Concluding TZ Marathon Post SYFY 2021. 2 of 3

Serling introduces The Silence

 Still working off the NYD morning / afternoon block from SYFY's schedule for the fourth and final day of the big weekend:

9:00am – Mr. Dingle, The Strong

9:30am – Static

10:00am – The Prime Mover

10:30am – A Hundred Yards Over the Rim

1:05am – Nick of Time

11:00am – The Rip Van Winkle Caper

11:30am – The Silence

12:00pm – Shadow Play

12:30pm – The Mind and the Matter

1:00pm – Two

1:30pm – The Arrival

This was during the point of the morning when I woke up periodically and returned to sleep because I didn't have much interest in losing sleep to some of these episodes.

A Hundred Yards Under the Rim

Nick of Time

The Prime Mover

The Silence

I admittedly detest "Mr Dingle, the Strong". Burgess Meredith is once again victimized, this time by jerk Don Rickles, given momentary powers by the worst alien (twins hooked together in a horribly campy costume with antenna poking from their protruding bald heads) ever conjured for the Twilight Zone show. Meredith is just minding his own business when Rickles (a welcher of bets he rightfully loses) and bookie Eddie Ryder go to him to prove who is right about a baseball game. Rickles lives to punch Meredith in the face so the alien twin-headed thing (Spencer from "Thing from Another World" and Fox of "Sounds and Silences") grants the latter enhanced strength. And the strength provides plenty of Meredith (and obvious stuntman, going over a bar, lifting a park bench, etc.) completing feats that shock and awe until the alien double-headed thing decides to take it away because he is exploiting something extraordinary that has finally happened to him in a life of severe disappointment. Of course Velusian kids grant him extreme intellect so he can properly predict baseball game outcomes. Great faces in this episode, like Westerfield as a bartender and Millhollin as a news reporter. Lots of TZ fans love this one. I just don't.

The Rip Van Winkle Caper

I wish I could fall for the magic of "Static" but while I love Jagger in "White Christmas", I can't stand him as the grumpy, short-tempered, ripe-to-immediately-insult misanthrope, Ed Lindsay. Matthews, as potential romantic interest for Jagger, has the patience of a saint. I wouldn't give that grouch the time of day. The radio provides waves from a whole other time as Jagger listens to music and content long gone, while those in his boardinghouse consider him what I do: hard to stomach. Jagger loves Matthews but that alligator rough attitude and stubborn attachment to the 40s has made him mean. The plot is romantic, though. Jagger and Matthews were supposed to get married, didn't, and for 20 years regretted it. So Jagger gets lost in his radio programs while those in his boardinghouse sell the radio to a junk dealer hoping he would get over these "flights of fancy"...why they decided that, I don't know. Why not let Jagger live up in his room and quit bellyaching about television? The Twilight Zone does allow Jagger to get a second chance. Good of them.

I really only watch "The Prime Mover" during marathons. I'm just not much into gambling episodes, like "The Fever". That said, this was the Twilight Zone episode that had Buddy Ebsen from "The Beverly Hillbillies" so that alone is probably why I appreciate the episode when it comes on. Ebsen has telepathic power to move objects with his mind. Clark is the down-on-his-luck diner proprietor who exploits Ebsen's ability to make money in Vegas while White is better known as Shatner's wife in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". White is the girlfriend of Clark who is quite patient and willing to marry him despite their having next to nothing but when he gets lost in the sickness of greed derived from the ability of his friend to win lots of money in casinos she won't remain in Vegas another minute. Soon the mob gets involved and Clark is in hot water. Ebsen fakes the loss of his powers and Clark must once again return to his diner flat broke. Who could feel sorry for Clark, too stupid to realize how fortunate he was to have the windfall that he had before Ebsen finally pulls the free ride from him? Who could blame Ebsen considering the headaches that come when he uses that power? Fooling around with gangsters from Chicago...smart. You have those TZ episodes which sort of fall in the middle and rarely rise to the surface when thinking about them unless marathon time reminds you. The results of this episode are just not surprising. Clark needed the coin machine (last seen tormenting Everett Sloan) gone, too. Clark's got plenty...a good friend and a girl that loves him. Why bother with all that money?

Funnily enough, I considered "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" and "Nick of Time" as a future "Summer in Twilight Zone" marathon. Marathon staples in my life, these two episodes are always a favorite to me I look forward to when SYFY would announce their lineups for NYE/NYD and 4th of July. Since they have decided to dissolve the 4th of July marathons since 2018, I have had to put together my own. These two most definitely are essential viewings for any marathon, NYE/NYD or otherwise. Not much links these two besides diners, haha. I LOVE that "Nick of Time" is now a classic episode. I don't think it was in the 90s as that other Shatner classic got most of the notoriety. The same can be said for Cliff Robertson since "The Dummy" is most often referred to as his most famous episode of Twilight Zone.  In both cases, while I perfectly recognize them as absolute standard bearers of the series' popularity and status, I actually personally prefer these two, "Hundred Yards" and "Nick of Time". I think Robertson's haunting reception of his surroundings in 1961 and how the husband and wife of the diner in New Mexico try to humor him always captivates me. The entirety in the diner with someone actually from another time, the "pioneer days", absorbing the shock of what he experiences while the two who live in 1961 trying to comprehend his reaction to everything--any of us would be the same--call a doctor to assist them. That gun is the convincing factor, amusingly, and the Penicillin (I'm actually allergic to it) given to help Robertson is the catalyst in his son's recovery...time travel used effectively once again by The Twilight Zone. Of course, "Nick of Time" is all about obsession and superstition. I don't think personally the Mystic Seer is anything supernatural, but the possibility is never totally out of question. In fact, there are many Mystic Seers in the diner in Ridgeview, Ohio. How many Mystic Seers populated 1960 diners across small towns in The Twilight Zone? Shatner with his rabbit's foot and superstitions calls out to the Mystic Seer of of that one table, just a short distance (but might as well be miles, thanks to Breslin's persistent pleas to her husband to leave that napkin-holding, card-spewing, one-cent machine behind), telling it he's not a slave to it. To any of us who just looks at the Mystic Seer as part of a cafe's "atmosphere", propped against a wall on plenty of tables, Shatner's voice of defiance carries towards absolutely nothing. To him, that defiance is a hell of a lot more.

