Liam O’Shaughnessy (hereafter known as Liam unless I CTL-H his ass) comes running into O’Kelly’s Pub. He is excited that the good lord has seen fit for him to bear witness to the titular Little People in Killany Forest. As Liam’s portrayer is 5’2″ Hamilton Camp, they must be some wee peeps indeed.

He was in the forest and saw a strange glow.  He discovered the fabled Little People, not over 3 feet tall, working “like cockroaches” under a giant mushroom.  He waxes on and on until Mike O’Mulvaney lives my dream, tells the Clavinesque patron to shut the hell up, and tosses him out the door.

His friend Eddie helps him up.  Liam says he still has his pride and walks off “to the only real friends I got.”  I guess he is referring to the Little People who he never saw before today, and who he just called cockroaches.  Mike sees him stop by O’Dell’s Hardware. After Liam leaves with a box, Mike visits O’Dell and bullies him into revealing Liam bought a bunch of building supplies and paid with a strange triangular gold coin.

Mike continues his search for Liam.  He first goes to the rooming house here Liam lives. Mrs. O’Finnegan tells him Liam said, “They was waiting” and gave her a triangular gold coin and slipped out the back door.

Mike has just been an obnoxious jerk up until now.  He has been stalking Liam and spoke to his contacts menacingly.  Finding out Liam has a pocket full of gold, however, turns him into a full-fledged gangster.  He finds Liam in the woods and like a cartoon villain somehow gets ahead of him.  He confronts Liam with a big stick and demands payment of his debt,  Liam says the money is not his, he’s just shopping for the Little People.  He gives Mike a triangular coin anyhoo, but Mike wants it all.

Liam warns him, “the gold don’t last for those the Little People don’t like” and hands it over.  He is able to knock Mike aside and take off running.  Liam jumps over a fallen tree into a brightly lit area.  Mike leaps over the fallen tree, and I just can’t reveal what happens next.  Suffice it to say, TZ is on a roll this week.  Some of the segment was iffy, but it fully redeemed itself.

Good stuff.

I see the next segment contains one of the worst actors in the world, however, I am actually optimistic.

Post-Post:

• Written and directed by J.D. Feigelson.  He had previously adapted The Burning Man, and also wrote the TV cult classic Dark Night of the Scarecrow.  Sadly, he seems to be out of the business, or in a real dry spell.

Becky sent husband Daniel to buy a new brass bed, but he has returned with a steamer trunk that even one of them couldn’t fit in.  He has purchased some antique photo-graphic gear which, however, might also be useful in the bedroom . . . wink wink, nudge nudge.  He examines the camera housing and the lens, but notes that that glass plates are broken.  The episode opened with Becky noticing a chip in a wine glass.  Connection — none that I can see.

Daniel assures her that it isn’t just the camera debris; the trunk itself is perfect for the restoration of their house.  He finds that the trunk has a false bottom.  In the secret compartment, there is a Kodak 100, the first camera to use roll film.  Dan notices that there is still film in the camera.  Becky says, “I have a feeling the hedge isn’t going to get trimmed this afternoon” which sounds dirty even if it’s not.

Daniel develops the pictures.  The first one helpfully is a title card which states that the pictures were taken during a 1913 National Geographic expedition to the Amazon.  The pictures are of the Curucai Indians ^[1].  Becky is also amazed by the photos.  They want to show them to their old friend Alex, but it is almost midnight; so they kiss and go upstairs to trim the hedges.

The next day, after Daniel leaves to run some errands, Becky hears strange noises.  She had been chopping vegetables, so takes the knife with her to investigate.  Meanwhile, Daniel is talking to Alex who is literally an old friend.  Daniel describes the photos, but Alex says he was actually on that expedition and there can be no photos. The Curucai believed that to take their picture was to steal their souls.  They broke the scientist’s cameras and drove them out of the village.

Turns out the photographer had given his life to save this last batch of photos.  Daniel pulls them out to show Alex.  However, now there are no Indians in the pictures.  Daniel races back home and searches the house until he spots an Indian behind their ficus. As he runs, the house is booby-trapped ^[2] with forks, knives and broken glass.

