Thanksgiving with The Twilight Zone

 

I finished up my Thanksgiving viewing for the year and with a ton of Christmas movies and content watched (reviews added to my Letterboxd Scarecrow88 account), along with a nice dinner with some family I hadn't seen in two years (nothing last year due to the Pandemic), there was an evening available. With some much appreciated time off (though I will be working overtime from home during the weekend, but I digress...), I had this little block of time and decided to watch some Twilight Zone, continuing my march through the entire series, episode by episode, season by season. I am just about done with Season 1, so I thought I'd knock out the remaining episodes of said season, maybe even starting on Season 2 if I felt like it.

Mr. Beavis

I was eating some of my mother's Pumpkin pie as Orson Bean's James BW Beavis slid down the stairwell rail of his apartment complex on a dare by a little boy who lives in one of the rooms in the building out of the front door, down the steps, and into the sidewalk, this spilled but smiling goof having to hand-wave his messy hair into some sort of agreeable place. I had this big smile because the landlady of the apartment complex, Dorothy Neumann, is the wife of Mayberry drunk, Otis. I went to sleep while watching Columbo early one morning, awakening to "The Andy Griffith Show" and the episode that was on was about deputized Otis and his attempt to stay sober. Anyway, "Mr. Beavis" is a guilty pleasure episode if ever there was one as Orson Bean is just this lovable ole irresponsible mess who loves model ship building, Zither music, old Rickenbackers that cough up smoke and need the local kids pushing on the sides to get it to jumpstart and go, playing football in the street with neighborhood kids, catching the apple from a local immigrant fruit salesman, comprising his desk with pawn shop odds and ends that drives his boss (fussy, stiff-shirt Peckinpah (played by huffing, puffing Charles Lane) bananas, rarely makes it to work on time, is way behind on the rent, and has an apartment scattered with stuffed animals. He's quite chatty, wide-eyed, harmless, and seemingly reckless but never boring or willing to let setbacks bum his mood. He has a guardian angel (yep, another angel in the Twilight Zone) played by Henry Jones wanting to help him gain control of his life, to get serious and straighten up. That means a nice car that actually starts up at the crank, a fine suit and tie without the loud patterns and disheveled fashion sense, and rent paid up to three weeks. Even a raise from a proud Peckinpah seems to leave Beavis rather out of sorts. The kids don't play football with him, the fruit salesman tells him no apples for free, and his desk is neat and clean. All of the eccentric accouterments that make Beavis so unique and speak to his quirky personality are removed by Jones' J Hardy Hempstead, the guardian angel looking out for his best interests, not realizing that despite all the ensuing crises that keeps a lot of folks up at night don't necessarily usurp his human's real zest for life and zeal for whatever comes next. The guardian angel learns this when he hopes that Beavis will "get his act together" and "make something of himself". Beavis is just not that type to operate as other sufficient humans do. He's too cluttery, off-kilter, and hasn't lost that child-like innocence so many of us cynical humans have. 

The After Hours

Return of the mannequin. Except lots and lots of them. Wanna creep me out? Load up zoom closeups of mannequin faces in a dark department store with off-voices calling out to Marsha (Anne Francis), trying to jog her loose of her attachment to the "outsiders" and "other people". How the Elevator Man (John Conwell) -- speaking of this, I guess if ever there was a timepiece to 1960 and the rise of the department store, the job of a guy in an elevator operating it for the customer, taking that person to the floor of their interest sure seems like a thing of the past! -- and Saleswoman (Elizabeth Allen) treat Marsha with frustration and seemingly consider her annoying always was a disorienting trick of the screenplay I appreciated, especially considering "what" Marsha actually is. When you overstay your welcome when designated a month as a human, the other mannequins aren't too happy with none of that! I read up on the colorful, bug-eyed, stuttering, and very animated Millhollin (as the store operations manager, so opinionated, dizzyingly active, and hyper-aware of everything on his floor, almost to the point of an efficiency expert, never wavering in his capitalist mindset of selling as much product as possible and attending the customer to the utmost, even as he complains about them behind their back) of the episode...he actually died in my home state of Mississippi, in Biloxi, of Cancer, after retirement from the industry. Probably one of the iconic moments of the episode is Millhollin's Armbruster moving about the store, expecting a certain sales amount, splitting up talking women employees on the floor, stopping when noticing the Marsha mannequin, and nodding off the idea that he had just talked to her the previous day.

