The Twilight Zone - Showdown with Rance McGrew

The western satire, “Showdown with Rance McGrew”, is played strictly for laughs, playfully mocking the television and movie depictions of iconic figures in history and how made-up characters get the best of them. Rance (Larry Blyden, totally a clown) is a diva actor demanding ginger ale as his “whisky substitute” and a stunt actor committing to the smallest of action, clumsy to the extreme (the number of mirrors he accidentally breaks when losing his gun accrues quite a bit of bad luck) and incapable of drawing the gun from his holster on cue. What Rance doesn’t realize is that his hoity-toity ways, not willing to be the part as much as barely even play it right, have caught the negative attention of the ghosts of outlaws like Jesse James, gathered together to send down one of their own to set him straight. Arch Johnson is a treat as Jesse James, having quite a bone to pick with Rance. He is to have a showdown with Jesse James as a means of making amends for how poorly his shows/movies have portrayed the great criminals of the Old West! More or less a dressing down of actors showboating in hero parts opposite outlaws who are portrayed as inferior, Showdown totally parodies them to a severe degree. A prop man and the show director have a running bet on just how many times Rance will break mirrors, Rance’s troubles breaking a liquor bottle in order to look badass are quite embarrassing, the constant stopping and starting so the stunt man can replace Rance are infinite, and the takes involved in “getting it right” are exhaustive thanks to Rance’s constant failures. Jesse is to “whip Rance in shape” and plans to hang around to make sure to keep him honest. While I’m not personally as invested in the comic TZ episodes, I do think Blyden has the kind of timing and expressive face and body to make the material work. I prefer the more profound and thought-provoking episodes, but I realize that they needed to mix it up from time to time. And the idea that the outlaws from the Old West now congregate in the hereafter with serious issues in how they are presented to television / theater audiences is right clever if silly nonsense. Being that it is the Twilight Zone and can get away with that, Showdown lightens things up considerably and doesn’t have a serious bone in its body. And all involved never allow the material to be anything other than tongue-in-cheek. Robert Cornthwaite, as the beleaguered director, is a pleasure, in just how he responds with eyes rolling and comments made out of Rance’s line of hearing. He scoffs and shakes his head, returning to Rance’s whipping boy when his star needs pampering.