Matthew Foreman (Scott Wilson) is awakened from suspended anim-ation.  In the future, it is apparently recommended to shine a flashlight directly into the eyes of people waking up after a coma. Sarah is evasive about how long he has been asleep.  He tells her to “cut to the chase” thus ensuring that idiotic phrase will survive another 324 years into the future.

They go outside and Foreman sees a pastoral, almost Amish, farming community. There is a horse, a pig, a bull and I swear I think I even see a monkey.  He asks why he was brought “way out here” and not taken to a city.  They take him in for a medical procedure.  Rather than getting an anesthetic, an empath feels his pain for him.  A remote viewer diagnoses his carcinomas.  Sarah performs psychic surgery, reaching into his stomach without an incision to remove the growths.  There is great synergy in this being a farming community because there’s a lot of horseshit here.

After he recovers (i.e. the next day), Sarah explains the new-agey philosophy that governs life now.  Foreman was an engineer who actually built things — planes, tanks, satellites.  He wonders what his role is in this society.  After the nuclear war, the earth’s population fell to 200,000.  They take him to their computer room which is hefty Hefty bags of primates wired up like the human battery farms in The Matrix, but hairier.  The monkeys are intelligent enough to choose life in the matrix where they have all the bananas they can eat and all the feces they can fling — which is efficiently circuitous.

Three weeks ago, the remote viewers spotted an asteroid heading toward earth.  That image is telepathically sent to Foreman.  Such a rock could pound the earth back to the stone age which is, granted, not as far as it used to be.  They hope Foreman can use his engineering skills to instruct satellites still in orbit to blast the asteroid into bits, and also get free HBO.

Foreman successfully reboots the old satellite and targets the asteroid.  As it comes into range, it slows down and alters its course as if it is slipping into orbit.  He suddenly realizes that with their psychic ability, they can make him see whatever they want him to see.  They allow him to see the truth — he has targeted a spacecraft with an American flag on it.   He is outraged, but they tell him the ship is “full of the military and politicians — the ones who started the war.”  Unfortunately he can’t just target the front of the ship because you know the politicians would be in first class.

He tries to stop the satellite, but Sarah sabotages the computer.  She says the ship is bringing nuclear weapons back and that can not be allowed.  The laser fires, destroying the ship and its 1,000 passengers.  Congratulations to TZ for going dark.

Wracked with guilt, Foreman sits on the porch and looks at the stars.  As a kid, he had gone into engineering hoping one day to go out there.  Now he feels unworthy.  The remote viewer offers to show him the universe.  He declines, but she does a quick mind-meld ^[1] and gives him a fly-by of Saturn.  The hell with the 1,000 people he killed five minutes ago, he excitedly decides to explore the galaxy from the front porch.

There was such a good premise here, but it was somewhat squandered.  Once again the squishiness of the 1980s TZ is at fault.  Much of the issue in this case is the totally inappropriate score.  This could have been a suspenseful, gut-wrenching episode. Think of the elements: Waking up after 324 years, a completely changed society, your life & career are obsolete, humans have harnessed spiritual powers, a killer asteroid, then the betrayal, then the crushing guilt of murdering 1,000 people, and the finally the ability to live his childhood dream of exploring the cosmos.  The episode just lacks an edge that I can imagine if it had been made in the 1960s.  For example, Foreman has a monologue that is greatly undercut by the score.  I can imagine Serling writing a monologue for that section — with no score — that would have nailed it.

The 1980s version just tries to be too nice.  I could have done without Fore-man’s exploration of the cosmos.  Ending on him as distraught as Nancy Pelosi at the SOTU speech would have been fine.  And, frankly, part of the problem is Charles Aidman’s narration. I’ve heard him praised in commentaries and in articles, but he’s too dang avuncular.  This isn’t a guy who would have left William Benteen behind.

Serling, in both his clenched-jaw speech and in his appearance had an edgy, slightly menacing vibe.  The black suits and skinny ties are even now are associated with Tarrantino-esque psychopaths — I think that is partially due to Serling.  Plus, he had a butt going half the time and he had the virtue of being the creator — he was The Twilight Zone — and that gave him even greater gravitas.

