The first two segments of this episode feel like someone at the Department of TV decided to throw conservatives a bone and let them have this episode as equal time.^[1]  Little Boy Lost can be taken as a parable about stay-at-home-Moms or, stretching only slightly, abortion; Wish Bank is about the soulless, confiscatory bureaucracy of government.

Little Boy Lost

Tortoise-shell glasses, turned-up collar, cheesy mustache, and later seen wearing a sweater draped over his shoulders. You’re better off without him.

Carol Shelton is late to the movies ^[2] with her fella Greg.  She has received a job offer to become a serious photographer, shooting “no more anorexic models, no more scotch ads.”  Which frankly is all that would have drawn me to the profession in the first place. She will now be traveling the world, ergo not in the kitchen much.

Greg is not thrilled at this news. He asks, “Did you ever stop to think about us, our future for a second?”  He doesn’t understand why they can’t just get married and have a couple of kids.  The dialogue here is a little muddled so it isn’t even clear at one point who is taking which side of the argument. Greg’s position is confirmed when he walks off.

Carol’s first “serious” job for the international agency seems to be shooting a kid at the local zoo, although I guess she hasn’t started the new gig yet.  She spots the kid — who, probably not coincidentally, looks a lot like Billy Mumy ^[3] —  and correctly guesses his name is Kenny.  They take pictures all over the zoo, and even get someone to take a picture of the the two of them. At the end of the day, Carol offers to send copies to Kenny if he will give her his address.  He skateboards off into the magic hour.

Carol develops the negatives and feels a real connection to Kenny.  While she is working, the agency leaves her a message apologizing that the model for her shoot did not show up.  Carol begins to have regrets about putting her career over having babies.

She goes to Greg’s apartment and tells him that she has to take this job, but she is clearly remorseful.  As they embrace, she sees Kenny down on the street looking up. When she goes home, he is in her apartment.

He says, “You told him no!  Why did you tell him no!”  Carol offers to take him home, but he says he doesn’t have one. She asks how he knew where she lived and, like all the men in her life, he runs away.  In this case, however, he literally runs around a corner and vanishes completely.

She later sees him from her window and chases him down.  Seeing that he has freckles as she did, Carol finally realizes who Kenny is.  They both tear up and Kenny asks why she “couldn’t choose me.”  Carol says she will someday, although I assume Kenny was based on a Carol/Greg DNA coupling which now seems unlikely.  Kenny begins fading away like Barfly Bruce in Shatterday.  Before he disappears completely, he twists the knife by saying, “Goodbye, Mom.”  As maudlin music plays, the camera pulls back from her weeping against a non-willow tree, leaving her alone to wallow in her selfishness.

There is a final scene that is also a little muddled.  Carol is on the phone. She promises to “get some great stuff, to tear their hearts out.”  But she is wearing a snappy 80’s business suit which makes you wonder if she is going to continue working in the city.  If she were going international, wouldn’t she be in jeans or camo or a beret?  From her luggage and the closing narration, though, it is clear she has opted to be the jet-setting childless international photographer.

The ending really plays up the sense of loss and wasted opportunity — i.e that Carol blew it.  I guess it would have been a cop-out for her to choose the motherhood route after this experience.  The closing narration and music make it clear her choice is to regarded as tragic.  Now take off them shoes and get back in the kitchen, baby!

Wish Bank

Janice Hammond rubs a magic lamp at a yard sale so gets three wishes. She wishes for $10 million, to look 10 years younger, and for her ex-husband to have erectile dysfunction . . . which I’m sure will be gratifying to enslaved people and starving kids all over the world.

Janice then finds out that she has to pay taxes on her wishes despite the government not having a damn thing to do with it.

Then she has to stand in a long line to get her papers validated.

Then the nasty clerk tells her she is missing a critical form.

Then the clerks all put on their Devo hats and go on break.

There is a reason this place is called the Department of Magical Venues (DMV).

