The 2022 Memorial Day Twilight Zone Marathon - Part 1

Serling presents The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross

 Yep, I went from following along with SYFY (or The Sci-Fi Channel) to making my own holiday TZ efforts just for the kicks. I had recorded some 4AM morning episodes of TZ specific for this Monday.

As of now, it looks like a mix of fifth season from SYFY, and a few from the third season. I guess throughout the day I'll determine some sort of schedule, but I doubt it. See Part 2 for the second half of the Memorial Day marathon thread.

The television repairman (Barney Phillips)

Finchley's version of tender, loving care

Where else would Serling host in A Thing About Machines?

 

• Come Wander with Me - while this episode does have its fans, I'm just not one of them. I find Floyd Burney, the Rockabilly Boy, obnoxious and dated as a character despite how the story wants to be this ethereal dark fairy tale about a timeless song, tragically tied to a singer lost in backwoods limbo, never to escape while harmonizing Mary Rachel knows his fate, hoping he might try a different path towards survival, knowing too well "all the other times" he does the same exact thing over and over. If he didn't get on my nerves with his slang of that time and blathering about "gotta have that song, Dad, you dig?!" I might take to this more. I admit this is an odd duck to kick off the marathon.
• Mr Garrity and the Graves - Dehner played his other performances on the TZ perfectly serious, so this gem that always serves as comfort food for me is made all the better by his crafty conman who cleverly navigates the naivete and paranoia of the Happiness, Arizona's township, a town of citizens so terrified of the possibility Garrity, a traveling "resurrectionist", they're willing to be quite the "pear for him to pluck" with help from a dog skilled at playing dead and an actor who goes from town to town to get dirt on locals with secrets involving their dead loved ones. This cast is such a hoot. The 60s had a treasure trove of character actors like O'Malley, Helton, and Adams to fill out television. This was for me a golden era.
• From Agnes, With Love - Wally Cox seems skilled at one thing and that's involuntarily getting a computer operating system to fall in love with him. He tries to gain interest from a woman at his aerospace company, but she winds up with this tall, dark and handsome fellow SuperData employee. All thanks to Agnes, the supercomputer with a crush on Jim Elmwood. This could be seen as a precursor to "AI and human romantic entanglements" to come afterwards, but Cox is treated as such a dweeb and the computer acting like a conniving, jealous, and temperamental monster. I found it tiresome. I think it might work for some TZ fans who find the humor to their liking. Cox got on my nerves as the clueless nerdy scientist incapable of realizing how much of a dupe he is while Agnes was just a silly concoction meant to represent a certain kind of insufferable woman. Perhaps the comedy will find its particular audience, but I hardly ever see it mentioned or part of any conversation. 
• Dead Man's Shoes - this has always been just a basic mob story about seized territory, revenge, and how a pair of gangster's shoes drug a hapless tramp into a mob war without his permission. Body possession via shoes. Syfy cut out an entire scene where the tramp must ward off other hobos crowding him. The poor tramp has no control over his fate since a thug kingpin named Dane took advantage of his "new face" to try and get even with Bernie. Bernie does seem clearly shaken and will probably look over his shoulder from that point forward.
• The Jungle - I could easily see some balking that "nothing happens" much in this episode since Dehner has about fifteen or so minutes practically alone in a strangely empty city except for a taxi cab driver and hobo, the former keeling over in his cab seat, the latter disappearing ominously when the back is turned. But I eat this part of the episode up for its Val Lewton vibes...every single time, I just groove to the presentation of Dehner can sense that curse present, feel the impending danger, hear the jungle's wild drawing in. The superstitions Dehner rails against as ignorant backwards nonsense soon literally devouring him through a leaping lion.

Alan contemplating the lion's tooth to Chad, The Jungle

Jim Elmwood has no idea what he's in for in From Agnes, With Love

Jesse considers Fats' offer in A Game of Pool

• A Game of Pool - this would typically be my July 4th pick of the Klugman episodes, but I was in the mood for it. I love the way Winters has that condescending provocation that irritates Klugman and how Klugman conveys that need, obsessive and whole-hog, to "be the best". It's easy for Jesse Cardiff to talk shit when not actually opposing Fats in a real game. But faced with the chance, Klugman is aces at revealing the doubt his Jesse has even when presented with this opportunity to assure all the time and practice made perfect. Then he realizes the price that comes with it.
• A Thing About Machines - Barton Finchley is the most miserable, inhospitable, raging character on The Twilight Zone. The machines in his home, designed as if the Victorian era vomited its opulence and privilege throughout the space, were as sick of his attitude as people who come in contact with him.
• The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross - Not all that crazy about this one since Ross is a taker and only improves because he has an uncanny gift to barter for qualities from others he lacks in order to get a woman who doesn't like the person he really is. What he trades with the woman's father in order to gain empathy, understanding, caring, and affection in exchange for the ugliness in him, the conclusion sort of blows up in his face. How he talks to her father, the disrespect and denigration, such as his modest teaching job and handicap due to the war, that nastiness moved over to a good man in a wheelchair no longer encumbered by morality and held back by conscience. Spending so much time with Ross is a big pill. Why she kept giving him chance after chance, the real tragedy is that what pops traded away he won't get back.