Bronson and Montgomery in "Two"

"Room for one more, honey" - Twenty Two

The Mind and the Matter

I don't know. The more I've watched "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" the less I like it. I admire the twist...that gold is of little value 100 years after a group of gold robbers led by Beregi (known more for his Nazi returning to the concentration camp for a "bit of nostalgia" in "Deaths-Head Revisited) and the heinous Oakland (I've seen him in a lot of television but never as vicious and underhanded, calculated and cruel as this episode of Twilight Zone) hole up in a cave in Death Valley--good ole area the Twilight Zone never failed to use to the fullest--awakening after time spent in suspended animation. Oakland's stupidity in driving that car off the ledge and killing a member of their team leads to his own undoing, and Beregi going along with him is further proof that their are doomed. That damned gold just brings out the worst in people.

Franchot Tone, to me, is so evil in "The Silence" that I yell at the screen for Sullivan (who had a minor role in "The Changing of the Guard", an episode of TZ I try to watch every Christmas Eve) not to agree to his terms for taking his word on that bet for a year of not talking. His pompous, elitist, "privilege of snobbery" and how he tries to use manipulative tactics to get Sullivan to crack and the resulting failure to pay up as expected is a special brand of detestable behavior deserved of a certain place in hell. Harris of "Lost in Space" I just watched in "Twenty Two" this afternoon is Tone's attorney and attempted voice of reason. But Sullivan's lengths to secure a year's worth of silence and Tone's inability to reward him is just disgustingly tragic. No sign of supernatural in the episode but Tone is as monstrous as any creature the Twilight Zone could ever produce. Horrifying twist. Sullivan isn't without trying to outsmart Tone and made a hazardous mistake.

Serling introduces "Two"

I did wake up on NYD to watch "Shadow Play", a memorable repeating nightmare (perhaps a type of hell) for Dennis Weaver (his lone TZ appearance) who keeps getting sentenced to death but the roles of those as the judge, attorneys, and jury continue to change, with a stay of execution almost always just out of reach. It's a rotation Weaver has relived (if what he's doing is living) and tells to others over and over. This has been done a lot in many different story-telling forms since this episode. A limbo for some unfortunate soul that never ends. Weaver's desperation and frustration is so potent. You feel what he's going through. And after it you are glad you aren't him.

I was never a fan much of "The Mind and the Matter" either. I also was awake for this episode on NYD before falling back into a deep sleep not long after. Shelley Berman's Archibald Beechcroft hates people and would rather just be alone...until he decides to populate his world with more of him while "willing away" everyone else. Nothing against Berman, but spending 30 minutes with his sneering Beechcroft with a scowl or frown that seems paint his entire outlook on life feels wasted when I could watch a great episode like "Two". The episode offers Berman talking to himself a lot. Yeah, no.

Serling prepares us for The Arrival

"Two" is another of those "Oh, shit, that's Elizabeth Montgomery and Chuck Bronson in the same episode together!" kind of experiences I had when I was a kid. I always thought the 50s and 60s were so cool because of how so many of the familiar faces I grew up watching would pop up together in all the television of that era. But on The Twilight Zone within neat science fiction stories, being of how much I love the genre, it was easy to see why I could get so giddy. Montgomery rocking the smoky eye shadow before that was an actual voluntary makeup choice, wearing tattered wardrobe of a female Russian soldier, and remaining mute for a majority of the episode was so incredible when I watched this for the first time in the 90s during Sci-fi Channel marathons. But Chuck Bronson, young and not having to go on any monologues, either, seems to be perfectly suitable as Montgomery's obviously eventual mate. He was always a man of less words and more action. They investigate their battered wartorn town (the set design is just phenomenal) for items needed when not eyeballing each other precautiously. At some point, they realize that pointing guns at each other (laser rifles found in a damaged theater, the skeletal remains of an employee discovered under the ruins) isn't a desirable option. Who is left to conduct such matters as patriotic duty to country when global catastrophe has rendered all that moot?

Despite its flaws, "The Arrival" is right up my alley. I don't think the twist is nearly as great as the developments to it. This ship that arrives without a crew. Its seats' colors different according to those in attendance as well as the identifying number on the side of the plane. Stone as the aviation investigator with one mystery he couldn't lick, Wayne (who I watched this afternoon as the agent to the patient in "Twenty Two") as the relations man getting questions about the missing passengers from their loved ones, and Keen as the executive whose hanger the Flying Dutchman landed perfectly in make up most of the cast. I get the point of Serling's script that Stone is truly haunted by a missing plane he couldn't solve, but it just never quite rebounds from that magnificent opening fifteen minutes. I felt the episode falls apart once the plane vanishes and Wayne and Keen are found relaxing in an office by a perplexed Stone, the entire investigation of the first fifteen minutes merely a mirage. I still think it is for the most part quite eerie.