Like many of the short segments, it is a one-joke piece.  But it is a pretty good joke, and like all good jokes, is based on truth.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Yeah, that balances the scales.  Actually, I don’t know if things had gotten so divisive then.  Sure Reagan was in office and hated by many, but I’m not sure pop culture had skewed entirely left yet.
• ^[2] Beverly Hills Cop, if it makes a difference.  Watched this again a few weeks ago.  It holds up.
• ^[3] Featured in three episodes of the 1960’s series, one episode of the 2000’s series, and the movie.  He was also behind Fish Heads.
• Linking Fish Heads serendipitously led me to another awesome video from him — The Beatles’ A Day in the Life mashed up with the opening from Green Acres. Great stuff.
• Classic TZ Legacy:  For shame, riffing on the name of a classic episode.  I look forward to The Mobsters are Due on Maple Street and Ear of the Beholder.
• [UPDATE] There actually is an upcoming episode called Dead Woman’s Shoes.

Bob Spindler has just closed some sort of big deal that is not important enough to describe to the viewers.  It was big enough to score him a commission of $1,500.  That’s still only $3k today.  A nice payday, but not life-changing — unless you’re Bob Spindler.

He squanders it on buying round after round at the local bar rather than judiciously investing it in 20 year old dancers in the VIP Room.  Or maybe a new jacket — the Murray Hamilton Collection would be a step-up.  He calls his wife and promises he will have just one more before heading for home. He continues to get so loaded that even free drinks aren’t enough to keep his co-workers at the same table with him.

Kudos for them trying to get his keys, but maybe they should have tried a little harder. On the way home, he has a near-miss with an on-coming car and a near-hit with some trees.  Although, in literal terms, it was the other way around.  Neither he nor his jacket is seriously injured.  He blames the other driver, creating instant empathy with viewers everywhere.  Turns out he has fortuitously crashed right in front of the titular Kentucky Rye bar.

From this point forward, good structure would dictate that everything happens for a reason, leading to an logical conclusion. Unless the desired result was confusion, this was not the case.

He goes into the bar and his wound from the crash is magically healed, he beats the local undefeated champ at arm-wrestling, the bartender calls for drinks on the house, and the bar is on sale for only $1,600 with insanely low APR.  Spindler goes behind the bar and announces another round on the house.  He opens up the taps and fills two pitchers with mostly suds.^[1]  He tries to bargain the owner down, but he stubbornly stays at $1,600.

Here’s where I am lost.  Knowing what is coming, I can say there is no reason he should own the bar.  Even if I concede that he must own it and thus it is available at a fire (of Hell) sale price, why is it made just out-of-reach at $100 more than his Commission? And didn’t he blow a chunk of that on booze for his co-workers anyway?

A stranger bathed in angelic light like Warren Beatty^[2] offers to put up the remaining $100.  Spindler buys himself a bar!  He drunkenly tours his new kingdom.  The customers suddenly become motionless or very slow — why wouldn’t it be one or the other?  Spindler passes out and awakens in a busted-ass, dusty abandoned building — the bar he bought last night.  So I guess beer-goggles work on real estate too.

Out of the window he sees his car being hooked up to a wrecker.  The man who put up the $100 appears and says he is the driver Spindler ran off the road last night.  Outside, he sees the man being covered with a sheet and loaded into a hearse as his wife grieves.  Oddly, the wife was in the bar last night even though she is still alive.  And who were all those other customers?  Spindler sees his own body being loaded up and screams from the boarded-up building.

So what was the point of his victim putting up the $100?  The bartender laughs maniacally and says, “It’s yours!  It’s all yours!”  So is he stuck in the bar forever?  Is that his hell — an alcoholic stuck in a bar?  What difference does it make if he owns it? And what does that really mean, that he owns it?  Surely some living guy actually has the title and pays the taxes.

In the big picture, he did bad.  He is consigned to eternity in this abandoned bar where he will be eternally tormented by the sunny reality he can only see through slits in the shuttered windows.  I’m totally on board with that; I’m just not sure why we needed more dead ends than Sim City.

