Episode 35: The Crossing / The Hunters

It's time for a Paul Lynch double feature with The Hunters and The Crossing, two episode from October 1988. They're two fairly typical Twilight Zone episodes with visions from the past menacing or haunting the present.

Episode Transcript

(00:29):
Hi there, I'm Chris Stash youI'm Mike White, and this is Found
Them Alone and we're the host ofDreams for Sale on the month one the
month one the month. I'll justdrop all the hs so far off to
a terrible start. Yeah, todayhas been great as it is on one
Jesus, Okay, we are thehost of Dreams for Sale, an leave

(00:52):
it all in. We are thehosts of Dreams for Sale. A once
a month look at the Twilight Zonenineteen eighty five, otherwise known as the
best version of the show that isn'tthe original, though Father Malone would say
the two thousands is pretty good,but you know, no, that's the
best. Oh Forrest Whitaker, forAs Whittaker, Oh my god, he
just makes it. He just makesit. O Guy's effortless. I mean

(01:15):
he is, but he's not inthe show. But put on this episode
of Dreams for Sale, we're goingto be taking a look at the third
and fourth episodes of the third seasonof the show, otherwise known as the
Downhill Run. That is the finaleof this show. The third season.
We'll be taking a look at twoepisodes, The Crossing and The Hunters.

(01:37):
There dwells within this parish, amodern day apostle and master builder who lists
among his tools of trade a bible, a rosary, and a calculator.
His name father Mark Cassidy, ageforty two, a fair and nobleman who's
about to discover one of his accountsis still open. That account is labeled

(01:57):
guilt, and it's sealed in aledger stored in the Twilight Zone. So
both of these episodes are directed byPaul Lynch. The Crossing is written by
Ralph Phillips. It stars Ted Shackelfordas a priest, a father who something
something happened. Do we know,look these episodes that we're talking about this

(02:22):
episode. In the next episode,I think we're gonna have a lot of
questions about what was going on inthese episodes, because all of a sudden,
the show decided that we don't needto know what's going on anymore,
at least not in a way thatany of us could talk about. So
I guess this father is haunted bysomething that happened to him in his past,
and that haunting is manifesting itself inhis daily life. Right, Yes,

(02:46):
sure, it seems so weird becauseif the stuff happened already. You
would think you would be like,why is this happening again, because it
just seems so surprised when it happens, this car being on fire. But
then he's in the confessional confessing toanybody is there anybody in the other booth,

(03:07):
talking about how he couldn't have savedor why was I the one that
was thrown from the car. Butthen at the end, she's alive,
and he's then yeah, god,was she alive? Five the situation,
she's the one that put the floweron the casket. I just assumed that
she is like a ghost, Yeah, a googlie who the fuck knows this?

(03:29):
This episode just um exists in thisweird realm of nothing matters, there
are no rules, and we'll dowhatever we want. Yeah, I just
wrote down this is one of theworst I've seen at all. Um,
Like, there are absolutely no stakes, there's no drama. It's just a
slow progression to figure out this thingthat already happened that the lead character already

(03:52):
knows about, Like what is thepoint of this? And then he does
and yeah, and his solution isto like go get in the ghost car
with her and then take her place, I assume, which, by the
way, for Catholics, that suicide. So father Mark is burning in half.
But it's not suicide because he didn'tdrive the car. But if he

(04:13):
was, he knew what was goingto happen. No, but he wasn't
driving the car, Dude, thathe knew that kill yourself to go to
hell. No, that's not that'slike saying, well, I didn't kill
myself, it was the ground afterI stepped off that ledge. Well,
I just assumed that's how all Catholicsjustify it. Yeah, I mean,
if he was Blackett could have justgotten shot by a policeman. Yeah,

(04:34):
he could have waved to a cop, right, Yeah, it was he
married to this woman? Was heposed at the time, and like it
looked that way from the photos?Didn't Hey, I'm not sure we could
answer that question either. I mean, the episode gives us It is so
strange to me. This is atwenty three minute episode. It gives us

