Trigger Warning:  There be Asian stereotypes here. ^[1]

Minna Boswell, described as attractive and a bit earthbound, calls out to her Chinese servant Song to see if he remembered the milk.  From off-screen, he replies, “Yes, Miss.  Plenty milk for young person in refligerator.”  I’ll be the first to agree that English uses entirely too many prepositions, but he really punches that middle L while being cool with the other three Rs.

Song is set up as a Magical Asian, and described as not so earthbound because he was born in Peking “where people have been around long enough not to disbelieve merely because they don’t understand.”  However, this story takes place in America just outside stodgy old 1959 San Francisco which, in the next 10 years, will surely never fall for far-out concepts like spirits, karma, auras, and free speech.

Minna has purchased the house for her brother Paul and his daughter Ann to live in after the death of his wife.  Alfred Hitchcock Presents has more brothers and sisters shacking up than Pornhub.  Paul and Ann arrive by cab.  Minna introduces Song by saying he was with the previous owners.  So he came with the house?

While Paul and Minna discuss the size of the house and what a good deal she got on it, Ann is distracted.  She slowly walks to the stairs accompanied by some genuinely creepy music.  Song sees her on the stairs, and she asks him who is up there.  He says, “No one.  Empty looms.”  She says they are not empty.  Minna calls Ann back into the living room and we learn what a hot-head jerk Paul is when she is too slow answering.

Minna presents Ann with three dolls.  Then she and Paul hit the scotch.  Ann pours herself some lemonade but accidentally knocks over a picture of her dead mother.  Paul goes nutz and accuses her of doing it on purpose.  What?  There has been zero indication that Ann didn’t love her mother. He shakes Ann very roughly and says, “She hates her!  She hates her!”  Minna pulls Ann away.  Paul says to his dead wife’s picture, “Why did it have to be you?”  Considering the asshole she was stuck with, she could say, “Just lucky, I guess.”

Later, Minna tells Ann she needs to be patient with her father who, after all, just lost his wife.  Of course she is an 11 year old who lost her mother and a delicious glass of lemonade, so she is the rock in that family.  Ann says she knows her father wishes she had died in the accident instead of her mother.

Ann asks for a tour of the upstairs which is not being used.  Song is giving her and Minna a tour when she hears her name called from one of the bedrooms.  Song says it was a nursery.  Ann insists that it be her bedroom.

A few oddball things happen, which Ann attributes to Jennifer, Rose and Mary.  The episode makes a huge blunder by having Ann point to the dolls as being Jennifer, Rose and Mary.  It would have been much more effective, just having the audience assume that, because the force behind the weird events is actually three ghosts living in the room. They are nice ghosts, though, encouraging Ann to be nice to her father so he will stop being such a dick.

Ann actually is very lucky because the ghosts in the house next door are Lewis, Jeffrey, and Ghislaine.  Although Ghislaine’s ghost won’t show up until her suicide next week. ^[2]

Of course, the magical Song cracks the case.  He tells Paul that Ann just pretended Jennifer, Rose and Mary were the dolls to wrap her head around the fact she was living with dead people.  “Nursery occupied by something other than dolls,” he explains.  In the 1920’s, three girls died from a gas leak in that room.  They too had a nasty father, so they are guiding Ann to soften Paul up.

Well, it’s a happy ending as Paul, Ann and Minna move back to Denver.  I guess they will just foist the house on some sucker who doesn’t realize it comes with three mystical entities, not understood by Americans, and bound to the house forever.  Four if you count Song.

Sure, the episode could be nitpicked to death, but who has the energy?  OK, Paul’s anger at his daughter was inexplicable and pre-dated his wife’s death.  Is he really capable of redemption?  What was the point of Minna being divorced?  Couldn’t she have just been single?  Which was the bigger shame for a 31 year old woman in 1959?

On the other hand, the series continues to surprise with its direction.  There are a couple of truly chilling scenes here.  The score is appropriately eerie.  And, thank God, John Newland is finally learning to direct children.  Unlike the screeching kids in Premonition and Epilogue, Ann’s performance is entirely tolerable.  Quite good, actually.  The one time she does threaten to become obnoxious, he has her run out of the room.  Well-played!