Despite my bitching, I still rate it 80 Proof.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] This might be the real reason he goes to hell.  It is fun watching the background extras dutifully try to pour it into glasses, though.
• ^[2] Uber obscure.  I saw Warren Beatty on Larry King’s CNN show once eons ago. Thinking it would make him appear like a young stud again, he had the crew bathe him in an amber light which succeeded only in making him look pathetic; but still better than me.
• Bob Spindler is played by Jeffrey DeMunn from the watchable season of The Walking Dead.  OK, it got good again after they left the farm.  But, for the love of God, let it be Rick that Nagen brained in the season 6 finale.
• TZ Legacy:  A Nice Place to Visit also had a man end up in hospitable surroundings who ended up with a manically-laughing minion of Satan.
• Skipped Segment:  Children’s Zoo.  OK for a short, one-note film, but not really what I’m here for.
• IMDb and YouTube.

Jackie (Eric Bogosian) is not much of a burglar.  He has just scaled a rope a) in front of a museum on the side facing the street, and b) left the rope dangling behind him.  Maybe that jerk can climb a rope, but I’m smarter. Whoa, gym class flashback.

Jackie — the default name for low-life TV crooks — seems to be looking for something specific.  For reasons unknown and unexplained, he settles on a rock generically-labelled Religious Talisman.  He grabs the rock, but sets off the alarm.  He is shot by a security guard with a similar aptitude for his job, because Jackie still manages to escape out the window and down the rope after being shot.  To be fair, though, the guard arrived in less time than it took Jackie to run to the window.

Jackie is curled up in pain, still clutching the rock when it begins to glow.  A moment later, he pulls up his shirt to reveal his wound has healed.  Back at his apartment, he hears a commotion and discoverers his hairy neighbor neighbor Harry has dropped dead.  Jackie runs home to get the stone.  When he returns, he keeps the stone hidden in his hand as he pretends to heal Harry by the laying on of hands.

Harry later tells Jackie that he had a near-death experience.  He left his body, could see the neighbors, saw the usual bright light.  Jackie has stupidly revealed the rock to him. Harry says, “That baby is going to be our ticket to fame and fortune.”  So suddenly it’s OUR ticket?

In the next scene, after some unspecified period of time, Jackie is in a white suit on a stage.  He has wisely started going by the name Brother John — a faith healer just like the ones on TV; except legitimate.  He is kneeling before a girl in a wheelchair and asks for her to be healed.  The young actress seems like she couldn’t care less. She does at least give a smile when BroJo yanks her out of the chair and she is able to walk.

After he leaves the stage, Harry takes to a podium to ask people to send whatever they can spare so their work can continue.  As theft and misusing sacred powers go, this ain’t really all that bad.  The dope who hid this rock away in a museum is the real criminal.  I’m sure it was put there by top men.  Top Men.

BroJo is actually happy to be helping people whereas Harry is all about the “Love Offerings”.  He wants to expand the program to 90 minutes to help more people, but Harry complains that will eat into their profits.  As he is removing his make-up, BroJo sees a man behind him in the mirror.

Pop Quiz:  Is it a Cop, a Construction Worker, an Indian, a Cowboy, a Soldier, or a Biker?  This is Hollywood — of course, it is the mystical Indian because all Indians have magic powers.  Or, in this case, Mexicans playing Indians as is the actor Joaquin Martinez.^[1] He has come to get the Healing Stone which is sacred to his people.  BroJo is ready to return the stone, but Harry refuses.  The Indian, tells him that after this choice, his path might not be pleasant.

BroJo gets a visit from a gangster he worked for 11 years ago.  He has lung cancer and wants BroJo to cure him.  He agrees to cure the mobster for $2 million.  When he tries, though, the rock does not work.  He is worried about the rock not working for that night’s show, so they grab a deaf kid from the audience and bring him backstage.

