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Burgess Meredith stars in another episode (he was also in Time Enough at Last from Season 1 and Mister Dingle, the Strong, from Season 2 and Printer's Devil from Season 4).

As with Time Enough at Last, he's dealing with books here, as he's a librarian, deemed "obsolete" by the state, and in his hearing, he has been sentenced to liquidation. Only in this future, he is given the option of determining how he would like to be liquidated. So he decides that he'd like to tell only his assassin, and he'd like to go in his room. So he does, and he invites the chancellor (Fritz Weaver, also in Third from the Sun from Season 1) over for a final word.

He doesn't tell the chancellor that he wants to go by way of bomb, and that he's locked the door. Not until he's inside the room, that is, and the camera comes on. It's only a minute or so before the bomb goes off, and the chancellor has buckled under the pressure and invokved the name of God (another no-no) when our little librarian lets him out. But by then the damage is done and the chancellor has become obsolete himself. Classic.

This is one of the stranger episodes in the series, as it doesn't have much dialogue. It's also interesting because one of the other episodes that shares that aspect is The Invaders, from Season 2, and that stars Agnes Moorehead, who was also in Bewitched with Elizabeth Montgomery, who starred in Two. Whew. That's a mouthful.

In any case, she and another well-known actor, Charles Bronson are veterans of a war, and they also appear to be the only survivors of the war, at least in this particular city, which makes things difficult because they are on different sides, and they don't seem to speak the same language. So they follow each other around warily and forge an uneasy truce while they keep an eye on one another. All-in-all, pretty uneventful and rather boring.

Flight 107 arrives just as it should, but when it does, no one is there. No pilots, no crew, no passengers, no luggage, nothing. While investigating the flight, they can't find anything about it, until slowly things start to disappear, until finally one of the investigators bursts in on the others and it's years later. It turns out that this is the only flight that he's been unable to solve in all his years on the job. It just went missing one day and he's been unable to come to terms with it.

Much like The Monsters are Due on Maple Street, this episode is an exercise in suspense. Rather than seeing anything in particular, we're caught up in what we think is happening, or rather what we think might be happening, and that's worse than anything that might actually be happening.

In this case, one family has prepared themselves by building a bomb shelter, and when the warning comes, they load up into the shelter, ready to weather the storm. Then the neighbors start knocking, wanting to be let in, thinking there is room for just one more. Then the next neighbor comes, and the next, and before you know it, everyone is at each other's throats and the shelter lies in ruins, and no one is safe.

And just like that the alarm is called off because it was all just a drill, and everyone wants to go back to the way things were, but we've seen how everyone acts, and we've seen what lurks just beneath the surface of these people. Terrifying, really, that the monsters aren't coming from outside. They are right next door.

Cob Home Builder. Mike starts off this episode in Washington state, building a cob house. For those who don't know, a cob is a loaf-sized ball of mud, clay, sand, straw, and whatever else can be cobbled together. The size was determined because it was easy to transport. Once you've got everything mixed together, you can make your cobs, and then you can form the walls of your house.

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What a turnaround. The hippy team of BJ and Tyler finished first in this leg after choking down a hefty bowl of fried crickets (each) to claim the fast forward. This after starting the leg with no clothes, no pants and no shoes (well, BJ had no pants and no shoes). I have to wonder, though, what was he thinking? They knew at the end of the last episode they would have to run. I can understand not being able to put on pants while you're driving. Why wouldn't you put on shoes?

In any case, I just wish I had some dipping sauce or something, if I were in their place and had to eat a whole bowl of fried crickets. I don't fault third-place finishers Ray and Yolanda at all for walking away from that one. I don't know if I could have done it. Meanwhile, they had to hustle back to the roadblock and build a fancy feast for some monkeys, which was fun to watch because the monkeys don't seem to care about the fanciness of it. They just want to eat.

So instead of waiting for it to be built, they just start eating, which makes it all the harder to build the thing in the first place. Still, frat boys Eric and Jeremy managed to get done first, and then Monica and Joseph finished up and finally Ray and Yolanda finished after speeding back to the roadblock when they decided not to eat the bowls of crickets.

Then it was off to the detour, where Eric, Jeremy, Ray and Yolanda took on a new hobby in applying gold leaf to a Buddha, while Joseph and Monica made a costly mistake in transporting pots by board from one dealer to another, and in the process dropping them and having to make an extra trip. This extra trip cost them a spot in the finals, as the top three finishers will take each other on in the two-hour finale next week.

Just about any episode that features Mr. Eko is welcome to me. I think he's one of the more interesting characters on the island. So it was with some interest that I watched to see what new secrets would be revealed. Unfortunately it wasn't too revealing.

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