A good week for One Step Beyond.

Misc:

• [1] Well, actually only one — this ain’t no Charlie Chan movie.  Although a Charlie Chan movie might actually have none.
• [2] I guess it is a good sign that I had to reach back almost 200 years for the 3rd name.
• Song also displays his otherness by claiming to listen to plants.
• Maybe his accent was entirely appropriate.  I must admit I don’t talk to many 1959 Chinese people.  Just seemed a little exaggerated.

Oh, One Step Beyond, every week I find something to compliment you on.  It might be the direction, the set design, the use of stock footage, or Cloris Leachman’s slinky dress.  But the visual triumphs are always in service of a slice of the genre pie that is shrinking every week.  Honestly, after this week’s slight entry, I don’t know how much lower OSB can go.

Dude, you never go full-Biden!

In 1901, rambunctious 11-year old Lisa is being hunted down for her ballet lesson.  The maid and her French personal ballet instructor find her on the veranda.  So, yeah, her widowed father has money.  When Lisa sees her father watching, she runs to him and he goes full-Biden, hugging her and picking her up.  It is a little strange because the 11 year old is played by a 15 year old who is a little too curvy for the part and a little too chunky for the ballet.  Oh well, in 5 years, Hollywood will be casting her as the mother.

She shows off her skillz for her father, ending up with a series of pirouettes.  Frenchie implores her to go faster, faster.  When she is about to burst into flames, the teacher tells her to slow down.  But Lisa seems to be in a trance.  She continues spinning and can’t stop even as she sees the ceiling begin to crumble and a large chandelier crashes down on her.  This is one of those visual touches that make the series bearable — really well-done.

As the title of the episode might spoil, this did not really happen — it was the titular premonition.  And it is the only premonition in the episode.  It ain’t exactly a train derailment or the Titanic.  See what I mean?  Lisa collapses, and a doctor is called.  He asks her father if she suffers from Vertigo.  I know it left me unconscious the first time I sat through it.

Lisa awakens and begins screaming that the chandelier fell on her.  This is a high-pitched killer of a scream like the kid in the OSB episode Epilogue.  And this caterwauling goes on for almost a full minute.  John Newland, who directed both Epilogue and this episode had no idea how to restrain kids.  I find a 6 mm nylon line perfectly adequate.

That night, Lisa goes to see the chandelier and gets hysterical at the sight of it.  Any time she must enter the room, she will not walk under it.  The sight or her father or maid walking under it gives her a conniption.

Ten years later — I repeat, ten years later — her caring father has a carpenter finally examine the chandelier fixture.  The carpenter says it could withstand an earthquake.  He calls Lisa in so she can hear that for herself.  She is still terrified of it, though.  Her fiance tries to convince her that they can safely dance under it because he was not in her vision.  He’s really a dick about it, reducing her to tears.  But he finally waltzes her beneath it and she is even able smile about it.

We skip ahead to 1947 — I repeat, 1947 — and Lisa is having a coming-out party for her grand-daughter, which meant something completely different back then.  She seems very happy with life until she hears the chandelier rattling in the ballroom.  Lisa rushes into the ballroom, but we just get a shot of the back of John Newland’s head.  We hear a scream and the sound of the chandelier crashing to the floor.

But who was killed?  Lisa’s grand-daughter was pointlessly also named Lisa.  So was that old Lisa screaming or young Lisa?  Was the premonition 46 years ago just that someone named Lisa would die?  Newland even f*cks with us, delivering his usual, “We know to whom it happened, we know when it happened . . . ” spiel.  Well, spill it dude — who was killed?

Again, there were great elements to the episode.  An Analytical Guide to Television’s One Step Beyond (AGOSB) discusses how cleverly the chandelier is photographed much better than I can.  On the other hand, the book also says this is a high point of the 1st season.  I just find it hard to get excited about a premonition that comes true 46 years later.  She could have predicted a World War and been right twice.  A lot of things can happen in almost half a century.

So, well-presented, but these stories need work.

Miscellaneous

The real mystery is, who is Debbie?