(04:57):
nothing, Like it is his shocklong to get there. Well, yeah,
well those are the best kinds ofstories. They give you nothing and
they take forever to get there.Oh my god. Yeah, it must
about the hospital wing. We spenda lot of time on fundraising in this
episode. Yeah. Important, it'simportant. That's what people who watch Twilight
Zone are into fundraising. Yeah,And is it like, I guess we're

(05:21):
supposed to believe that, like heuh like feels so guilty about his friend
dying that that's what's driving him andyou know, forcing him on. But
like, it doesn't seem like there'sanything really deleterious going on other than he's
remembering something that are already happened.Yeah, comment on that, Chris,
Well, I don't know. WhatI don't understand is what's the point of

(05:41):
showing is something that's already happened whenit happens again at the end, and
it's not given any context as towhy it happened the first time, who
had happened to the first time,and why the father is seemingly on the
hook for what happened. That's whatI don't understand. The throne from the
car, right, That's that's whatwe're supposed to So, yes, is
the survivor's skill is the idea here? And and if that's the case,

(06:04):
if this is an examination of survivor'sgill, the way to cure that is
to kill yourself. According to theTwilight Zone, he's doing good deeds building
the raising two million dollars to buildthis hospital wing. But he just feels
so guilty about this thing in hispast, and it's just like, maybe

(06:26):
you should have some therapy. Ipersonally think that this is the obvious,
clear prequel to Fraggle Rock, becauseyou have Gerard Parks who plays Monsignor Perrault.
So what happens is Ted Shackelvert killshimself, he retires from the Catholicism,
and he goes and opens a store, changes his name to Doc and
then you have Fraggle Rock. Ohhe buys a dog, Yeah, and

(06:47):
I'll go you on better. Heloses his mind over the sudden disappearance of
Father Mark, who ends up dead, and the reappearance of a woman from
years ago, and then imagines FraggleRock happening and in his shop. But
does he ever actually laugh the caresaway or does he just imagine that he's
doing it? Is this Marjorie thetrash heap? Does she live in his

(07:08):
yard? Oh? Yeah, thetrash No? I don't think so,
because they have to go through FraggleRock and then they end up in some
outside i'd some other area. Okay, I just want to point out that
the fact that the three of usgrown ass adults are talking about Fraggle Rock
as seriously as we are, Ithink is much more important than anything that
this episode does. Yeah, youknow, I tried to think of a

(07:30):
way that this episode was a success, and the only way I could figure
is if the creators of this episodewere attempting to make me feel like I
was actually in the Twilight Zone,that this is the best that the Twilight
Zone had to offer, then yeehaw, you guys win. Otherwise, what
in the It's like it's even moreoffensive than the sort of overtly Modlin and

(07:51):
Schmalsey episodes we've gotten before, becauseat least those had something to say.
I don't know what this was about. Also, she's so go Steve Kelly
comes back from the dead at theend, and then it must be tough
to get a driver's license after you'vebeen legally pronounced dead, right and then
you just reappear. So I wonder, between the three of us, since
our opinions are kind of the onlyones that matter at this point except for

(08:13):
mine, obviously, I am curiouswhere do we come down on this episode.
Is she a ghost? Doesn't matter? Has the episode given us enough
information to make that assessment, becausehonestly, I think I fall into the
ladder. I don't know, becausethe episode doesn't even know what the fuck
it's going for. It feels liketo me that history was undone and now

(08:35):
he's the one that died. Butthen that again, it undoes all of
the shit that he was working on, the raising of all that money for
this hospital wing. It's just like, Okay, you're undoing all of your
good deeds because you feel so guiltyabout this, and now you're, like
you said, committing suicide by replacingyourself with you know, and now she's

(08:58):
alive. Okay. That's what itfeels like to me, is that he
is rewriting history. Yeah. Imean, that's the only way it makes
any sense at all if this iswe've now traveled back in time to the
point of the accident, and thenthis is his funeral and she did not
die, because otherwise it's a clusterfuck of a fucking episode. It's a
cluster fuck anyway, but at leastit makes more sense with that ending,