There is no point in giving a play-by-play.  Daniel continues searching for his wife.  Their pet parrots have been let out of their prison, so lend an air of wilderness as they make startling appearances.  The Curucai use a sound like the wind to communicate which is also unsettling.

As he is attacked, just like fellow photographer Jeff Jeffries, Daniel grabs a camera as a weapon. When he photographs the Indian, his soul is sucked back onto film.  So he stalks the Indians like a Gawker photographer, except he has a job.  He photographs all of them back into his camera until the last ^[3].  He has squandered his ammo by taking multiple shots. Becky saves the day with her Kodak Instamatic.

Like Shadowman, this is an episode that shows what TZ is capable of.  It isn’t like the old TZ, but it has an interesting concept, and follows up with some chills and suspense. There are minor quibbles to make, but my only real criticism is the score.  During the episode it is fine, but why bookend it with sappy, sentimental Lifetime movie music?  I suppose it is supposed to be a counterpoint to the darker middle scenes, but it just reminds me of how mushy many of the new TZ episodes are.

I rate it 32 out of 35 mm.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] The Curucai seem to be a fictional tribe.
• ^[2] Hehe, booby.
• ^[3] The last Indian was covered in dark make-up except for his shoulders and feet.  Was that a tribal thing?  Or a no-people-of-color-in-the-stunt-man’s-union thing?
• Alex and Daniel were played by father and son, John and Robert Carradine.
• This was John Carradine’s last TV appearance.

Note to self: Need to work on that macro that types “It was a fine episode, just not what I’m looking for from The Twilight Zone.” Maybe CTL-T-Z.

Scientists Kevin and Daniel are working on a holographic imaging system.  Suddenly, there is a 8 to 9 month old fetus hovering in the holographic field.  Unable to explain the miraculous scientific breakthrough, the two brainiacs decide to abort the fetus by rebooting the system.  This drastic step will take all day, or slightly less time than my old Windows Vista.  After they clock out for the day, a baby appears floating in the field.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch-style house, Kevin is in bed with his wife Carol.  She is complaining that he knows she wants children.  He says he is too busy at work, and she counter-productively launches into a nagging tirade that ain’t exactly gonna put anyone in the mood to make a baby.  He spends the night in the guest room.

When he gets to work the next morning, there is a homely little girl in the purple holographic field. Kevin programs a ball for her to play with.  When Daniel finally drags his ass into work, she says her name is Nola Granville, from Westchester, New York.

Kevin tells Daniel that Nola is aging at about 10 months per hour, or about 10 years per day.  That seems more like 20 years per day to me, but I ain’t no scientist.  Daniel has done some research and discovered there was a Granville family in Westchester.  They recall having a great-aunt named Nola who was kind of a black sheep in the family.  Nola, now 10 years old ^[1], tells Kevin she remembers a trip to the beach with her father in 1916

The next day, Nola appears to be about 20; now we’re talkin’!  Nola and Kevin do two things unlikely on TV: 1) they quote William Butler Yeats back and forth, and 2) they don’t pronounce it Yeetz.^[2]  This is the first portrayal of Nola to not be cringe-inducingly awful.  In fact, Anne Twomey is pretty awesome in the role.  This is no small feat as she is translucent, purple-tinted, and her words are smothered by insipidly sweet music.

She and Kevin talk about their lives and before you know it, Kevin is moving out of his house and into the lab.  Kristoffer Tabori as Kevin is a completely different person when he is with Nola.  There is an ease and comfort that is missing in his scenes with Carol.  The deck is a stacked by having Carol be a little bit of a passive-aggressive shrew, but Tabori grounds it perfectly.

While Kevin is making time with Nola, Daniel continues investigating her.  He tracks down a relative in Westchester with maybe the worst hair-do ever seen on American television.  Her accent is also grating, but my God, that hair!  She tells him how Nola’s father threatened to disown her over dating a Jewish student.  Queue the insipid music, but this time there is an interesting difference.  The first five notes, which are repeated frequently, are right out of Star Wars.  I don’t know what it is called, but it is here.  Seems like I remember it from the end of Empire, but I’m Star Warred out.

