Leonard Randall walks to a comfortable chair in front of a classroom of students.  He requests quiet and soon slumps down in the chair.  He suddenly becomes alert and states in a confident, somehow electronically-enhanced voice, “I am Delos, and I am here.”  He says he was born 10,000 years ago and died 9,500 years ago.  C’mon, I’m down with his perfect English, his being from Atlantis, and his ability to project his consciousness millennia into the future, but he lived to be 500 years old?

He offers his wisdom to the paying customers.  So I guess they aren’t students.  They are people who have paid good money to be fed a line of intellectually bankrupt nonsense by a con-man.  Say, maybe they are students.

The first rube uses her opportunity to access the wisdom accumulated over millennia from all reaches of the cosmos and planes of existence to ask if she should marry her boyfriend.  Delos, admittedly, gives a nice parable about a butterfly that makes her happy, but maybe not so much her boyfriend.

He says, “This vessel grows weary” and can only take one more question.  He calls on “the one this vessel calls Julia.”  She asks why Delos stayed silent for so long, and why he came back now.  That’s a better question, but would be about #300 on my list.  He says, “This vessel called Leonard has been chosen to receive wisdom.  The universe has selected him.”  He comes now because he senses the same decay that caused Atlantis to sink below the ocean.  He further states that they have choices to make, that they will tilt the cosmic balance between good and evil, that there is light in each of them, and that cassettes will be available in the lobby in 30 minutes.

Backstage, Leonard’s manager updates him on retreat bookings, and the sales of crystals, tapes and amulets.  It is clear they regard Delos’ followers as wallets with legs.  Leonard is surprised when a different voice comes out of his pie-hole, even deeper and more electronically enhanced than Delos.

It would be even more tedious than usual to recap what follows.  In this case, however, that is not a sign of the episode’s mediocrity.  Peter Scolari defies expectations of anyone who knows his other work.  He is utterly believable not only as Leonard, but as Delos, and then the legitimate entity who eventually speaks through him.  Even better, and allowing a little of his comedic chops, are the transitions between conciousnesses.  Despite some humor, Scolari commits 100% to the part without the slightest wink or irony.

Kudos too to the writing which was tight throughout.  The transitions are as well written as they are performed, with the real entity being contrasted with the vacuous Leonard.  Even the entity’s platitudes, which we have heard before from a thousand snotty-ass aliens, have an elegance and a gravitas we don’t often see.  Finally, it is an interesting choice to have the real entity be kind and interested in improving humanity.  How often does that happen?

Actually, it is a little ambiguous whether the entity is a threat or will usher in a new era of peace through Leonard.  But he has a soothing voice and looks a little Jesusy, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Lonely Norman Blaine worries that no one loves him and that when he dies, no one will mourn.  He returns home to wallow in his isolation and seclusion.

He dumps out some food for his only companion, a parakeet . . . which he keeps in a cage . . . away from any other parakeet . . . which will someday be flushed down the porcelain graveyard unmourned.  Not much room for self-awareness in this studio apartment.

He cooks up a Swanson Lonely-Man TV Dinner in an oven that is suspiciously clean for a single dude.  He falls asleep watching TV and wakes up at midnight to a loud infomercial, though, sadly not for Girls Gone Wild.  The announcer is hawking classical records ^[1], which interests Norman.  He grabs a pencil to jot down the phone number 555-4221 (this must be a local infomercial) ^[2].  He is so addle that not only can’t he remember this easy number, he even writes it down wrong.

He calls the number and an American woman answers which should have been his first sign that something was amiss.  He immediately realizes he has dialed the wrong number and apologizes for waking her.  She says she was just sitting around and heard the phone ring.  The two lonely people decide to have a little chat.  Her name is Mary-Ann like the cute girl on Gilligan’s Island; his is Norman like the psycho killer.

The next day at work he is telling his obnoxious office-mate Richard about the 90 minute conversation he had last night with a girl,  It was unusual for him because 1) it was so comfortable, 2) it was like they were old friends, and 3) it wasn’t $6.00 for the first 5 minutes.  Richard misses Norman’s more customary silence, but advises him to ask Mary-Ann out.

The next night, Norman calls Mary-Ann again.  This time they talk for 3 1/2 hours.  Mercifully, we hear only the last few seconds.  Mary-Ann says how much she enjoys their talks.  He asks to meet her somewhere, but she refuses.  She wants to keep the NATO strategy of No Action Talk Only.  That would be swell, he lies.  He agrees to call her again the next night.