• The episode description on Amazon says, “Debbie is haunted by the fear of her own demise at the hands of a chandelier in her home.” ^[1]
• AGOSB refer’s to Debbie’s vision of the ceiling cracking.
• The cast list in AGOSB includes “Pamela Lincoln (Debbie).”  Strangely, none of the other actors have their character name included.
• Per IMDB, Pamela Lincoln plays “Older Lisa Garrick.”
• There is no question that the girl with the visions and her name-sake grand-daughter are both named Lisa.  So where is this Debbie coming from?
• [1]  Hands of a chandelier?

OSB once again, to great effect, uses historical and stock footage to add depth to a story which is just not that interesting.  We open with several shots of WWII Dunkirk and London in 1940 before we arrive at a bunker where a group of men cheer Winston Churchill’s rousing “finest hour” speech on the radio:

• ’bout time somebody give those Nazis what-for!
• Churchill’s a real British bulldog!
• He’s the leader we’ve been needing!
• It really gives one hope

Of course, in 5 years with the war over, these same blokes will be kicking him to the curb.  Bloody ingrates!

This is an odd assortment of a farmer, a coal miner, a chaplain, a bank teller, a chemist, a grocer, a retired one-armed WWI hero, a young volunteer, and the headmaster of a girl’s school.  It is a different time when this group of patriotic civilians would prefer to defend their country rather than going to work in their own jobs every day (well, except the headmaster, I imagine).

Charlie tells Hubert Blakely that he saw his wife Ethel in town.  She sends a message that he should wear a scarf, and that his tropical fish just had 28 babies.  Marlowe marvels that they still act like newlyweds even though they have been married 20 years.  Well, Blakely must have been 50 when he got married, because this guy is old! ^[1] In fact, except for one young guy, this whole crew looks like COVID-19’s dream smorgasbord.

Col. Marlowe tells Tim that he and the young man, Willie, are to man the outpost tonight.  Tim complains that Willie is not up to the task. In fact, Willie does seem a little twitchy and frightened.  The men know he was rejected from joining the service, but he won’t say why.  Blakely offers to take Tim’s place.  The men head out armed with . . . wait, what?  A sawed off oar and a pitchfork!  Wow, we really did save their arses.

At the outpost, Willie confesses that he really is scared.  Blakely assures him that is normal.  Willie reveals he was rejected from the service for “bad lungs”.  Willie’s confession about his bad lungs seems as if it should be significant, but why?  It’s not as if anyone thought he was rejected by the army for being scared — I don’t think they diagnose that at the induction center.  PTSD, I could see, but he was never actually in the army.  In fact, wouldn’t he want the guys to know he was rejected for a legitimate medical reason?

Strangely, almost halfway into this episode, we don’t really know who it is about.  Blakely and Willie have had the most screen time.  However, several others have had a line or even a scene such as the Colonel, the Chaplain, or Tim.

The elderly Blakely takes the first watch.  Nazis row the boat ashore, hallelujha — wait, that’s not how that goes!  But he has already dozed off.  He dreams of his wife Ethel, as well he might — she is only 35 years old!  Uh, wait a minute, Charlie said they had been married 20 years.  Oh well, it was the olden days, I guess.^[2]  He dreams of Ethel at home asleep in their bed as bombers release their load, which is more than he’s done lately.  The old guy is awakened by the whistling of the bombs, the explosions, and his enlarged prostate.  Good thing, too, because at that very second, a Nazi is peeking into their bunker.

Blakely kills him with the pitchfork and grabs his Luger.  He and Willie go to sound the alarm, but encounter another Nazi.  Blakely shoots this one, even though he still had that swell oar.  Willie picks up the Nazi’s machine gun.  Another Nazi inexplicably decides to wrestle zwei out of drei falls with Blakely.  Willie pulls him off — hee hee — then strangles him.  The rest of the Nazi’s are killed, thus concluding the comedy portion of tonight’s episode.

Back at the bunker, Blakely admits to Col. Marlowe that he fell asleep.  He says he awoke just in time to kill the Nazi because of the bombs exploding over his house in his dream.  Marlowe says no bombs were dropped in their town, but Blakely goes home to see for himself.