Like the girl, the young actor shows no emotion at all at the prospect of being cured. BroJo palms the stone and lays on them hands.  Nothing.  The boy’s hearing does not return, but the Indian does.  He says the rock only works for those who heal unselfishly. And it seems to take the power back retroactively — BroJo collapses with his old bullet wound. He hands the rock to the boy and shows him how to heal the wound.  Then he takes the rock back and cures the boy’s deafness.  He then laterals the rock to the Indian, who runs it in for a touchdown.^[2]

BroJo walks away from the church. He has a renewed sense of caring for people which will last until his Mafioso pal puts another bullet in his gut for not curing him.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Maybe I was too hasty on the Indian thing.  It’s hard to say for sure what they were going for or if they were purposely sending mixed signals.  He did not have a ponytail or braided hair like most Hollywood Indians, and he wore a sarape.  On the other hand, he was wearing beads which you don’t usually see on a Hollywood Mexican.
• The actor is not much help.  He was born in Mexico City, but his last five roles were Chief, Enrique, Xela, Running Bear and Geronimo.
• Wikipedia  and Wikia call him a “Native American man”, so it must be true.
• ^[2] Thus exhausting my knowledge of sports.
• Available on YouTube.

I have said before that if you stick a couple of guys in space suits, and I’m on board for just about anything.  Apollo 18 — not great, but OK. Europa Report — a little slow, but it kept me awake.  Prometheus — well, there is a limit.

This episode got off to an immediate good start with me by being so mundane.  We get a couple of minutes of stock footage of the Space Shuttle and astronauts doing EVAs.  It was this simple beginning that reeled me in.  As much as I liked Gravity, George Clooney wasting fuel doing dangerous circle jerks around the ship and running his yap nonstop while Sandra Bullock was trying to work just took me out of the movie.

Here we get simple dialogue, and the kind of simple joshing that astronauts always put on to keep the funding coming.  Astronaut Becky sees a blue light flash from her EVA. Nothing comes of it, and the shuttle lands safely.

After the shuttle is back on the ground and up on the rack, the technicians start tearing it apart. Camera #2 seems to have had a problem, going haywire just like NASA cameras do when the UFOs show up.

As Chief Simmons is taking it away for analysis, it begins glowing purple. Simmons disappears and the camera falls to the ground.  I suppose this is the same light the astronaut reported.  Maybe purple just looked better than blue in post-production.

His assistant Tyson declares a Code F emergency.  Really, this happens so often there is a code assigned?  And not even like Code ZAGH, but the 6th code in the book?  The camera is taken to a secure isolation room to be analyzed.  While four scientists are looking on, the camera glows again and Simmons reappears in the isolation room.  They note that the camera is gone which doesn’t make much sense.  Did the camera turn into the man?  When the man first disappeared, the camera was left behind.

Simmons demands to be let out. Director Heilman shows up and begins questioning him.  Soon, Simmons disappears and it is Simmons’ wife in the isolation room. When Simmons reappears, he gets even more belligerent, destroying equipment in the room.  When he passes out, Heilman goes in with a gas-mask.  Turns out he was only playing possum.  He grabs Heilman and turns blue again.  This time both men disappear and an atomic bomb appears in the room.  Its countdown clock is at 2 minutes.

One of the scientists goes into the room and tries to reason with it.  He actually talks to the device, which makes sense but is a little odd looking.  It is suspenseful as the machine just continues counting down as the man talks to it.  At 1 second to go, it transforms into Heiland and walks out the door.

One of the scientists finds him outside and asks why he came here.  He replies, “Just curious.”  Then turns into a little ball of light and zips away.

Well, this was like finding out Wallyworld was closed.  I loved every minute of the trip . . . then, a big nothing.  Like Wordplay yesterday, it lacks the features of a 1960s TZ episode:  irony, a twist, come-uppance, self-realization; most of all, closure.  I guess this is the new & improved TZ, although 30 years old now — but closer to the original than to present day.  Both segments were very well-made but seemed to be lacking something at their core.

Nonetheless, another fun outing.

Post-Post:

• Skipped segment:  Sweet Dreams is an 8-minute segment which would have been right at home as one of Night Gallery’s filler bits — and that’s not a good thing.  It is an OK little short, fine effects and Meg Foster is entrancing.  Just not much original here.  BTW, way to spoil the twist on the menu picture!

