Brief Passages - Twilight Zone (A Nice Place to Visit/Nightmare as a Child)

I watched this episode not too long ago (a repetition I’m noticing as I work through the first season this year), and “Rocky” Valentine (Larry Blyden) is a character I care not to spend too much time wasting on. He’s a thief since he was seven, finally shot down by police and killed, awakening to white-suit “fatso” (as Valentine belittles him), with a pleasant, jovial attitude named Pip (Sebastian Cabot, a gift we needed considering Valentine is the main character we must endure). Valentine actually fires a gun at Pip but it does no good, and the realization his destination is set, his eternal trip has found its final landing spot, and it seems so good to be true, probably because it is. The thing about Rocky is that he likes living on the edge, facing the possibility of being arrested or endangered, just narrowly escaping in one piece. And here’s Pip with his little notebook, looking to arrange for the desires of Rocky, able to provide him all the money, ladies, and fine digs he could ever hoped to have acquired in his life prior to the police gunning him down after he fired on them. Rocky is bored because he continues to gamble at the roulette wheel, at cards, at the slot machine and always wins. One strike at the balls on the pool table sends them all in the sockets. There is no struggle, it’s always arranged. Pip lets him know that despite what he might have thought—he’s in heaven because everything he could possible want is provided—is right the opposite. The Hall of Records even indicates that Rocky was bad every since he was a kid, starting a gang at 8 years old, killing a dog at 7, taking toys and items from stores, leading all the way to when those cops pumped him full of lead. And that lack of struggle or the ability to steal and rob “officially” is Rocky’s hell. Pip’s laugh at the end was quite heartwarming…hell reimagined. Pip saves this because Rocky’s avarice and viciousness was on full display and he was quite a piece of work…not a good guy to spend even thirty minutes with. Blyden plays this asshole well. 2/5

I preface by saying that I think when you watch the episode, “Nightmare as a Child”, for the first time, it can be quite potent and the use of a child version of the adult character of the story hoping to unlock memories that could foretell the man responsible for murdering her mother could be quite a fascinating hook that keeps our curiosity to its conclusion. However, I think once you have seen the episode, and how it all plays out, the value of repeated viewings might not be as gripping. I do think Janice Rule acts her ass off, though. You see the wheels turning when the little version of her (Terry Burnham) encourages memory to resurface and the mind open in Rule’s performance. Burnham pretty much walks Rule through the entire experience one step at a time, with Shepperd Strudwick arriving curiously at a particular point and time so that the past and present collide. Strudwick appears and I think sets off an alarm just in his presentation and how creepy he is. The episode could have thrown a swerve but doesn’t so in other viewings you see how telegraphed it all is. I think because we are so conditioned by serial killer and “law and order” crime procedurals, the impact of “Nightmare as a Child” isn’t quite as long-lasting. But that first viewing might land well for those who see it as it did me. 2.5/5