May 13th, 2006 Archives

The Twilight Zone Recap: The Dummy

Cliff Robertson (A Hundred Yards Over the Rim, Season 2) needs a new act. His dummy, Willie isn’t just a dummy. He’s alive. Or so Jerry thinks. No matter what he does, there Willie is, taunting him. He says things that Jerry doesn’t say, he doesn’t things that Jerry doesn’t make him do.

And in the end, we come closer to the stage, and as we circle around to the front we see that things have changed, that there’s a new act – and that instead of Jerry on the chair it’s Willie – and that Jerry is now the dummy. So things have indeed been changed. An interesting idea, but not executed very well.

The Twilight Zone Recap: The Gift

Little Pedro has a new friend, only this friend isn’t from around town, he’s from outer space, and he’s been injured by a few bullets. The doctor has helped by taking the bullets out of his body, but he shouldn’t even be alive. And now the police are coming to pick him up and everyone is nervous. Pedro’s friend has given him a gift, but he’s told him not to open it right now, to wait until things have died down.

In the end, Pedro’s friend is shot in the street and the gift is burned because it is from Satan, but the doctor picks it up and can just make out part of it, where it reads “People of Earth, this is our gift to you, a cure for cancer…” but then the rest of it is burned. So in our fear we killed no only this one man, but the dream of a cure for cancer.

When Jefferson Myrtlebank (James Best, also in The Grave from earlier in Season 3) dies, no one thinks much of it. But when he gets out of the coffin during the funeral, folks think about it a bit.

It’s a bit unusual mostly because he’s been dead for two days. His folks, his girlfriend, no one wants anything to do with him. Not until he makes a fine speech, that is, about how one of two things is true. Either he is Jeff Myrtlebank, in which case they have nothing to worry about. Or he isn’t Jeff Myrtlebank, and he is this evil spirit they worry about, in which case they ought to be realy nice to him. At that point, they see the error of their ways and leave Jeff and his bride-to-be alone.

So Jeff lights a match with his fingers and closes the gate with his mind and they go on their merry way. Nice.

The Twilight Zone Recap: A Piano in the House

Mr. Fortune has bought his young wife a piano for her birthday. But since he’s worried that she may not have any talent to be able to learn how to play it, he purchased a player piano. The only problem is that as you play a type of tune, that type of tune brings out something about someone. If they are a romantic, it brings out the romance.

In the case of the butler (Cyril Delevanti, Smithers in A Penny for Your Thoughts from Season 2), he is suddenly all smiles. In the case of his young wife, he finds out that she no longer loves him. A friend of his wife has been having an affair with the wife. And as for Mr. Fortune himself? He’s just a young boy, afraid of what everyone will think, suddenly reduced to crying on the floor as everyone laughs and leaves him all alone.