The Twilight Zone - Static

Misanthropic Jagger and his beloved radio

I really wish I could say I liked Static but I just couldn’t stand Dean Jagger, even though by episode’s end he gets to return to 1940 and the woman he loved and start over, provided by the Twilight Zone a second chance. Beaumont’s script does seem to ultimately mean well and it does reflect on a desire for returning to the past when life was a little sunnier and offered more happiness, even giving a curmudgeon who threw love away in favor of a gloomy existence, living in a boardinghouse along with other folks his age, except the rest of them embraced the action [and noise, according to the crude reception and remarks of Jagger] of the television. Jagger outcries against what the television of “modern day” 1961 presents to its audience, instead embarking on a return to when his cobwebbed, aging relic of a radio played Tommy Dorsey and Edward Bowes, even FDR relating a speech to the American people, from a station long sense closed. Eventually the woman he once was set to marry, Vinnie (Carmen Mathews), confronts Jagger’s grumpy Ed about their past romance and its evaporation, believing that the programs that only seem to emerge for his hearing are a figment of a regrettable mistake-filled past imagination. Retiree Professor Ackerman (Robert Emhardt) humors Ed, and along with Vinnie sell the radio, hoping by doing so they can shake him out of his supposed mental “slippage”. It just engages Ed into finding it at the junker’s and further slipping away…all the way back to 1940, seeing Vinnie as she once was and realizing he got to go home again. Spending 25 minutes with Ed was long enough…this Oscar the Grouch and his rude comments to the boarders was quite a lot to endure. Yes, they were transfixed and entertained completely by the television, and it does eliminate the imagination of putting image to what you hear from the radio. But that doesn’t mean Ed has to turn the knob on the television box and ridicule them for the programs they are watching. It is the equivalent of someone on Twitter using his keyboard to ridicule the lifestyle choices of those that maybe don’t line up with his, putting his thoughts in ALL CAPS, laying it in hot and heavy. Ed is indeed what Vinnie calls him during her monologue about their failed relationship: a cantankerous, mean old man. The shot-on-video ugliness of the episode and the production limitations (even Serling’s appearance in the basement on the stairs is less than satisfactory) sure don’t help matters. I like Beaumont’s idea but the execution and Jagger’s unlikeable character killed this for me personally. Ed just insulting people like one boarder at the dinner table and his dismissive nature in general is just a lasting bad taste to me. I wanted him off my screen. 2/5