He finds it was indeed bombed.  He searches through the burned-out house, but there is no sign of Ethel.  Devastated, he returns to the bunker.  Blakely is overjoyed to find Ethel there.  She says she had a dream of him fighting Nazi’s.  That woke her up in time to hear the bombs and flee to the basement.  Wait, he didn’t go to the basement when he searched his house.  Wouldn’t that be the first place you checked after a bombing or tornado?

Another not particularly interesting — not even really a twist — but more of a gimmick or hook this week.  It really is a mixed bag though, with some great elements.  The episode had great potential with an large cast of defined characters, but didn’t know what to do with them.  Too many people were thrown at the viewer at once, and arcs were hinted at but never paid off.  The shaky kid did kill a Nazi, but that wasn’t really a satisfactory resolution.  Well, not for the kid.

On the other hand, OSB continues to astound with its production design.  It might start out in a one-room bunker, but it eventually moves outdoors (even if it was on a set) to show some effective fighting with the Nazis.  The devastated town that Blakely walks through is utterly convincing.  That and the bombed out home are worthy of a movie in that era.  Much as I love The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, they never matched the visuals on this series.  If it had not been so committed to such a narrow genre, this series might have been remembered as the equal of those classics.

Other Stuff:

• [1] This not an exaggeration — the actor is 72.
• [2] The actress playing Ethel was 37 years younger than Blakely.  The creepy scene of them in bed looks like the first 30 seconds of a Pornhub video except she doesn’t call him Step-Daddy.
• I honestly didn’t think WordPress could get worse after their previous update.  What I found after being away 6 months was an abomination.  Like Adobe and Microsoft, they seemed determined to make their products more freakin’ unusable with every update.

The screaming!  My God, the screaming!

The very first words of the episode are screams from Carl Archer in his hotel room.  “SHE WAS STANDING RIGHT HERE!  IT WAS NO HALLUCINATION!”  Another man tries to reason with him, but Carl continues shouting, “YOU WANT TO HEAR IT AGAIN?  I’LL TELL IT  THOUSAND TIMES!” It comes as no shock when we learn the other man is a psychiatrist, Dr. Sanders.  Or that Carl just got out of rehab six weeks ago.  Flashback . . .

Carl goes to Nevada to find his wife who has filed for divorce.  He enters the hotel lobby and sees his 10 year old son Steve.  The boy seems a little hesitant, so Carl says, “I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re wondering.”  Does that ring true?  I have little intimate experience with alcoholics, and no intimate experience with 10 year old boys.  Would a father say that?  Even more incredibly, Steve says that his mother sent him down to the lobby to find out if his dad was drunk.  I’m pretty confident I can say that would never happen.

The latest in spelunking gear

Carl tells his young son he will never have to worry about his ol’ Dad being drunk again.  Before he can discuss his financial issues or the time he went to a prostitute during the war with the boy, they go to Helen Archer’s hotel room.  She avoids Carl’s hug, then sends Stevie out to put something in the car, and pick up a carton of Luckys while she and Carl talk.

Carl sees that she got the flowers he sent but that she didn’t read the note.  She tells him he was always sweet and thoughtful.  He adds, “except when I was drunk and looking for somebody to punch?”  Whoa, is that the titular one step beyond?  This is getting pretty heavy for a 1950s TV show about ghosts.  She asks why he came all the way out here.  She says, “The answer is no.”  She always used to think he could change, but has given up.  She recalls “the last time you were drunk, shouting and fighting, and the way those two policemen looked at me!  I’ve forgiven and forgotten so many times that it’s just all gone out of me!”

Carl says, “We both need to remember how horrible it was.  That’s what will stop it from happening again” which simultaneously sounds like the best and worst advice ever.  She starts crying and says, “I can’t go through this again!  I can’t!”  He tells her he was angry at her for having him committed to that awful place, but is now grateful because it made him want to sober up. Anyhoo, he asks to be taken back, she says she’ll think about it, then she takes Stevie to see an abandoned mineshaft.

What’s that, girl? Trouble at the old mine?

They go into the old silver mine which fortunately is one of them mines with natural lighting and no rats or methane.  Helen has chosen to explore this mineshaft in a white dress that comes down to her mid-calfs, so maybe she’s hitting the sauce too.  I must say, though, she looks pretty hot in that slim little dress.  As the Germans say, “She can explore mein shaft anytime” although I’m not clear on why they say half of it in English.