Nola continues to age up to the point where she was pregnant.  She suddenly doubles over, screaming in pain.  She tells Kevin she lost the baby.  Thank God we are not treated to another floating fetus.  They go on talking and talking (and talking and talking) as she ages.  Turns out, she is there for a reason.  Blah, blah, blah.

Despite some great performances and a good concept, this is hard to recommend.  The mawkish music and Lifetime Movie vibe must have driven away many of the few remaining fans of the original series. C’mon, you started out great!  An unexplained fetus in the holographic field — something the original could never have gotten away with — and this is where you went with it?

CTL-T-Z:  It was a fine episode, just not what I’m looking for from The Twilight Zone.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Now played by Winnie from The Wonder Years who could have helped with the math.
• ^[2] They do, however, irritate me by saying patronize with a short “a” and eye-ther instead of ee-ither.  I have literally never heard anyone in real life use those pronunciations.
• Nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award.  No argument.
• Skipped segment:  I of Newton, which turned me off with a cutesy title and 8 minute run-time.  Once again, African Americans are segregated into their own story. However, it was worth the time to see Sherman Helmsley play someone other than George Jefferson.

Once again, this segment is like being the best synchronized swimmer at the high-dive event.  Or maybe it’s nothing like that, but at 1 AM that’s as close as I’m going to get.  It is a fine story and Peter Riegert is very good in it despite being a little over-the-top in a few scenes.  It’s just not the Twilight Zone.  Sure, time travel is a standard TZ trope, but it is buried in such sentimentality here that it loses its edge.

Big-shot Hollywood screenwriter Gus Rosenthal is both awoken and awakened at 6:00 AM by a caller from New York who doesn’t grasp the whole time-zone thing.  He gave a lecture the previous night and his fee is apparently even higher than Hillary Clinton’s as he walked away with an actual human being.  Sadly the groupie is so poorly lit, poorly made-up, and poorly cast that he might have been underpaid.  After getting some bad news from back east, he decides to go back to his childhood home in Ohio.

He arrives the next night by cab, presumably from the airport.  Poking around the lawn of the abandoned house, he finds one of the toy soldiers he used to bury as a kid.  This snaps him back 30 years.  This would put him in 1955, but his snappy new suit and the music now coming from the house seem pretty 40s-ish.  Peeking in the window, he watches as his young self is punished for stealing a comic book.  His parents realize that a crime like that could lead to bigger things; like peeking into people’s windows.  He then gets the most listless spanking in history.

The next day, young Gus is running from some bullies and runs smack into Gus Prime (let’s call him just plain Gus).  His future self scares the other kids because he “looks like a G-Man.”  Gus later sees young Gus stealing toy soldiers in the drug store, but says nothing.  He the sees young Gus being roughed up by the bullies and chases them off.  He takes young Gus home and meets both their dads . . . or both their dad . . . or the dad of both of them.

The next day adult Gus stops by young Gus’s house and tosses a baseball with him.  Then they go look at comic books, get ice cream, and play with toy soldiers.  Later, adult Gus reads to young Gus from a sci-fi book while on the swings, and wrestles with him on the front lawn.  I take it back, this might be the creepiest TZ ever.

The Gusses’s father comes to grown-up Gus’s hotel room that night then we get the gooey scenes where they explain why they act as they do and they are able to talk as equals rather than father and son.  All in all, it does not equal Ray Kinsella throwing a couple of baseballs.

There is a revelation and it is not that Gus shouldn’t be wearing that same suit for a week.  Walking to young Gus’s house, Gus finds him sitting in a hole that he dug.  This one is big enough for a real soldier, but that also not the revelation nor is it even commented upon.  Gus suddenly remembers when he was a kid, he was also visited by himself.  He realizes he is the cause of most of his own problems, but ain’t that usually the case?  He shifts back to the present.  He must have only been gone a short time because his flashlight is still shining, he has no beard, and local dogs did not eat him.

Once again, an OK segment that is just not what I’m looking for.

Post-Post:

• Classic TZ legacy:  A little Walking Distance, a little Incredible World of Horace Ford.  But you’ve going to get some recurring tropes and paradoxes in any time travel story.