Dr. Richard Sheldon can’t remember what happened from the time he vanished in Milan, Italy until his appearance two weeks later in Zurich, Switzerland. Thornton from the US State Department and Harcourt, a prominent psychiatrist, await his arrival at the airport. Sheldon is catatonic as they wheel him off the plane. Unable to find a cause for Sheldon’s symptoms, Harcourt injects him with truth serum even though he wasn’t lying, unless it was by omission.
He is put in a hospital bed in his home. His wife Karen tries to get him to respond, but doesn’t really use the best tools in her fine-ass arsenal. When a firetruck goes by blasting its siren, Sheldon’s eyes open and his eyes dart around. Once it passes, his eyes close again. Harcourt deduces that when Sheldon is alert, it is always in the presence of loud obnoxious noise.
Harcourt tries beaming [ ] [1] through a parabolic dish and Sheldon’s eyes open. When it ends, his eyes shut again, but he dreams of [ ]. High and low frequencies all produce the same response over the course of a week.
Dr. Neilson proposes that Sheldon should be subjected to absolute silence rather than noise. He designs a field that will screen out ALL sounds so that Sheldon can be put into it. He shows Harcourt a ringing bell that, when held inside the field, is silent. As usual, SFT gets it backwards. That proves sound within the field is silenced to an outside observer, but not that sound from outside the field will be eliminated to the person within it.
Even worse, he tells Harcourt to “say anything” and walk into the field. Harcourt starts counting “one, two, three” and enters the perimeter. He reacts as if stunned by the sudden silence. But guess why — the dumbass stopped counting! His lips aren’t moving. Did no one on the set have the cajones to explain this to Adolphe Menjou? Were they still scared of a guy named Adolphe in 1955?
They bring Sheldon in and sit him in the cone of silence. He awakens in response to the silence. He still seems anxious, and they determine that he can still hear the sound of his own heartbeat. Well, wait a minute — Harcourt couldn’t even hear himself speaking in the cone. How . . . oh, who cares?
Sheldon has a flashback to being grilled by his captors during his time missing. Sleepily, he says, “I can’t go through it again. I’ve told you everything I know.” Which are my feelings on this post; I can’t even go back for pictures. Turns out Sheldon gave up some secret codes, I guess to the Commies. He snaps out of his catatonia. The codes can be changed. And now scientists can study silence as a cure for “amnesia and even more complicated forms of mental illness.” The end.
Other Stuff:
- [1] I’m so bored that I spent more time looking at this blank than watching the episode. At first I had Amy Schumer in there. She is a terrible comedian, but not really known for being loud, so I took her out
- Sam Kinison was not funny either, but was loud. But, really, who cares anymore? OK, that one bit was good. How long before Amy Schumer starts using it?
- Googling “worst band” gave me some ideas. One idea is that people who write about music are pretentious dicks. C’mon, Wings or The Eagles are the worst bands ever? Get over yourself.
- Nickelback seemed to be the knee-jerk, go-to worst band choice, but I’ve never heard anything by them, and it seemed like piling on.
- Then I was fixated on how many spaces should be in the brackets. Seven seemed too few, so I bumped it up to ten. Made all the difference in the world.
- Zzzz-zzz-zzzz-zzzz-zzzz.
- Title Analysis: Barrier of Silence? Why not Silence Barrier to play off “sound barrier?”
- In the intro, pseudo-science guy Truman Bradley again uses a tuning fork for his demonstration. This time he calls it a vibrator. Hehe.
Whereas Voice of Reason assembled a diverse group of both white men and white women, this episode goes one better and has four clones of the same white guy kick off the action. They are parked conspicuously about 15 degrees off-kilter in a hotel parking lot waiting for newsman Donald Rivers. The crusading journalist, the progres-sive savior of the oppressed, the afflictor of the comfortable, [3] the champion of the underdog, outsmarts them by sending a homeless guy in his coat & hat out to be killed in his place while he sneaks down the back stairs.
After congratulating the network for their courage in airing the episode, Rivers goes to Exhibit A, 
Rivers interrupts his own show to tell viewers that the show’s parent company is giving a press conference airing on some of his affiliates. The corporate spokes-weasel says they do not control Rivers’ show and they are appalled by the sensationalism. She says his informant is mentally ill and, “The name of his show not withstanding, he is only interested in ratings.”
Avery’s unified theory is that the government is creating clones which they can control. These look-alike clones will then be used to replace world leaders and other powerful individuals. For Exhibit G, they completely wreck the time-space continuum by using a clip from a future episode, season four’s 
I try not to pre-judge, but this does not bode well . . .
chews out LeBreaux, the French cop, for their “frog talk” and reminds them they promised to keep him safe while he was “here to get me a new face.”
Gould is a complete dick, smoking a cigar in her office after she asks him not to. He demands they get started immediately on replacing his face and, really, who can blame him? Dr, Renaud tells him, “Here at the institute, we feel that cosmetic surgery is just one step in a much larger process.” He suggests they get down to business “before I shove this desk down your stinking throat!”
That night, Gould sneaks in to Bloc 6 where the surgery will be done. He picks up a couple of instruments which look like a garlic press and a mixer to me, but I’m no brain surgeon; or chef. On the X-Ray screen there are a lot more shots of brains than you might expect from a cosmetic surgeon. He finds a room of men either bald or with their head in bandages. One of them repeat–edly asks, “Bon jour, comment tallez-vous?” I think they were lobotomized, but to be fair, Gould never answers him.
In September 1907, a train rolls across one of those impossibly huge bridges in the Alps. I’m not sure we could build one of those now. It’s like those gigantic statues and titular towers in Lord of the Rings; how did those simpletons build such colossal structures? There is probably a 50 page LOTR answer replete with Elvish songs, so I retract the question.
Stella insists that he retrieve her husband’s body off the mountain. Cavendish and his pals brave a 
Back in London, Cavendish and Stella begin attending dinners and concerts together. One day, she invites him to tea and he shows up with a ring. She refuses his proposal. To explain why, she takes him with her to see a professor. He describes — in very authentic sounding jargon, BTW — how glaciers move and transform over time. He blows his credibility when he absurdly predicts the glacier will poop Ballister out in 40 years on July 21, 1947, around tea time. Stella plans to wait all that time to be with her beloved, perfectly preserved Michael. In a stunning Hollywood reversal, the wife would be 40 years older than the husband. Madness, I tells ya!
Well this is a problem.
It was the last episode of the season and they ended with a hoot. But it doesn’t give me much to work with. I could document every reference, but where’s the fun in that? I didn’t even catch many of them. The director’s commentary educated me on the more obscure ones.