May 11, 2023 • 44 mins
"The Time Element"
Season 0, Episode 0
Written by Rod Serling
Directed by Allen Reisner
Starring William Bendix, Martin Balsam and Darryl Hickman
Original Airdate: November 24, 1958
Aired as a part of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse on CBS
Synopsis:
A man is sent back in time to December 6, 1941 and tries to warn people about the upcoming Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
This episode acted as the unofficial backdoor pilot for what ultimately became The Twilight Zone. It is considered to be the first produced Twilight Zone story for television, essentially paving the way for CBS to greenlight an official pilot to be produced.
This is the very first episode of Zoners: A Podcast For Fans of The Twilight Zone! We are going to cover every produced episode of the original run of the show, which ran from 1959 to 1964.
Zoners is hosted by Matt McGregor, Colin Shaw, and Harris McCabe. Three friends who also co-host and produce License to Watch, a comedic movie review podcast focusing on movie franchises.
That show can be found HERE. Listen and subscribe for free everywhere you listen to podcasts!
Season 0, Episode 0
Written by Rod Serling
Directed by Allen Reisner
Starring William Bendix, Martin Balsam and Darryl Hickman
Original Airdate: November 24, 1958
Aired as a part of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse on CBS
Synopsis:
A man is sent back in time to December 6, 1941 and tries to warn people about the upcoming Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
This episode acted as the unofficial backdoor pilot for what ultimately became The Twilight Zone. It is considered to be the first produced Twilight Zone story for television, essentially paving the way for CBS to greenlight an official pilot to be produced.
This is the very first episode of Zoners: A Podcast For Fans of The Twilight Zone! We are going to cover every produced episode of the original run of the show, which ran from 1959 to 1964.
Zoners is hosted by Matt McGregor, Colin Shaw, and Harris McCabe. Three friends who also co-host and produce License to Watch, a comedic movie review podcast focusing on movie franchises.
That show can be found HERE. Listen and subscribe for free everywhere you listen to podcasts!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:27):
Submitted for your approval. A mangoes to a psychiatrist complaining of a recurring
nightmare where he wakes up on Decembersixth, nineteen forty one in Pearl Harbor.
But it's not a dream. Theman is a time traveler, and
when he can't prevent the Pearl Harborattack, he is killed by Japanese fighter
planes, leaving his confused psychiatrist togo day drinking in a bar in New
(00:52):
York City in the Twilight Zone.That pretty much sums it up. That
is a story. This one hadan intro by Desi arn Is. Yeah,
well we'll get into that. Ohyeah, well, I you know,
you know why he couldn't come backand do the intro to all of
them? Too much, too muchexp planning to do. That is an
awful lot of splay to do.Oh, welcome to the Zoner's podcast to
(01:19):
Do. Yeah, this is Zoners. We are I'm Matt McGregor. Nailed
it. Let's try that again.I'm Met McGregor, I'm Colin Shaw,
I'm Harris McCabe and we you mightremember us if you are a fan of
the License to Watch podcasts. Weare the same guys on that show.
If you've never listened to license towatch, it's free. You can listen
(01:40):
to it wherever you listen to podcasts, and God have mercy on your soul.
We you know, we're usually chattingabout movie franchises, but we decided
to focus our efforts on the nineteensixties, fifties and sixties classic television program,
the Twilight Zone or the t Zas well to call it the Zone.
(02:01):
It's the Zone and were t TZ? Well do you say? I
usually pronounced it phonetically, so I'musually like, nobody knows what I'm talking
about. Yeah, I got aNissan Z and an aut Et T and
I cut them in half and Iwelded them together. Um, front and
(02:22):
back or side to side? Uhquarters, Okay, so it's got a
front right right is one thing.Yeah, front left, left, back
left is the other. Audit andbut yeah, okay, complicated, Yeah,
more work complicated. Man, it'sa good thing. This is an
incredibly long episode. So the waythis show is going to work is we
(02:43):
decided we're going to go through chronologicallyfrom the air date of the very first
episode all the way to the verylast. There's five seasons. There's like
thirty something episodes per season, sowe're gonna be doing this until twenty forty
six. I'm hoping I outlive thispodcast. That'd be something. Right where
when we started the show, Harriswas alive and there now underground from Harris
(03:07):
is great. We just didn't launchchairs on a dedicate all the later seasons
to my memory. In his contract, he still has airtime, so we
just hold the microphone up to theheads are like our podcast logo has like
our three faces, like in anold fashioned movie, like in circles,
like you know, like starring thesethree, but Harris is black and white
(03:29):
and has an X over. Y. Um, should we talk about this
episode? Yeahs lou playhouse episode ofthe Twilight Zone, right, so the
first episode. We're not talking aboutthe pilot episode of the Twilight Zone.