This goes on for five nights.  He complains to Richard about her refusal to meet him.  Richard helpfully explains how to determine the address of her phone number without waiting 20 years for Google to be invented.  Apparently Norman takes his advice because we next see him walking into the Civic Art Gallery and asking for Mary-Ann.  The receptionist doesn’t know a Mary-Ann but suggests Norman stick around to ask the Director.

Norman wanders around.  He picks up a white courtesy phone and dials Mary-Ann’s number.  To his surprise, he hears a phone ringing nearby.  He doesn’t hang up the receiver, but goes to the other phone and picks it up.  He seems surprised no one is on the line, but what did he expect?  He hangs up and looks at a sculpture nearby of a girl on a bench.  Another art-lover tells him it is a self-portrait, the last work the artist ever completed before killing herself.  And her name was Mary-Ann Lindeby.

That night, Norman calls her again.  Mary-Ann says, “I saw you come by today.  You were standing right in front of me talking to that woman.”  Before she can say, “Did you think she was pretty?” Norman says “That’s impossible” and hangs up on her.

Facing the prospect of moving on to the Swanson Horny-Man TV Dinner, he quickly calls her back.  She apologizes to him, saying she never should have answered the phone.  She was just so lonely, and it was so dark.  She says goodbye and hangs up.

Norman thinks about her all the next day.  That night he stares at the phone.  He finally calls her, but gets no answer.  The next day, he goes back to the gallery.  He tells her he felt like he was nothing and that he had nothing until they met on the phone.  For the first time he feels like he is in love.  He moves to kiss the sculpture, but a security guard busts him.  Oh the humiliation!

That night, Mary-Ann calls him — this script really could have used some tightening up.  Rod Serling loved his long-winded speeches, but I’ll say this for him — it padded out an episode without so much repitition.  She says she heard what he said and it reminded her of herself just before she committed suicide.  “Come to me now,” she says.  “Tonight.”

He goes to the closed gallery and finds her sculpture.  He hears her voice, “It’s been so long since anyone said they loved me.”  He sits on the bench.  She says, “I don’t want to be alone anymore.  Stay with me.”  He says, “Forever.”

The security guard comes around again and now there are two bronze figures sitting in the exhibit about to kiss.  His flashlight stops briefly on them, but continues on.  Whaddya want for $12 an hour?

Seem like they could have done more with this.  Why is she trapped in the sculpture?  Is it punishment for the “sin” of suicide?  Is she really better off dragging Norman to the same fate?  Is he happier?  Sure, they are together, but they are both trapped in this hellish “locked-in” existence.  Even worse, they are in a permanent, not-quite embrace which must be frustrating.  Now that they are together, will they begin making Jerky Boys type calls?  What will happen to Norman’s parakeet?

Still, I liked the premise and it has left me thinking.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Sadly the great commercial with Basil Rathbone hawking classical records does not seem to be on You Tube.  Found it.
• [2] At first it seems like an error to have this be a local number, but it is actually necessary.  They couldn’t have him mis-dialing a long-distance number, then making repeated trips to The Louvre.  First, there was no budget to go to France, and second, that Mona Lisa . . . not a looker.
• Classic TZ Connection: Long Distance Call, Night Call, really any episode with “call” in the title.  Miniature has been mentioned elsewhere.
• I didn’t know how to work it in above, but nice rack on that sculpture!  And some fine detail work on the nipples.
• If the phone were in the Picasso Gallery . . .
• If the phone were in the Rubens Gallery . . .

Dramatis Personae

Martha  Brockman

Selena  Brockman

Diane  Brockman

Debra Brockman

Kent  Brockman

What a mess!  Maybe there’s a reason this original story from Rod Serling never got produced.  At least in Number Twelve Looks Just Like You we didn’t have to meet all twelve; and they were hot!

Why would they start out with this shot of a girl in a B&W photo?  We don’t know who she is, and won’t know the significance until 2/3rds into the episode.  It sets us up for nothing.  Did any viewers really recognize the bandage on her arm that appears to be a sleeve?  Benedict Cumberbatch wouldn’t have noticed it.  I mean, Sherlock Holmes would have.  I just assume Cumberbatch is an average Joe (with occasional superhero tendancies) like me and probably would not have.

Young Doctor Burrell is making a house-call to check on elderly Selena Brockman, which might be the single most fantastic premise in this entire series.  But such personal care is why he went into medicine.  He quickly regresses to the medical mean by giving the old woman a fistful of pills.  Her niece Diane Brockman uses the opportunity to hit on the doctor.  No, wait, that’s why he went into medicine.