An OK episode that could have been great.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Appropriate as I believe this actress was was driving the ship when baby Spock was found on the Genesis planet in Star Trek III.  It seems to have dropped out of streaming, so I could be wrong.
• Scott Wilson would do more time on a farm later as Herschel on The Walking Dead.  He’ll always be Scott Crossfield to me, though.

Matt is in critical condition.  He senses death coming, and I mean literal death on two legs.  He pulls himself up, ripping numerous tubes from numerous orifices.  When Death reaches Matt’s room, all he finds is an empty bed; Matt and girlfriend Lori have sped off.  And good for them — shouldn’t Mr. Death only show up when a person is about to die?  If Matt was able to get up, lose the tubes, make it to the car, and take a road-trip, Mr. Death was a tad pre-mature.

Lori turns down the dirt road to the titular Winfield with Matt shivering in the back seat. She soon arrives at a town that seems stuck in the 19th century.  Finally, three weeks later, Death takes the same turn off the main road.  To be fair, there was probably some low hanging fruit at the hospital keeping him busy — that’s like the Dollar Store to Mr. Death.

A couple of yokels are playing horseshoes when Death’s white Mercedes rolls into town. One of them says, “What do you think that is?”  Oddly the whole town saw Lori & Matt’s car three weeks earlier and seemed to get the whole car-thing.  The crowd is a little taken aback as am I — white is a terrible color for a Mercedes.

One of the hayseeds lets it slip — and by “let’s it slip”, I mean proudly exclaims — that he is 150 years old. Shafting another actor out of a speaking role, he also exposits that Matt is hiding out in town. Death calls his predecessor Chin Du Long for some advice. The townsfolk hope they can strike a deal with the new Mr. Death as they did with “The Chinaman.”

One of the hicks tells Death that Chin allowed them to live because “they wasn’t herting anyone.”  OK, he correctly pronounced it hurting, but I assume it was misspelled in his mind.  This raises a few questions.  Did Chin come to town to kill all of them at the same time?  Did a possum fall into the well?  Did he grant them immortality, or did they already have it?  What was the aforementioned deal?  What did Chin get out of it other than a racist nickname?

Matt gallantly gives himself up to save the town, but Death says he might have to take everyone.  His predecessor Chin was “too sentimental in an inscrutable kind of way.” You know, like all Chinese people.  Death tries to get Chin on the phone, but he is unavailable. Death says, “I don’t care if he’s dining with Mao, I want him on the line.” Because who else would a Chinese dude sit with at the cafeteria having only 10 billion dead souls to choose from.  And wouldn’t Mao be in Hell, anyway?

The mayor steps up and offers to sacrifice the town for the boy.  They are all over 100 years old, but Matt is just starting out.  Matt won’t hear of it. All three factions yell at Death to take them, me being the third.  Death inexplicably changes his mind and lets everyone live “for another century or so.”  He gets into his Mercedes and zooms into the sky like Doc Brown — although his rear window still shows him at ground level.

There’s a lot to like here, and any complaints were mostly to fill space.  The one small weakness is the ending — I would have really liked some motivation for Death’s change of heart.  The frontier street has a solid feel to it, and the score is appropriately banjo-y and twangy.  Matt and Lori ^[1] don’t have much gravitas, but the episode is well-carried by Death and the Mayor.  I initially thought Gerritt Graham was miscast as Death, but he won me over.  Henry Gibson as the Mayor was interesting as always.  Despite being great character actors, neither ever seemed to be appreciated by Hollywood.  I suspect Gibson was undervalued because of his work on Laugh-In.  That’s what did-in Nixon, as I recall.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Congratulations to JoAnn Willette on surviving that really awful 1980s hairdo.
• Classic TZ Legacy:  Numerous embodiments of death.  I guess.  I can only think of two.  I’ll say this for them, it took more than an upset stomach for them to show up.