So there's a little bit of historyhere. So this show is created by
Rod Serling, who I have detailednotes here. Um. He is one
(03:50):
of the more famous writers from theera of the fifties and sixties. Uh.
He died pretty young, but um, before that, he had an
illustrious career of writing plays and TVshows and even movies. Um. He
famously wrote a draft of Planet ofthe Apes, which we covered on our
other podcasts. But so he's fromupstate New York originally. He actually grew
(04:15):
up in Binghamton, which is whereI went to to undergrad. And it's
weird because the town, like there'smany like Rod Serling, you know,
points of interest around the town.It's also the birthplace of like, um,
the carousel or something like that.There's carousel shit all over the place.
I don't know, it's an interestingtown. It's very cold and rainy.
(04:35):
Um anyhow, Rod Sling he wasborn on Christmas Day in nineteen twenty
four, and uh, he enlistedin the Army the day he graduated high
school. And he was in theUS Army Airborne Division paratroopers, the sorry,
the eleventh Airborne Division paratroopers. Hesaw battle, he saw action,
(04:57):
I mean in the Philippines. Hewas injured, uh, and in war
and he came back and he waslike, I want to be a writer
and or actually I have here.I never want to be in war.
Well, he was like writing inwartime too. He would write poems and
mail him back and write like,I don't know when he had time to
write. I guess do you havea lot of time, and I think,
like when you're not being shot at, I think it's a lot of
(05:18):
sitting around. Yeah. Um,so it's a pretty interesting guy. I'm
trying to like bullet point the goodstuff here. Um. He came back,
he got married, he had somekids, has two daughters. He
went to a place called Antioch College. Am I saying that right? I
don't know where that is. Ididn't look upwhere that. I think it's
(05:40):
in New York somewhere. Maybe,Um, eventually, we've only had a
New Yorker here to ask if onlyI've never heard of it. I don't
know if it's it's probably in deepupstate New York, or maybe it's maybe
it's somewhere DC area. I don'tknow, maybe why he eventually moved to
Cincinnati, so maybe never Maybe it'slike in Ohio or something like that.
We've got to three or four states. I will look it up. Um.
(06:01):
You know, he tried to Hewas always interested in writing for television
and radio, and he tried todo that, um at the same time
as being a dad and like,he also worked at a radio station and
he found that it was just toomuch, couldn't do it. But he
really wanted to write, and sohe quit his job to focus solely on
writing. I'm sure that was thenext listen, kids, I don't like
(06:26):
it. I don't like this.Um. He sold scripts to all,
you know, all the shows likeof the time. There was a lot
of like um shows much like thisthe Desilu Playhouse, which we'll get into,
but there was a lot of oneoff shows back then. There was
a lot of like playhouses and drafttelevision theaters there and like the Hallmark Hall
(06:47):
of Fame, and a lot oftimes they would adapt like stage plays and
stuff like that or short stories orwhatever. Yeah, And um, I
don't know if I mean, Iguess like if you wrote good tells,
you became a household name. Likewhat other writers of the era did people
know about, Like Gene Roddenberry thatwas And I don't even know if he
was he was a little later andwas he considered a writer. He was
(07:11):
sort of just said he was likea show creator, Yeah, which I
don't know. Um, isn't thisthe time of like Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah,
but again not really a writer.He was just sort of like a
brand. Yeah. And he's aninteresting one because he did movies, and
he had a television show around thistime too. But this is that when
his movie career waned, is whenhe started branding himself for the show,
(07:32):
and then it was actually using histelevision production team to make Psycho. That
kind of put him on the backon the map because he was people thought
that he was kind of old fashionedand irrelevant, right, So eventually Sling
and you know, we don't haveto talk about him as in depth in
the other episodes, but I feltit was natural to talk about him in
this first thing, just to getsort of the backstory of how this what
(07:57):
is this episode called the time Element, how this came to be for the
folks at home who are just listeningand aren't aware of Matt has a legal
pad that is like eighteen pages oftiny chicken scratch. So once we get
through this, which you know,if you want to just skip ahead to
like the thirty minute mark, Ithink we should have Rot Sterling's autobiography out
(08:20):
of the way by that. Yeah, continue, Okay, So there was
a show called Playhouse ninety which was, like, you know, again,
every week it was like something newthat was that that might have been the
one that the Casino Royale was apart of the original or whatever his name
was starting. Yeah, so itwas Playoffs ninety or one of those,
because Playoffs ninety was one of themost famous of these, you know.
