Brief Passages - Twilight Zone (Walking Distance)

Nothing quite as good as summer and being a kid… - Martin Sloan, 36, world weary ad exec.

I beg you to see the uncut version of this episode, as SYFY's version is cut and if there is an episode that deserves to be seen in its purest form, it is Walking Distance.

This is one of those Twilight Zone episodes I never want to end and when it does my heart sort of lets out a teary-eyed sigh. I think a lot of folks (except those who had a rotten childhood and never wishfully want to look back or go home again) sort of ponder what it would be like to have the kind of access adult Martin Sloan is allowed when he “treks back” to Homewood, his hometown (based on Serling’s Binghamton, I always envision Serling writing this, in his own bit of wish fulfillment) for a “revisit”. When he gets the entire picturesque view of home—the park, the bandstand, merry-go-round, popcorn, cotton candy, boys climbing trees and kids playing hide-and-go-seek, pitcher’s mitt and ring-a-ding-ding pedal bike, the diner with the three ice-cream scoops for ten cents—it is just so intoxicating and eventually he wants to meet his parents again and tell his young boy self to enjoy his youth while he has it. Yes, we do sort of create a picture of idyllic youth, a setting of pure joy where the pollution of struggling adulthood does not seem to invade, and this episode of Twilight Zone allowed Martin Sloan a special trip back, even though his own “pop” tells him he needs to leave (there is one summer for this boy, Martin, and two Martins can’t occupy it) and his mom, bewildered by his claims of being her son, slaps him. The recreation of this place and the music (God this music!) are just, for lack of a better term, majestic…the music, it can’t be stressed enough, carries us on Martin’s emotional ride. This episode currently sits at #2 on my all time Twilight Zone favorite episode list, just behind “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”. There are these two acting moments for Gig Young, when he turns in the old diner while thinking about his childhood and hearing the merry-go-round after his parents are puzzled at his behavior (claiming to be their son), that can be put up against any performance this series ever featured—and there were some damn good ones—or television of its time. I think this is as close to a perfect episode as the series ever offered.

--Brian

This is often shown while Netflix loads the episode

Meeting Pop

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So just for 2020, along with my other ongoing projects for the horror genre, I thought it would be fun to build towards my [now annual] self-created 4^th of July Twilight Zone Marathon with a “brief passages” series for the first season. I thought it would be a neat sort of 2020 episodic footprint and the point of the “brief passages” part is to try and limit myself to just a “mini-review” five-to-six line paragraph for each episode of the Twilight Zone (and some Universal Monster films as well) in the first season. My marathon for Independence Day will not be as extensive as it was in 2019…ten episodes, five from the third season and five from the fifth. Because I have written big reviews for many of the first season episodes in the past, this “brief passages” format won’t be as difficult while those certain few that might not have gotten a more elaborate, detailed treatment, it should be quite a challenge to limit myself.