It takes so little to entertain me.  John Newland opened the episode this week standing in the rain with an umbrella.  Never saw Rod Serling do that.  And it was real rain, or at least real fake rain.  Not the usual screen of drizzle between the camera and the actor where he miraculously doesn’t get a drop on him.  Like the glimpse of the French Street in the previous episode, the little things in this series really ground it for me.

It’s a good thing this started out on a pleasant note.  We are immediately introduced to Will and Carol Jansen who are just as repulsive as Larry and Angie from last week’s AHP.  Will accuses his wife of purposely wearing a low-cut dress and flirting with the other men at the party.  Carol accuses him of . . . well, I’m not sure what he did wrong, but I’m sure it was bad because she is pissed.  Oddly, the final straw is when he insults the awful hat she wearing.  Seriously, that brings her to tears.

The bickering continues when they get home.  Carol starts in on him about not being a good lawyer and not making enough money.  He then berates her for . . . well actually he doesn’t do anything.  He calmly pays the babysitter.  Eventually Carol literally smacks him because he monstrously . . . well, was just there mostly.  I don’t think her character is intended to be a shrew; I think we are supposed to see them as equally at fault.  But as a man it is hard for me not to get a feeling of irrationality, a feeling of emotion, a feeling of deja vu.  Will has had enough and walks out of the house.

He drives aimlessly through a laughably spotty rain storm, and finally stops at the edge of a cliff.  He angily talks to himself, mocking his wife’s words, such as when she accused him of being a lousy lawyer.  Seeing her dopey hat on the seat just makes him angrier.  He rolls down the car window using some sort of hand-powered crank mechanism — WTF? — and tosses it out into the rain.  I hope some innocent child doesn’t find that and put it on.

We get a nice shot of the cliff he is on beginning to crumble.  Of course, it is a model, but it is quick and effective — this John Newland has a future in the business.^[1]  Will begins to chide himself for getting mad at Carol.  He is all ready to drive back and slip into the bed beside her.  I literally mean the bed by her side — in 1950’s TV fashion, they have separate twin beds.  The cliff begins to completely give way and Will’s car topples off the edge.  As the car falls, Will screams Carol’s name but his last thoughts were probably “I should have nailed the babysitterrrrrr”.^[2]

He is thrown from the car and pinned beneath it.  As he screams for help, back at the house, Carol can sense he is in danger.  Not only is his leg pinned under the car, but it is pouring rain, and he could drown in a puddle.  Even Ted Kennedy couldn’t have run away from this waterlogged wreck.

Carol sensed his life was in danger, but that didn’t stop her from turning out the light and going to sleep.  At the same time, he was passing out from the pain as the rain continued soaking him.  The next morning, Carol sees that Will didn’t come home, and is visibly angry about it.  He regains consciousness and calls Carol’s name.  Again, she thinks she hears his voice at the house and actually starts to get concerned.   BTW, it is still pouring rain.

Carol continues hearing his voice, and begins receiving sensations from him such as bumping his noggin, or hearing a plane overhead.  Carol begins to think the worst — that she might have to find another man who would put up with her shit.  She lays on Will’s bed in despair and hears him calling again.  She is now very concerned for his safety.

Carol goes to the police to report Will missing.  Of course, under TV-Law the police won’t do anything for 24 hours.  She senses a sign that Will sees that says “Landmark”.  The detective drives her to Landmark Cafe.  Turns out it has been closed for a while.  On the way back to the station, Carol again receives a broadcast from Will.  She jumps out of the car and runs to the side of the cliff.  She finds her hat, and decides she might as well also look for Will while she’s there.

They spot Will and his car at the bottom of the cliff.  Carol and the detective do some cool minor stunt work sliding down to the bottom.  Carol takes him in her arms, and the detective calls for back-up.

There was a lot to really like here, but some weaknesses that make it one of the worst episodes so far.  On, the plus side, there were some great locations and models, there were some clever callbacks in the writing, and I still dig that rain.

The general criticism is that some OSB episodes are just a straight line from beginning to end.  No matter how well done some elements might be, you see the ending coming from far far away.  That’s not necessarily bad, but it is hard to achieve greatness when stories are so predictable.  This episode in particular did not work for me because both Will and Carol were poorly cast.^[3]  Watch almost any episode from this era (Science Fiction Theatre or Alfred Hitchcock, for example) and you will see an actor you think would have been a better Will.  To be fair, Carol wasn’t as bad as I made her out, and Will was not faultless.  However, the scales were not balanced and the lack of chemistry between them forced me on to Team Will out of solidarity.  I did not even mention their daughter who horribly shouted her lines.

One minor issue:  Carol describes the strange events to someone on the phone, “You know how I always felt I knew Will was thinking?”  This is so wrong for the story and the theme of the show.  Her telepathic connection from Will should have been a one-time thing brought on by the danger to his life.

Other Stuff:

• [1]  Indeed, he seemed to work on every iconic drama of the 1960s.  But why do I see so many directors with, for example, one Man from Uncle, one Star Trek, one Naked City, etc?  If he did a good job, why would he not be back?  If he was a hack, surely word would spread and he would not get so much work.
• [2]  No, this was no underage girl.  In fact she was born only 31 years after the Civil War.  Ya know, forget I said anything.
• [3]  Both had huge careers, so it must have been the casting.
• Title Analysis:  Why 12 hours?