The Mighty Casey

I think that because I was so pumped for the 2020 New Year's Eve marathon, "The Mighty Casey" benefited from that since I just had a good time watching it. But back down to earth, there is a reason "The Mighty Casey" is of very little consequence for a majority of TZ fans. If you have an affinity for baseball and how the sport seems to get plenty of mention on the show, I figure that might be an alluring draw. If anything, this episode says a lot about the time the series was made when baseball was the rage. There was a lefty whose hand no longer worked for a pitcher in the episode, "What You Need", as an example. But I do like the animosity and back and forth between Warden, manager of the terrible baseball team, the Hoboken Zephyrs, and his team's owner, played by angsty and frustrated Alan Dexter. Their conversations about how much the team stinks is probably want I enjoy the most. The "robot pitcher" plot doesn't really do all that much for me personally. It is a cheat that helps a very bad team somehow stay relevant, but something I don't understand is how Casey could lift an entire team to greatness since most long-game pitchers only pitch one every five or so games. Warden has the towel to take off the sweat (and bite into, when he frets at just how rotten his team is), slumped shoulders of defeat, and an attitude willing to embrace any help in order to just win a game. The baseball references might be manna for purests and historians of the game.

A World of His Own

I always have a lot of fun this one. I think it is because Serling used the same audio tape machine the character of Gregory West (Keenan Wynn) does in the episode, "A World of His Own". Despite a couple good episodes at the end of the first season, there are a few okay-to-decent episodes such as this one. But "The Chaser" and "The Mighty Casey", and some might say "Mr. Bevis", didn't necessarily knock it out of the park (sort of fitting since I just watched the baseball TZ episode forty minutes ago). I think the episode might unnerve some newer viewers because Wynn's novelist creates women exactly as he wants them, destroying the tape that manufactured them into human form when they develop a mind of their own that eventually disobeys him. So any liberty, a decision they make without his consent, such as Phyllis Kirk's Victoria West -- the "wife", planning to commit him for claiming to have the ability to create and destroy the tape of anyone (or thing, as the elephant blocking the front door, proves) concocted through his descriptive mind into his audio machine -- Gregory will just cut the tape from his machine and throw it in the fireplace to burn whatever character has "upset the applecart" into oblivion. Mary (Mary LaRoche; "Living Doll") is the other woman he creates (and destroys over and over as not to set off Victoria) as an alternative to his wife, who is raven-haired, strong-willed, stubborn, and seemingly ready to free herself from Gregory. While Victoria is considered superior to him in every way, in how she dresses and looks, Gregory considers Mary as the mate best suited to him at the present date since she's pleasant, blond with kept hair, very conservatively dressed, and so attune to what he wants her personality seems less likely to go against him. I can certainly see how the wrong viewer would want to throw a drink at the screen by the end of this. I think others, though, love the idea of creating the perfect mate just by speaking his or her description, in elaborate detail, into existence merely by hitting record on an audio machine. Rob appearing in this early meta scene, with Gregory punishing him by tossing his tape into the fire, makes for a fun bit of clever TZ creative humor I applaud. I think ending the first season with Rod making an appearance, though, is the right decision because he began to host the series going forward. I think that is the one negative of the first season is the missing Rob intro as the host. That was why I was anticipating the second season and onwards. Oh, and before I forget: some of the last few episodes had the woman's eye blink (with the pretty eye lash, too). This does seem a bit out of left field, to tell you the truth since it is only used for just a few episodes.