(09:20):
and for me, the thing Iultimately don't get is why do you want
to have it both ways at theend? Why can't you just make a
determination on which one it is,because honestly, it doesn't affect the story.
Actually, it would probably make youif they came down on either side,
he would probably have to make thestory make even less sense, frankly,

(09:43):
because then they are taking aside.So with their kind of ambiguous interpretation
or ambiguous presentation here, it makesvery little sense. But it could make
even less sense if she was aghost or she wasn't. So we're just
left here kind of wondering why Idon't even know what the story was.
What would the point? It's astory about survivor's guilt, that's nope,

(10:03):
yeah, I don't kill yourself survivor. Once again, we're bringing more to
this story than the story brought tous, Like, yeah, that's because
we actually can understand that it's nota good story. What's strange to me
is how anyone who worked on thisfilmed it did anything else said yes,
this is a full story, becauseI don't think they did. Oh yeah

(10:26):
at this yeah exactly, yeah,And I thought of that too, Like
there has to be like a writer'sroom of some kind here and Jay Michael
Straczynski's the story editor, and hehad worked in the previous two seasons at
least this sort of a junior writer. So somebody had to come up and
pitch this idea to him, andhe said, yes, go do that,
and then they turned in this scriptand they went yes, and then
they mounted a whole production. Atwhat point does anyone goes, what does

(10:48):
this mean? I don't know.It's crazy when mediocrity sort of gets funneled
through the system. To me,I don't know. Well, it's crazy
that this was on you know,actual television station and actual actors are involved.
Well, I want to say toothat this it looks so fucking cheap.
Oh yeah, it's like the cheapestlooking episode of this show. We

(11:11):
see bizarre. And the crazy thingabout that is it's like these they're like
doing location filming, like that's youknow, they were in some house and
then they were outside and for somereason, like earlier episodes which I've you
know, called out because it's soset down like it, at least they
were enlivened in some way. Now, I actually wanted to say this about

(11:33):
the next episode, but it's truewith this the same guy not directed,
but um edited this episode and thenext episode we're going to talk about.
The pace is so crazily glaciale likein between things, just nothing is happening.
The camera takes forever. It's justlike on and on and on.
And the other thing I noticed,and this is true of like this entire

(11:56):
season, it seems unless people aretalking, we have sound, or if
like some event has happened to crashor something like that, we have.
Otherwise it's dead silent, like noteven incidental music. It's just like it
feels weird. It feels like alike a community play or something. Yeah,
it reminded me of like stuff Iwould have seen on the early days

(12:18):
of Nickelodeon when they couldn't afford programmingand they just bought like weird shit from
England and I'm like, okay,sure, yeah, go ahead. Sorry,
no, no, I'm done.This feels like this feels like the
Twilight Zones response to the seventh seasonof Tales from the Crypt. Let's just

(12:39):
fin our wheels because nobody cares anyways, Like, yeah, I mean we
ran into it. In Tales fromthe Crypt, they literally just shit out
a second season and said you dumb. Fans will just eat it up because
you're stupid, and that's what thisfeels like. It's like this, you
will eat this up because we thinkyou're dumb, and it's like, No,

(13:01):
the Twilight Zone, the Twilight Zonebrand holds too much importance to be
treated like this. It really does. It's an important part of like American
pop culture, especially when it comesto television and the way television anthologies are
told now. And the fact thatthis is the best you can put forward
on a show with the pedigree ofthe Twilight Zone is really disappointing for a

(13:22):
number of reasons, namely the factthat this is the same show that had
Shatter Day as its first episode.Like wow wow. So speaking of that,
let's talk about the next episode,The Hunters. Oh I think you
mean still Life from season one,right, Jesus. A beautiful summer day

(13:50):
full of adventure for a young boyon the surface, a field like any
other, soon to be covered withneatly arranged family homes. But today this
curious boy is about to discover anda terrifying secret that could only be shared
within the confines of the Twilight Zone. Oh boy, isn't that the case.