Comedian’s comedian ^[1] Robert Klein is trying to learn about his company’s 67 new products in one week.  To be fair, one of the new medical products is a sphyg-momanometer.  OK, that’s a mouthful, but are they saying that a medical equipment vendor did not already sell sphygmomanometers? That and malpractice insurance would seem to be the first two items on a doctor’s shopping list.  OK, it really is too perfect a word not to be used in the script.

He was up until 2 am studying and even had his manual in front of him as he shaved. The first hint of things to come is when his wife refers to their child’s doctor as Dr. Bumper.  This is a great introduction into the story as it is unusual and jarring, but is a conceivable surname.^[2]  Also it reminds me of Dr. Beeper.

Klein goes out to his car.  Oddly, he walks past the sports car in the driveway and goes to the family truckster station wagon to drive to work.  His neighbor tells him his dog just had five puppies.  He adds, “That’s quite a few for a small dog like an encyclopedia.” Klein calls him out for using the word encyclopedia, but his neighbor is just as confused that Klein doesn’t seem to know that the dog is an encyclopedia.

At the office, a few individual words are randomly replaced with other unrelated words.  Experience becomes mayonnaise, anniversary becomes throw-rug, lunch becomes dinosaur.  He goes home for dinosaur and his wife asks him to look in on their son whose cold is getting worse.  She then actually says dinosaur and Klein accuses her of being in cahoots with people from the office.  He presses her to define lunch.  She is getting concerned, but tells him that lunch is a color — sort of light red.

Back at the office, the word replacements are becoming more frequent.  Soon, people are speaking in entire sentences of random words.  I was happy to see they followed the logic and people could no longer understand Klein either.  Although since from their POV, he is the only one acting strangely, you might think they’d be concerned he was having a stroke.

Even his name has been replaced — awesomely, he is now Hinge Thunder.  Finally arriving at his desk, he is surrounded by people speaking these randomly replaced words and understanding each other.  His isolation is perfectly captured by his phone ringing.  It is very easy to empathize with him and his dread of answering this call which he knows will be incomprehensible to him.  When the caller begins, “Timber, Hinge . . . ” and continues on, Klein flees the office.  He doesn’t even use the restroom because he doesn’t know whether to identify as an oven-mitt or a baklava. ^[4]

At home, his wife is very upset but her husband can’t understand what she is saying, just like men everywhere.^[3]   Upstairs, he finds his son is very sick, so they rush him to the hospital.  The emergency room has no idea what he is saying, but his wife is able to get help for the boy.  Klein feels helpless as he awaits an update.  He couldn’t help his son, now he can’t comfort his wife.  The doctor comes back with good news — at least judging by his wife’s reaction.

That night he begins leafing through his son’s picture book realizing that he will have to start over.

I love the concept, and the execution was great.  I would have liked a few more throw-away gags like the Fasten Step-Dad warning light in Klein’s car, but that’s just looking for trouble. That said, it would have been nice if it went to another level.  There is really no effort to tie his new vocabulary at work to this phenomena.  His age gets a mention, but only as aside — he’s only 42, after all.  Certainly he would like to be better understood at the hospital to help his son, but his wife is right there so there is no real tension or danger.

So, there really was no irony, nothing learned, no twist, no comeuppance, no cruel fate.  I really enjoyed the episode, but if they have dumped most of the original series’s tropes by the 2nd episode, it does not bode well for the future.

I rate it & out of #*.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Definition:  A comedian that no one thinks is funny.  See also Colin Quinn, Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Winters, etc.  Note that the late Garry Shandling was labeled a comedian’s comedian’s comedian thus circling around to be funny again.
• Hey, look at me — I’m a blogger’s blogger!
• ^[2] One site says there are 46 people named Bumper in the US, but I’m dubious.  In fact, I’m Joe Dubious.
• ^[3] I had to identify as a woman for a few seconds to type that.  Back now.
• ^[4] It’s hard to distinguish the jokes in such  wacky episode.  Of course, it’s probably difficult in the non-wacky episodes, too.
• The neighbor is played by Robert Downey Jr’s father, Efram Zimbalist Sr.
• TZ Legacy:  Feels like there is something, but I just can’t place it.
• IMDb and YouTube (clip only)