Another niece, Debra Brockman, has received a phone call asking her to come see Selena whom she has never met.  Diane greets her and introduces her to Orville the Handyman.  Diane calls him the village idiot but says it is OK because he is deaf and she had her head turned.  Debra sees another woman staring catatonically out the window.  Diane says that is her mother which I guess makes her Martha Brockman.

Diane takes Debra upstairs to meet Selena.  Debra tells the old woman she will be helping to take care of her.  Selena takes her hand so firmly it hurts.  It leaves a mark which the doctor later tells Debra is a liverspot, but he might have just been flirting.  When the doctor next visits Selena, he is surprised she is dressed and sitting up alert in bed.

That night, however, the doctor gets a call from Debra who asks him to come to the house.  When he arrives, she is sitting in the dark.  He takes her to the hospital, but they can find no reason for her apparent premature aging. You know what I can find no reason for?  Not showing her aged face.  At the house, her face is kept in the shadows.  She is not shown at the hospital at all.  This is the point where her older self should have been revealed.  We know what is happening, and Debra thought it was severe enough to call the doctor.  Instead, we see her a few minutes later, after we have gotten used to the idea.  And she is not hideous enough to warrant any suspense that might have built up.

Back at the house again, the doctor is taking Diane’s blood pressure.  She says she is fine and her mother Martha is fine also.  He notices a nasty burn scar, which she says is from an accident when she was a child.  Selena rolls her wheelchair in and says they are both fine.  Dr. Burrell notes the irony that Debra is aging as Selena is getting younger.  She tells him his services are no longer needed.

Orville catches Burrell outside and shows him a diary.  There is the photo inside of the girl wearing wearing a bandage in the same spot as Diane’s scar, and it is dated 1940.   But the entry says it is her mother Martha in the picture.  The camera pans away from them in a textbook camera move guaranteed to create suspense — who is around the corner . . . did they overhear the doctor . . . is Orville in danger for ratting the Brockwomen out?  But no . . . yawn . . . the pan stops on a statue.  Hunh?  There’s actually a good gag to be had there, but I don’t think they realized it.  Also, it was aleady sorta used on the original TZ’s A Penny for your Thoughts.

Back at the hospital, we finally get our first look at the prematurely aged Debra.  That night, Burrell sneaks back to the house.  He rolls up the catatonic Martha’s sleeve and sees no scar.  He says, “You’re Diane!  You’re the daughter!”  Diane walks in and Burrell accuses her, pointing out that Martha has no scar.  Also that she had green eyes like Diane did.  “How old are you really, Martha?”

He busts into Selena’s bedroom and shouts, “It’s not right!  Give Debra back her years!”  His pleas fall on deaf ears.  Literally.  Heh heh.

Selena says, “What do you know about it doctor?  The game is longevity.  You play at it with your medicine and your stethoscopes, but we’ve won.  There’s one rule doctor.  It has nothing to do with morality or love.  When illness approaches, the trade takes place.”

Diane tries to brain him with a fireplace poker, but they get into a struggle.  While they wrestle, Martha enters with a oil lamp and cries, “Mommy”  Diane backs away from her saying, “Get away from me!”  the lamp falls and breaks and the wild fire spreads like . . . er, wildfire.  Only Burrell gets out alive.  Maybe.

The police say that neighbors saw one woman escape, clothes on fire.  Debra returns to the house looking young and cute again.  Meanwhile at the hospital, an old indigent woman with massive burns has been admitted.  A nurse notes that Jane Doe’s left arm seems to be healing quickly.  Another nurse in the hall shows a friend a burn mark on her left arm that she doesn’t remember getting.  Well gee, it couldn’t have been from Jane Doe — her hands are shown completely bandaged over.

The old greedily leaching youth from the young is nothing original, but that’s OK.  It’s one of those tropes that are too good to leave alone; especially as I get older.  This production, however, just seems a little busy.  I think dropping one of the Brockmans would have tightened the story up nicely.

Maybe it would have made this crazy family less dysfunctional.  Debra has never met her aunt Selena or her aunt Martha?  OK, I guess families move away or split up.  Why is Martha being abused by her mother as the walking fountain of youth?  It is demonstrated at the end that it need not be a blood relative.  For that matter, why did they recruit cousin Debra at all?  Couldn’t they just have placed an ad for “Hot nurse wanted.  Must provide uniform” like I do?