(14:13):
Oh well, instead of a camera, we found these cave paintings,
and we're gonna take forever to getto anything again. It just takes ever
so long for them to get tothings. I was, I mean,
what a waste of a Louise Fletcher. You know, I was under the

(14:35):
impression that when that kid fell downinto that hole, all of a sudden,
Moldern Scully, We're going to lookdown there and be like, is
that where the aliens are? That'swhat it looked like. That is straight
up. That entire set looked likea scaled down version of the X Files
Fight the Future set where the whereLucas Black falls into that alien bit.
And yet this episode, what doesit do, like you mentioned, Mike,
nothing, absolutely nothing. It doesso little that it's a five minute

(15:00):
episode stretched out to twenty minutes.It's it's but fucking insane. I My
tolerance with this show all of asudden as skyrocketed into nowhere because I just
I don't want this show to gothe way that it's going, and watching
it do it is so disappointing,like just massively disappointing. The frightening thing
about this particular season is you know, I want to kind of let the

(15:24):
entire series off the hook and say, well, the third season was just
a cash grab and thrown together.But the fact remains that they cut season
two and a half and shuffle halfof those episodes into this season so that
they would have a season to sortof get US asyndication. So a good
number of these we were going toget as legitimate shot in the US with
American talent instead of this cheap Canadianknockoff. Now, I do want to

(15:48):
see some good things in this episode. First, in foremost, it's Leslie
Carlson is Jim, the sort ofthe real estate developer guy who was in
Black Christmas as the the operator tryingto figure out where in the house or
where the calls are coming from.And then he was in a Christmas story
he was trying to sell them thetree. I like that guy, so
I was happy to see him.The other thing is I didn't think in

(16:10):
my lifetime I would ever see LouiseFletcher stabbed to death with a caveman spear.
So well you've seen it now.That's what you get for causing Billy
Babbott to him a suicide. SoI didn't under Okay, so explain to
me, like I'm five, exactlywhat happened. They find a cave underground

(16:33):
with cave paintings, and the cavepaintings are somehow living cavemen who come to
life when no one is around.No, yeah, no, no no.
I think that particular spot was abridge, like a time machine type
portal between their world and hours andthe cave paintings were changing because they were

(16:56):
doing different things now, because nowthere was this new a time that they
were sort of running into. That'swhat I got, and I got that
from the very um uh well thoughtout and delivered line. This looks like
a spiritual doorway, which is naturallythe first thing anyone would think when they
look at a you know, severalmillion year old cave painting. I think

(17:18):
it's a doorway. I'm glad,Mike that you and I both misinterpreted the
episode together, because I'm glad toknow that it wasn't just me who had
no idea what the fuck was goingon. Yeah, I mean I was,
Yeah, I was kind of moreunder the impression that it was that
they could escape from the paintings anddo their mischief when they needed to,
and then It kind of reminded meof like, what was that the Mischief

(17:41):
map where you could see like whereProfessor mcgonical and oh mischief managed. Yeah,
what is that called marauders map?Yeah? They say you have an
awfully big nose? Is that?What is that? What the thing says
at one point? Come on,you guys have seen Harry Potter. That's
what he says. It's like ProfessorSnape, it says that you have an

(18:03):
awfully big nose. And he's likeand then David Thulis comes in. He's
like, what's up, guys,I'm in this movie? Remember No?
Okay, Well, Harry Potter's dumb, so never mind. I like the
first two yeah, well the onesthat people didn't like. I liked the
second one a lot, Yeah,a lot. The third one I was
just like, wow, this itkind of sucks. It's awfully dark for

(18:27):
a children's film. It's what's sadabout this episode is twofold A. Obviously,
you know Louis Fletcher, great actress, wasted, criminally wasted other than
taking a spear through the back,which to me, Father Malone is similar
to when David Warner had a dummythrown at it on a stairwell. It's

(18:48):
like, I never thought I wouldsee this, but yet here we are
someone chucking. Oh yeah, soMike, there's in an episode of Tales
from the Crib, David Warner iswalking up a staircase, a rather narrow,
pretty Steve staircase, and someone justtakes a dummy body and fucking hurls
it at him and he eats shipbackwards down the stairs. It is glorious.

