Twilight Zone - Sounds and Silences/Caesar and Me/Jeopardy Room

Rod Serling introduces The Jeopardy Room

Episodes 147 - 149 of the Fifth Season of The Twilight Zone. I will admit that I have no intentions of ever writing about the first two ever again, and they will only serve as background during marathons that plan to air them. I'll need to go back to my Twilight Zone favorite to least favorite list and see if I can lower the first two anymore than they already. I can honestly say that the first two left me rather disheartened, but Richard Donner and Martin Landau rescued me from the doldrums with the third episode.

Sounds and Silences

It would have been better, I think, for Twilight Zone fans if this episode remained out of syndication/circulation. And that this is the episode Serling might be sued for due to plagiarism is rather tragic considering how fucking obnoxious it is. I asked myself while watching this, "How, at any point and time, did Lydia fall for this guy?" I can't picture Roswell G Flemington was ever charming or a big conversationalist. I can't imagine Roswell has ever been anything but loud, irritating, and bossy. How any of his employees could work at his model ship company, much less tolerate his sailor and seaman references worked into every moment of dialogue...in a manner of speaking. He has that finger point before he lays into people, his head tilted down, his forehead and teeth always ready to snarl before the spit flies. The wife and employees chose to be around this guy...granted, they sure detest him. So all the noise is purposely triggering and Roswell's mere presence is like nails down a chalkboard. And Lydia married this blowhard. I imagine when he enters a room anywhere, dread fills the entire space as those around him wait for the explosion. Out to sea, the ships fire, the explosions and warfare...and then Roswell returned home needing that to remain in his life thanks to a mother who has her own neurosis about her son being quiet, not to make any loud sound. Somehow Lydia fell for the guy at some point and reminded Roswell of her. Eventually through "mind over matter" (something that has been explored on The Twilight Zone before as well), Roswell cuts off the noise so he can't hear his wife, but that comes with a serious problem for Roswell...he no longer can hear any noise no matter how loud his records or war are or how much the furniture or fixtures in his house shake. Sounds and Silences is that episode during the marathon SYFY / Sci-Fi would play at the wee hours of the morning or late at night after the prime time classics have been prominently featured. It is the episode that comes and goes, leaving nothing of value. Once it ends and the next episode appears, I don't give Sounds and Silences a second thought. The writer of the story this episode was inspired by who received monetary compensation made out like a bandit as far as I'm concerned. This is the kind of episode I point to when someone wonders why the fifth season gets such a bad rap. Look no further than Sounds and Silences as to why the show would end. This isn't as bad as "Caesar and Me" or "Bewitchin' Pool" but Sounds and Silences belongs in the conversation. I think it plays best as a comedy, but I wasn't laughing as much as just wanting the episode to end so I didn't have to stomach McGiver anymore. But 147 episodes into any season, how could we truly expect stellar television with such an exhaustive volume. I could only imagine Serling was squeezed dry of real ideas.

Speaking of that.

How I felt while watching this

Caesar and Me

Why the horrible writer decided to make Morgan Brittany so detestable and sadistic in this sad, pale imitation of the far and away superior, "The Dummy" I'll never know. I have no idea why she hates Jackie Cooper so much, or why the writer of the episode decided to make the struggling ventriloquist such a pathetic sad sack but Caesar and Me, along with "The Bewitchin' Pool" are the rough watches of the series I love so dear where I felt bad for Serling. I imagine an episode like this one to execs had a similar reaction as the lounge owners to Jackie's tired act when they outright rejected his comedy. The dummy named Caesar talks to Jackie and gets him to rob joints for unpaid back apartment rent. Brittany is the niece who lives with the apartment complex landlord. While Brittany is a vicious, conniving, snooping little shit, the dummy isn't exactly a ray of sunshine for Cooper. The dummy actually seems to push Cooper to do robberies so he will eventually get caught. Cooper is gullible, naive, and easily duped by a dummy. When we meet him until he's arrested and sent away, Cooper is never anything but a loser. And this is just a hard watch because there's nothing of value to glean from this. The dummy isn't the least bit scary or creepy. You could replace the dummy with any cigar-chomping mafioso while Brittany seems to only exist in the episode to make sure Cooper's life is a living hell. I've had fans of the episode take up for it and try to convince me there is more to it than what I can see. I see nothing but an excuse to devalue some poor schlub whose back was against the wall and failed at every attempt to make something of himself as an entertainer. And on top of all that, Brittany has no other purpose but to spy on Cooper and find a way to hurt him. Mean-spirited is often used as a description of "Time Enough at Last" but Caesar and Me has a particular cruelty that seemed wholly unnecessary. I really despise this episode. But to add weight to Cooper's demise, he begs Caesar to tell the police how he was responsible for the heists, pleading with the dummy to speak up. While Brittany looks on, quite proud of herself, Cooper is escorted to jail by the police...she adds, "You no-good crook." I guess this is all meant for us to hate a child. Well, if that was the intent...success! Oh, and to put the icing on the cake. Caesar discusses a plan to go to New York with Brittany after they use poison darts on her aunt! You can't make that shit up. Just an awful episode. At the 148th episode, the show badly needed to recover from a serious string of turds.

The Jeopardy Room

I had thought about not including this episode in with the prior two but The Jeopardy Room does follow them in episode order (when they were televised). I watched three early Saturday morning as a plan, so this rather solid political thriller episode helped to remind me that The Twilight Zone, at the very end, didn't totally capsize into a crumbling rubble when it started as such an incredible high rise.

While I think the idea that Commissar Vassiloff goofing off with his mind games just to torment Landau's defector, Kuchenko, can be criticized, the intent of the episode was to show how devious an executioner the former is and how cunning and resilient the latter turns out to be. When the dingy, nondescript apartment is in ruins, Vassiloff's telephone bomb having been triggered by triggerman, Boris' impulse to lift the receiver after the ring, all the time wasted on creating art out of executing a traitor who knows too much about certain details his country he is fleeing (obviously Soviet, since it was the Cold War and all) want kept secret just seems foolhardy and ill-conceived. How I excused that, though, was something Vassiloff tells Kuchenko: the job can be a bit dull if all you do is find a person and kill them. And I just felt he has been so successful so many other times in the past, there was no reason to feel this time would be any different. I think a significant plus in the film's favor, also, is Landau's performance. You see the paranoia, fear, and when the phone rings the first time, that rationale emerges where he clearly connects the dots and figures out where Vassiloff's bomb device is planted. And by the end, Kuchenko just needs his assassins to turn away at the right time for him to flee the room. 

We have sure spent some time in depressing dwellings in The Twilight Zone, haven't we? Any time a character is in dire straits and seemingly near the end of his rope, Serling will sometimes drop him in some small room with a bed that seems ripe for bugs, often with four walls and a lamp stand, maybe a mirror. It is claustrophobic, tightly-confined, with some dimestore picture on the wall. If you end up here, it is because you are awaiting instructions to rob a bank, are hiding from someone trying to kill you, meeting with crooks to discuss "business", or wasting away after a life of bad decisions. In the case of Kuchenko, he's needing a place to hideout until he can flee on a plane hopefully safe from harm. In The Jeopardy Room, this kind of room -- a room on the show only known for its representation of how bad things really are for its many varied characters -- gets blown up real good. I like to think that is Serling's way of bidding adieu to the fleabag city building box where dreams go to die...or at least need to reconsidered.