After Stevie talks about his father several times, Helen decides to give Carl another chance.  Steve runs ahead and crawls up onto one of the support trusses and starts hammering away at it.  There is a cave-in on both of them.

Carl is passed out drunk on the sofa in Helen’s hotel room; no wait, he’s just sleeping, but it was a reasonable mistake.  Helen bursts in, her white dress filthy, and begins screaming, “HE’S TRAPPED!  HE’S TRAPPED!  HE’S TRAPPED IN THE MINE!”  They speed back to the mine.

Inside the mine, Carl sends Helen to find more help and begins digging through the rubble to find Stevie.  He struggles with the large rocks and beams.  Luckily 2 guys heard Helen’s screams and come to help.  They finally find Stevie and he is OK.  Then he starts shrieking, “MOM!  MOM!  MOM!  MOMMY!” and runs back into cave-in area.  He starts digging in the rubble, far more effectively than his father had BTW.  He uncovers Helen’s lifeless hand sticking out from under a heavy beam.  Stevie starts shrieking, “DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY! DADDY! DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!”  Seriously, 16 consecutive times in the same ear-splitting, high-pitched shriek.  This could have been a very effective moment if the kid had been better directed, or gagged.  While Stevie is screaming, Carl begins digging Helen out.

When he clears enough rubble to confirm that it Helen’s cold smokin’ hot body, he screams, “OH GOD!” and runs from the area; leaving Stevie in the cave-in site, BTW.  When he gets past the other men, he just wails incoherently and belts out the most deranged screams I’ve ever heard from a human who was not governor of Vermont.  He runs through the mine screaming, his arms flailing about.  This is a brutal situation for a man to be in, but it was hard not to laugh at his hysterics.

He stands silently outside the adit ^[1] for a moment, appearing to be dazed.  Then he suddenly starts shrieking again.  I see where Stevie gets it.  One of the good samaritans holds him back from returning to the mine.

We end up in the hotel room where we started.  Carl is telling the story to Dr. Sanders.  The doctor explains that Helen was killed instantly in the cave-in.  She appeared at the hotel, but her car never left the mine.  He says Carl was fatigued from a long drive, and under great emotional distress.  When Helen and Stevie were gone longer than expected, maybe he feared they would never come back.  Ergo:  Hallucination.

Carl screams, “I SAW HER!  SHE WAS STANDING RIGHT HERE!”  Sanders reminds him that as a chronic alcoholic, he has had hallucinations before.  Actually there is some serious dialogue here, deeper than I would have expected from William Schallert.  One of the men who helped dig out Stevie comes by the room and says it was a woman’s scream that brought them to the cave.  Carl feels vindicated and walks Stevie out of the hotel.

This episode was a little like yesterday’s TFTC in that it seemed to jump genres.  We learn in the beginning that something strange happened.  Then we get pure Lost Weekend melodrama for almost 10 minutes. Then we get the action portion of the tonight’s broadcast, followed by another extended melodramatic scene.

It is all well-done.  Charles Aidman (Carl) was more unhinged than I have ever seen him.  I usually think of him playing calm, rational characters.  He could have used some of this anger to give his 1980s Twilight Zone narration some edge.  William Schallert also surprised me.  I think of him as a comedic actor, but he was spectacular as the psychiatrist.  The mine set was nice, and the cave-in was believable.

But that screaming!  Charles Aidman gets us off to a bad start with his loud shouts.  Stevie is just unbearable as he screams continuously in the mine.  I know his mother was just killed, but his performance is just brutal.  Aidman’s screams as he runs out of the mine are nothing short of histerical and hylarious.  We even get a replay of the opening scream in the closing scene. ^[2]  So, a good episode, undermined by some over-emoting.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Throwing a bone to crossword puzzlers.
• [2] Like Pulp Fiction, the wrap around scene is a little different in the beginning than the end.  I understand screwing up a word, but a bellhop delivered an envelope in the opening, but was never seen in the closing.  That’s a pretty hig miss.
• And that’s 1,000.

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?