(19:08):
This is the equivalent of that.Unfortunately, similarity to that episode.
Louis Fletcher is wasted here and theother thing is again it's another twenty three
minute episode that does nothing like thestory that it's telling. Could have taken
five minutes. We look back atthe earlier two seasons when they would do
like a ten or fifteen minute likequick snippet, sometimes only eight minutes,

(19:30):
and I look back at those andgo, god, I could have dealt
with a half hour of that.Yeah, Like these are just like the
one note punchlines. It's like there'snothing to them. It's just like obviously
whoever wrote this was obsessed with thosecave paintings in France and was like,
I want to write a story aboutthat, Like the cave paintings come to
life, like okay, cool andwhere it could have been cool, It

(19:52):
could have been cool, absolutely,but you know what, the fucking the
last one, the priest one couldhave been cool if they had anything at
all to say. So, yeah, like that's a harder uphill battle than
this one. This one, youcould add like all sorts of wacky shit
going on, like they just Ithink in the last one, if they
had in any way touched on thestuff that we brought up, like this
sort of moral quandary about this priestmaybe committing suit like that could have been

(20:15):
something. But here it's just youknow, flight of fancy like I've always
when I was a kid, Isaw cave paintings and I always wanted them
to come to life. I'll writethat it's very it's very strange. It's
we've gone from the show taking asimple idea and really blowing it up into
something exciting and grand, and nowthe show has gone has gone to taking

(20:37):
an interesting idea and just like tryingto do nothing else but use the idea
as the entire jumping point. Andit's like, you guys have to do
more than just punch us in thehead with the idea over and over again.
So telling us about the cave paintings, tell us something more, please
anything literally literally anything, anything wouldsuffice other than nothing. It's very strange.

(21:00):
I don't I you know, I'mdisappointed by where the show is going.
I am. It's weird that thethird season is taking this big of
a just a nose dive. Yeah, yeah, it's not that unusual for
a television series, but certainly whenyou have something as varied as an anthology
series like there ought to be somehighlights. You would think maybe they're coming

(21:22):
up. Fingers crossed, Yeah,keep crossing him. Cut back to Father
Malone five years later. His fingersare crossed and he's skeleton. Just I'm
still waiting, are still yeah?The bones are still crossed, cross still
waiting? We done with this one? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. So,

(21:42):
with these two episodes out of theway, on the next episode of
Dreams for Sale, we'll be takinga look at the fifth and sixth episodes
of the third season. Those twoepisodes are aptly titled dream Me a Life
and Memories. So until then,oh yeah, it's it'll be good.
Dream Me a good episode. Untilthen, where can people find you Father

(22:07):
Malone. When you're not here,you can find me at father Malone dot
com. I've got links to allmy stuff there. But I do have
a half hour audio drama that Iput out basically once a month called Dark
Destinations. You can check me outthere. And well, that's it.
According to someone that I pointed atyour podcast on the internet, they said,

(22:27):
I love the first episode, couldn'tget into anything else. My response
was, sorry, how about mything? Yeah, I pump your show
when I can. Man, comeon, it's not our child, you
know what. Yah? Fuck thatperson. Wow, you said it not
me, So there you go.Yeah, don't listen anymore. I don't

(22:47):
I don't want you. I don'twant your downloads. Take it back your
one, take your one back?Here you go. Yeah, man,
what about you, Mike White?What's going on at the Projection Booth Podcast.
Well, as I have no ideawhen this episode is coming out,
we are covering movies every week.We talk about movies, and that's what
we do. And you can hearus talk about movies at Projection Booth podcast

(23:11):
dot com. I really set youup for failure with that one. Huh.
It's okay, that's my man whoknows what we're going to be,
who knows when this will come out, feels like we're like a year and
a half ahead right now. Ifeel like we might be rather far ahead.
I do not. This may becoming out at Christmas time, so
you know, I don't know.As for me, you can find me

(23:33):
on Twitter at Christmas clause. Ido the Culture Cast. It's where I
talk about movies once a week.That's it. As for this podcast,
Dreams for Sale Twilight Zone eighty fiveon the Internet, Dreams for Sale on
Twitter and Big Thanks as always toroxy Drive and Neutron Dreams for the intro
after music for the podcast. We'llcatch on the next episode. I