Other Stuff:

• Sweet Jeebus, I haven’t watched a TZ episode in weeks.  Was the new guy’s narration this insipid before, or is he going a new way?  Why do they try to make this show so . . . what, normal?  Melodramatic?  This is the MFing TZ, bitches!  Where is the edge, where is the menace?

A dude is lighting another dude’s cigarette in a bar, and his name is Timothy Bottoms.  Thank God I’m woke enough not to make anything of that.

The older man tells Miley Judson to keep the box of matches which says Hellgramite Method and has a red slash over a liquor bottle which I interpret as “say no to blended Scotch.”  The back of the box promises “a cure for the problem drinker” although a better ad for a matchbox would  be “a cure for the modern smoker.”  When he turns to the man, he is gone.  So Miley orders another drink.

He wakes up hours later with his head on the bar.  It’s bad to fall asleep at a bar, but it’s worse to be a bar that allows a dude to fall asleep there for hours.  He asks for another drink, but the bartender tells him to go home.  He grabs a pizza box that has been sitting on the bar beside him for 5 hours and heads home.  There is no ad on the pizza box to “cure the problem eater.”  At home, his wife is not pleased to have him coming home drunk yet again.

The ad said they were open 24 hours, so that night Miley goes to see Dr. Eugene Murrich at the sprawling medical campus of Hellgramite Method (i.e. Murrich’s living room).  After offering Miley a drink, which he happily accepts, Murrich offers him a red pill.  Like Morpheus, Murrich warns him that if he takes the red pill “there’s no turning back.”  Like Neo, Miley takes the pill.

The next morning, his wife is still pissed in the American sense, and he is probably still pissed in the British sense.  She is hostile and not supportive at all, but she’s probably seen this 100 times.  He says this time is different, and goes to work.

Naturally, he heads back to the same bar again.  He slams back his usual mass quantity of booze.  This time, however, he feels no effect from it.  He perspicaciously thinks, hey, maybe it has something to do with that red pill I took from an unlicensed practitioner working out of his living room at 3 am last night.  So he goes back to see Murrich.

Murrich explains that just like Agent Smith did to Neo, he put a disgusting squid-like bug inside Miley.  There was a hellgramite tapeworm larvae inside the red pill.  He explains, “By now, the worm ^[1] has attached itself to your stomach, and the drinking has stimulated its growth.  From now on the hellgramite will absorb all the liquor you can consume.  You won’t feel any effect from drinking.”  Miley is understandably doubtful.  Then Murrich shows him one of the slimy bastards in a glass jar.

Murrich helpfully waits until after the commercial to further explain the rules.  “No matter how much you drink, the worm will not be satisfied.  If ever you stop drinking, the pain will be excruciating . . . it’s dangerous.  You might not live through it.  And even if you succeed, the worm will always be waiting for you to drink again.  Every time the hellgramite is awakened from its dormant state, it comes back stronger.  Eventually, strong enough to kill you.”

Back at home, he once again tells his wife this time will be different; then kicks her and his son out.  He pours all the liquor in the house down the drain.  He then goes through the excruciating withdrawal phase.  While in agony, he goes back to see Murrich.  We finally get Murrich’s motivation, which is that he lost his family to a drunk driver.

But I’m still not entirely understanding Murrich’ motivation.  Is he interested in solving a problem or just wreaking vengeance on other alcoholics?  Taking the pill neutralizes the intake of liquor — great!  But why the agonizing pain?  And the only way to stop the pain is to drink more?  Isn’t that counter-productive?  Sure, the continued drinking will be fatal eventually, but how many more lives will be at risk until that time?

Back at home, Miley continues suffering through the withdrawals.  He is in such pain that he begins searching for any leftover alcohol.  He finally finds a small bottle in his luggage.  We next see him clean and sober handing a Hellgramite Method matchbox to another alchie.  But what does this mean?  Did he find temporary relief from the pain by drinking the little bottle?  Or did he persevere through the pain and is now free (as long as he doesn’t take another drink)?  The scene isn’t played to make that ambiguity interesting, so I guess it is the latter.  But what is his motivation to lure more drunks into the painful, potentially deadly, scheme?

A fine episode, but it could have been tightened up.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] I’m no entomologist, but how is this thing a worm?  It has at least 6 appendages and a definable head and abdomen.  Probably a thorax back there somewhere, too.
• Hey, Miley, how about calling the cops or a good gastroenterologist?

