Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

The Twilight Zone (TOS): “The Mirror”

Actor Peter Falk -- of all people -- got cast as a Latin American dictator who looked and talked like Fidel Castro. Unfortunately, the ending of the story -- as philosophically appropriate as it may be -- seems in retrospect to be more like wishful thinking on Rod Serling's part than anything else. After all, the real-life Fidel Castro lived to be an old man and ultimately died of natural causes. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of his many real-life victims.

TV Quote of the Week

There's something rather remarkable in the scope of imagination peculiar to children. they project and dream and fantasize with beauty and simplicity and faith, in a manner that somehow eludes us as we grow older. This is Brenda, and Brenda has a playmate. It comes to her in part because of loneliness, and what I wish for you is that you never get that lonely.
--Rod Serling, Night Gallery, “Brenda”

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Night Gallery: "The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes"

It's no big secret that director Steven Spielberg originally got his start directing TV show episodes and made-for-TV movies but I often forget that director John Badham -- best known for such iconic movies as Saturday Night Fever and WarGames -- got his start in the same way as well.

One of his more famous TV episodes was a certain memorable episode of Night Gallery that creeped me out the first time I saw it. It's based on one of the few screenplays by Rod Serling that actually attempted to argue that ignorance was bliss, a screenplay which in turn was inspired by a short story by Margaret St. Clair.

The episode was about a boy (played by Clint Howard) who literally predicted events like earthquakes and who ended up getting his own TV show as a result. But alas, complications set in and the boy decided he didn't want to do predictions anymore. When he was persuaded to do one anyway, he gives the TV audience a prophecy so offbeat that it just had to be false. And as you might guess, there turned out to be a reason why that was so...

There is not much else to say about this episode apart from noting that you may not want to think too much about this episode before you go to bed lest you have nightmares. If nothing else, you could always consider this episode to be the ultimate comment on global climate change...

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Rod Serling!

AKA Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling.

Born December 25, 1924. Died June 28, 1975.

He was the creator of the classic TV series The Twilight Zone, a show for which he provided both scripts and narration. (Of course, he got a little help on the scripts). He also contributed to the TV series Night Gallery but I suspect he was more proud of his work on The Twilight Zone, where he had more creative control as opposed to his work on Night Gallery, where he had virtually little -- if any -- control over the fate of his scripts.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Night Gallery: “Pickman's Model”

Well, you know how it is. You think you're going to have a nice quiet evening at home and then company drops by unexpectedly. Not just any company but that crazy girl you met in art class who seemed to be flirting with you earlier in the day. No sooner than you realize this but you get a second shock. It turns out that some of your no-account kinfolk have taken it upon themselves to drop by as well and you just know that if they ever meet your lady visitor, things will turn out badly for everyone. For you in particular.

Of course, a lot more than this happens in the Night Gallery episode entitled “Pickman's Model” and yet that above paragraph sums up the whole episode better than anything else I can think of. It certainly can't be summed up by the H. P. Lovecraft short story of the same name. As much as I would like to bla -- er -- give credit to the late Mr. Lovecraft for this episode, it owes a lot more to screenwriter Alvin Sapinsley's invention than to Lovecraft's work. And perhaps that's a good thing. Rest assured that Lovecraft had no room for romances in his version of the Pickman story -- he barely had room for plot and character. And yet this episode managed to be memorable despite all that.

Of course, the first time I saw this episode, I was still in grade school -- and thus easily impressed by tales of ghosts, ghouls and monsters. Despite what Rod Serling once said in an interview, I did not tune into Night Gallery expecting Mannix in a shroud -- or even Peyton Place in a crypt. In fact, it was my late father who originally introduced me to the show -- and what he saw in it, I'll never know. Then again, he was a big fan of the original Twilight Zone and it was his influence, no doubt, that got me hooked on the work of Rod Serling to begin with. And through Rod Serling, I eventually got introduced to the work of other writers such as Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Manley Wade Wellman and eventually... H. P. Lovecraft.

In any event, when I first discovered Night Gallery, I was still into late night creature features so I tended to like the scary episodes (which were rarely written by Mr. Serling) far more than the intellectual think-pieces (which were more often than not Mr. Serling's work) -- and of course, “Pickman's Model” was one of my favorites. It didn't hurt that when I first saw this episode, it seemed a lot more scary to me than it does today. I was not yet burnt out on umpteen hundred horror movies and horror shows. Nor was I was so blase that I automatically looked for the zipper on the back of the poor monster's suit. The revelation concerning actor Bradford Dillman's Richard Upton Pickman character--an eccentric artist prone to painting weird and morbid subjects -- seemed a lot more surprising to my young eyes than it probably would be to today's pre-teen viewers. And of course, the twist ending seemed a lot more ominous to my young self -- ominous enough to make for quite a few sleepless nights.

And yet even today I still continue to be fascinated by those aspects of the Pickman story which the screenwriter did not explain. Why exactly did an unmarried artist like Pickman live in a big old house by himself? What did the poor guy do on Mother's Day? For that matter, what did he do on Father's Day? If he hated human company so much, why was he hanging around them so much? Why didn't he just give up his residence and move in with his relatives?

Alas, none of these questions will ever be answered and I wonder if I might not be the only viewer of this episode who really cares. I am especially appalled that screenwriter Alvin Sapinsley chose to end the episode with hints about Pickman's mysterious disappearance because it would have been more interesting if the episode had had a less conventional ending.

Perhaps Miss Goldsmith (Pickman's would-be love interest) could have persuaded Pickman to paint more commercial subjects like, say, soup cans. True, her family and his might have had a few conflicts when she and Pickman became a couple, but on the other hand, true love has survived more daunting obstacles. Besides, Louise Sorel -- the actress who played Miss Goldsmith -- was so sweet that she probably could have charmed the dead right out of their graves. And surely Pickman's kinfolk would have had no problem with that.

Hey, I Remember This Show: Night Gallery

The last TV series on which the late Rod Serling worked and unfortunately, the one which gave him the most trouble. It says something about his dedication that it actually produced some good stories -- for example, the Emmy-winning “They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar.” Unfortunately, it also produced a lot of stories which were best not remembered.

I still have a fondness for most of the better stories -- if nothing else, the series introduced me to both author H.P. Lovecraft and actress Joanna Pettet -- but I wish for Mr. Serling's sake that the ratio of good stories to bad had been a lot more favorable. Then again some of those stories still haunt my dreams so they obviously had some effect even if it was not one Mr. Serling would have preferred.

Hey, I Remember This Show: The Twilight Zone

It is the one TV show every fantasy and sci-fi buff discovers sooner or later, even if it is on late night television. I'm referring, of course, to Rod Serling's classic anthology series The Twilight Zone.

The first season's opening credit sequence always struck me as dreamlike -- as if the composer was in the middle of a dream when he wrote the music for it. But it does not have the music most people associate with this series.



That music came with the second season.



The third season used the same music but different visuals.



The opening credits sequence for the fourth and fifth seasons was the one I remembered most for some reason. Perhaps it was that strange door. Or the many times I tried to figure out what the strange object was that appeared from the upper right hand corner after Einstein's famous equation.

In the long run, it does not really matter. They were all worth watching.