I’m continuing my move through the fourth season, revisiting
both
Mute &
Death Ship, and while I will include the links to my past
reviews in this brief post, I will say that with
Mute the theme of loss and
adapting to change (especially when a grieving mother believes she is getting a
second chance to be a parent again and the child gifted to you must adjust out
of a former family situation whose upbringing was speaking telepathically)
resonated more than anything and
Death Ship proves time and again that Klugman’s
spaceship captain is nothing but an unbearable asshole. Klugman is a Twilight
Zone icon, much like Burgess Meredith, and rarely plays a character that doesn’t
have something about him you can relate to, sympathize with, understand, and
even like. But in
Death Ship, he is just frustrating. When death is so clear it
could knock him upside the head similar to the ship that threw him to the floor
during a planetary crash, Klugman fails to acknowledge the obvious. In
Mute,
Baxley’s attachment to young, misunderstood telepath Jillian really reveals
itself in the emotional tear-jerker at the end while Overton returns to the TZ,
most recognizable in the masterpiece,
Walking Distance, as Baxley’s husband.
Even though he’s a very kind character in
Mute, I can’t help but always see
Beregi, Jr. as Gunther Lutze from the haunting,
Deaths-Head Revisited. Poor
Martin and Beir in
Death Ship just want to be with their loved ones, perfectly
willing to embrace the hereafter while Klugman simply won’t let them. There
came a point where I was like: fuck Klugman, eschew his nonsense and leave him
behind to kvetch how to avoid the unavoidable. I do imagine some viewers will
want to throw their drink or something at the screen when Klugman gets the ship
out of orbit from the planet only to decide to go back down while Martin and
Beir debate against it. I couldn’t help but think that these two must be so
submissive to Klugman that they can’t usurp his authority and just fucking go
home.
Mute
Death Ship
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