Mary McNeal is a regression therapist or, as they are more accurately known, a fraud.  The exploration of past lives seems to be a real thing in this world, so I am happy to go along with it.

Mary McNeal asks her very old patient to recall “the most significant memory of your past lives.”  She describes being a seamstress during the Revolutionary War, although she  is so old that might just be a regular memory.  Some British soldiers accused her of hiding soldiers, and burned her shop down with her in it.  She begins to panic, but Mary brings her back.  The woman is happy to have learned the reason for her fear of fire, men in uniforms, and taxation without representation.  Mary opines that if everyone could recall their past lives, we’d be kinder to each other because we could remember being poor or hungry.

In her office, Mary uses a small tape recorder to play herself leading a regression session to lull herself into remembering a past life.  When she awakens, as always, she has been unable to recall any past lives.  She has overslept, and wants to apologize to her next patient for missing her appointment.  Rather than just pick up a phone, she goes to the patient’s house.  But the woman answering the door is not her patient.  Stranger, the woman has perfect recall of all her past lives; as do all the inhabitants of this world.

Mary returns to her office and finds another business operating there.  OK, classic TZ, she has slipped into another world.  Great, I always dig these stories; but when did she enter this world?  Wouldn’t the logical point have been when she hypnotized herself?  But that sure looked like her office that she woke up in — same blue walls and white sofa.  But somehow the world changed after she left the office, and before she visited her patient.  No matter.

Ironically, this new business helps people adjust to their new lives.  Mr. Sinclair gives Mary a form to fill out.  He asks her what a Regression Therapist is; for the first time ever, she tells the truth and answers, “Nothing.”  However, he is impressed with her history of counseling and helping people.  He says “I see you didn’t list anything from your previous lives.”  He asks her to describe the jobs she had in her last three or four lives.  When she can’t give any details, she leaves and the man ominously picks up the phone.  He describes Mary and says, “She may be the one we’re looking for.”

Mary walks through the town which is has many homeless people, dilapidated buildings, sirens and arguing people.  She sees a woman living in the back of a beat-up station wagon with no tires and asks if she is OK.  The woman wants to die because she is so much worse off in this life than in her previous life; although she is better off than the guy living in the Mini-Cooper.  She wants to spin the wheel again.  Mary ignores her wishes, which seem to be culturally acceptable in this world, and goes to get help for her.  Unfortunately for Mary — and probably fortunately for the woman — Sinclair and his goons dope Mary up and stick her in a van.

She wakes up in a warehouse and is questioned by Sinclair and another man who I assume is the one credited as Vigilante on IMDb.  Vigilante says it is “utterly unheard of” for a person not to remember their past lives.  Wait, Sinclair said just a minute ago that “new souls” with no memories do exist.  Anyhoo, Mary is even more suspect because she doesn’t even have a current life — there is no record of her existence.  Vigilante menacingly tells her that means no one will miss her.

Vigilante grills her about what she is trying to hide.  “What names did you go by in your past lives?  The Borgias, Attila the Hun, Lady Macbeth?”  Really, he suspects her of being all the Borgias?  And does he know Lady Macbeth was a fictional character? ^[1]  After an intense interrogation, they finally believe Mary.  The bad guys are actually the good guys and offer Mary job.  They want her to use her mad counseling skillz to do un-regression therapy — to help people forget their previous lives.

Vigilante tells her that society has gone mad and is getting worse with each generation.  Wait, did she flip back to our world?  Rather than making people more empathetic, the recollection of past lives has caused people to “be so busy avenging the past, that we lose the present.”  Grudges go on for centuries, people long for past lives, the pain of birth is recalled in detail (I assume they mean by the baby, not the mother).  They want Mary to teach people to forget.

This is more like it.  The 1980s TZ could have used a lot more stories like this.  Sure, it checks some familiar boxes, but they are welcome tropes — inexplicably finding yourself in another world, having no identity, being menaced for unknown reasons.  Even better, this wasn’t a morality play beating us over the head with a message.  It put forth an original premise and explored how this might affect society.

Good stuff.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] The was a real Lady Macbeth, but surely it is not who Vigilante referred to.
• Title Analysis:  IMDb’s increasing useless Trivia section tells us the “The title comes [from] the song “Memory” from the musical “Cats” written by Andrew Lloyd Webber”.  First, the episode is called “Memories”, not “Memory”.  And I’m pretty certain both words were in common usage before “Cats”.  Hey, IMDb, you got rid of the Message Boards to make room for this?