The Twilight Zone Recap: He's Alive

A very young Dennis Hopper stars in this episode as a wannabe Adolf Hitler. That is, until Adolf Hitler himself shows up and helps him understand how to be a better leader. Well, better leader if you want to be Adolf Hitler, that is. So he starts speaking differently and people start following and all of a sudden he finds himself in a position to become the next Hitler. And that is when Hitler says that he needs a martyr, so he sacrifices one of his friends.

Next, an old friends challenges him in front of everyone and Hopper goes to him and shoots him, and the next thing you know, Hitler steps out of the shadows and just as Hopper is ready to ascend to the next step, the police burst in to arrest him in the death of his friend. So he runs, and as he runs, he is shot and killed. Perhaps next time, Adolf.

The interesting thing here is that the drama of this hour-long episode was really quite good, but the ending was a bit of a let-down. We never find out if Hitler was a part of his imagination or if he was actually alive. It doesn't matter so much, I guess, as I'm sure Serling meant it to be a commentary on hate, but after a good performance it just didn't end that well.

The Twilight Zone Recap: Mute

A young girl (played by Ann Jillian) is rescued from a burning house, only to find out that she can't speak. As it turns out, her parents never taught her to speak, fearing that it would interfere with her mind as they taught her as a telepath. This seems borne out as her new foster parents enroll her in school and in the first week her powers are considerably weakened. One of the better hour-long episodes.

This episode also has a short appearance from the late Oscar Beregi Jr. (who was in The Rip Van Winkle Caper from Season 2 and also Death's Head Revisited in Season 3).

Dirty Jobs Recap: Parade Float Dismantler

Coke Oven Operator. We start this episode at a coke oven. Coke is carbonized coal. Or something. Basically they take a bunch of coal (20 tons at a time) and cook it. That's right, they cook coal. I thought if you cooked coal it was burnt. But then, they cooked trees to make charcoal in Micro-Algae Man, so what do I know? It looks like it's hot. And it is definitely dirty. They won't even let Mike go into one room, and they don't let him operator anything more than a shovel. This place is dangerous.

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