitely has a type.

Seeing an epee on the wall of the lodge, Phil asks Bill if he ever considered challenging Baxter to a dual.  They talk and talk (and talk), the two men sitting at the table, until the 12-minute mark. This could get tedious under any circumstances, but Paul Douglas as Bill is just deadly-dull.[1]  Even though it is a fine performance, it is just mind-numbingly flat.  I completely buy him as a former boxer, and as a lumber business millionaire, though — he’s even got the flannel.  I bet that’s what attracted his young wife; no, not the flannel, the thing before that.

When Bill returns home from his hunting trip, Baxter and Laura are lounging around having drinks.  They make no effort to disguise what they were doing.  Bill takes a couple of swords off the wall and tosses one to Baxter.  Bill takes a few jabs at Baxter who reluctantly picks up the other sword.  In the midst of this tedium, I have to give AHP kudos for the duel.

Bill has no experience with the weapon, and Baxter is only a swordsman in the Urban Dictionary meaning of the word.  This is not the standard TV match where they then expertly cross swords up then down, up then down, then slide the blades down to the hilt as they gaze love-hatingly into each other’s eyes.  They clumsily clash swords a few times — more Episode 1 than Episode 6.  Mostly it is Bill chasing Baxter as he runs through the house.  He nicks Baxter a couple of times, then finally just runs him through.

Cartwright!

Bill goes to the Police Station and tells them he killed a man.  It is only now, as Bill spills his guts, that we learn Baxter’s first name is Phil.  Hmmmm.  On the witness stand, he describes how it was a fair match. Sure, being a former heavyweight champ, he could have punched Baxter out any time.  But he figures Baxter could have then sued him in that case. He sees this as a fair fight which Baxter lost.

He is found not-guilty, but immediately after the trial is called into the judge’s chambers. The judge says since Bill was the beneficiary of “the liberal provisions of the civil code in reference to duels” he must enforce another provision in that statute.  If you slay a person in a duel, you must provide for the widow and children of the person — and Baxter had a son.  Despite being found not-guilty, Bill is ordered to treat the poor 28 year old orphan as if he were a child.  Say, this is a liberal provision.   The judge orders Bill to pay out $100,000 plus a monthly allowance of $1,000 per month for life. [2]

His lawyer protests that it is too much, but Bill disagrees.  He says, “To be rid of Baxter . . . it’s cheap at half the price” which makes no sense.  He goes back to his house and finds his wife in her usual position of brazenly lounging around, swilling booze with another man. Surprise — it is his old pal Phil . . . Phillip Baxter Junior!  The smirking punk asks Bill, “Since I’m going to be your guest for the next 50 years, would you mind if I called you ‘Dad’?”

  1. This slightly misses the mark. There should have been a reference to an “allowance” in his zinger for it to truly work. Guest?
  2. This does not put Bill in a Dad-role — he and Phil Jr. are equals as lovers of the tramp Laura.
  3. Bill did not know his “pretty close friend” Baxter had a son?
  4. So, in the 1950’s you could not show a husband and wife in the same bed, but it was OK to have a dude making out with his father’s married girlfriend?
  5. And Jocasta Laura was OK with this?
  6. When Phil Jr. planted this idea in Bill’s head at the lodge, he had to know he was setting his own father up to be killed.
  7. And Jocasta Laura was OK with this? [3]

None of this would have mattered much if not for the talky opening and Paul Douglas’s lethargic acting.  I must admit, though, Robert Morse was not quite as hammy as he would become, and he elevated the episode to an “OK”.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Sadly, three months after this episode aired, he would be deadly-dead at the increasingly-young-to-me age of 52.
  • [2] In 2017 dollars:  $835k + $8k/month.  Holy crap!
  • [3] I know — strike-outs = lowest form of humor.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  Only Dodie Heath (Laura) is still with us.
  • I kept thinking Bill’s house looked like a Chinese restaurant, and his wife was dressed like a hostess.
  • . . .
  • Douché . . . I held out as long as I could.
  • [UPDATE] For more information on the episode’s source material and author, head over to bare*bonez ezine.  I initially missed this as a search for Touche without the accent came up empty.  What are we, in l’âge de pierre?