(08:41):
Yeah, So Sterling would write abunch of scripts and he would sell them
to that and he kind of turnedthat into a living and none of them
really took off until he wrote thisone called Patterns, which was based off
of a play that he wrote thatwas a huge hit. People wrote in
like we love this, and itkind of was based off a wallpaper he
saw. Yeah he uh, youknow, and so based off that success,
(09:03):
everybody wanted a piece of him,and he started writing scripts all over
the place, and none of themreally took off until he again wrote another
one called Requiem for a Heavyweight,starring Jack Palance as a you know,
boxer on the decline. It sayshere, Um. It was the first
original ninety minute show ever written forTV, and it swept the the Emmys
in nineteen fifty six, winning allsorts of awards and again like just you
(09:26):
know, making Rod Sterling more ofa household name. And so, you
know, in nineteen fifty seven rolledaround and they were like, Rod,
you're doing great, we love youhere at playoffs ninety what do you want
to do? And he was like, I want to create a science fiction
anthology TV show. And people werelike, uh because yeah, because at
the time science fiction was more orless relegated to B movies and uh,
(09:52):
you know, just considered for children. No one really took it. It's
basically it was like it was itwas genre stuff, which you know,
you could get away with if itwas like a thriller or something, or
a crime show, but not somuch like this was like fantasy. It's
like if you were going to pitchdoing a show about elves in like the
nineties, people would have been like, what fu No, we're not spending
(10:15):
a billionaire. I mean, like, look at what it's on. It's
on the Desilu Playhouse. Our DesiArnez and Lucy basically made the same show
four times. Yeah, exactly.Yeah, the creativity and daring challenges were
not like necessarily what people wanted.What if we get Lucy again and we
do a show where maybe she's marriedto Desi Arnz, we have a kid
(10:37):
this time, she's got a differentboss. She could have a job,
a job I don't know about that. Yeah, that's not is this science
fiction? So something I think we'regonna keep coming back to on this show
is we're gonna try and really placeourselves in the time period. And uh,
(10:58):
I you know, it's it's interestingfor us. I think too.
That's why we're all smoking. Yeah, we're all wearing three piece suits.
Um. Yeah, I think it'sinteresting for us to sort of put ourselves
in the time period to understand,to better understand, you know, why
things were done a certain way.That's why you guys been acting so sex
system. Yeah, that's it.Um. So one thing I so,
(11:22):
I got this Twilight Zone companion bookby a guy named Mark Scott zickrie Zygree.
I don't know how to say that, but it's, uh, it's
really it's really interesting. It hasa lot of cool details. So it
says here that or something I gleanedfrom it is that one of the reasons
why Rod certainly wanted to branch offand do a totally different thing that was
(11:43):
out of you know, the ordinary, is because he was so stifled by
the censors of the time. Everyscript that he wrote, they would have
him make like ridiculous changes and Ihave an example butt plugs. They haven't
been invented yet. So when youcouldn't have two people sleep in the same
bed on TV, right exactly didn'thave a toilet, so there's no toilets
(12:05):
in this Yeah, I know.The whole time I was watching where shs
happening? Why are we not seeing? We could modern dv um. There
was one script he wrote and hehad to change the word He had to
remove any use of the word Americanand any use of the word lucky because
that particular show was sponsored by acigarette company and they thought that those words
(12:30):
would remind viewers of rival cigarette companyand lucky lucky strike or whatever. Yeah.
Um, and and they had tochange them to United States and fortunate
instead of American and lucky, andso really stifling his creativity there. Yeah,
this boiled down to a script thathe wrote about. It was like,
(12:50):
I didn't write this one down,but it was, um, oh,
actually I have it right here.It was really interesting and it was
a lot of words. So Itook a picture of it. So it's
called Noon on Doomsday and it wasfor the United States. Steel Hour Wow,
brought to you by Steele. Seethe metal the metal, keep being
(13:11):
entertained, and keep buying that damnedsteel. Brought to you by Steele,
the comic book character. It saysthe plot concern of violent neurotic who kills
an elderly Jewish man and then isacquitted by residence of the small town in
which he lives. And it saysbefore the show is broadcast, a reporter
(13:33):
asked him if the script was basedon the Emmett Till case, in which
a black fourteen year old boy waskidnapped and murdered in Mississippi and his murders
were acquitted by an all white localjury. And his reply was, well,
if the shoe fits, meaning yes, this is exactly what I was
referencing. And so because of thatthey had to make changes, and I
(13:54):
wrote, I have the changes here, It says the murder jew was changed
to an unnamed foreigners of Coca Colawere removed from the set, and the
word lynch was stricken from the script. It was determined that it was too
southern in connotation. Characters were madeto say this is a strange little town
or this is a perverse town,so that no one would identify with it.
And finally they wanted to change thevicious Narada killer into just a good,
(14:18):
decent American boy momentarily gone wrongly gonewrong. Yeah. So once that
happened, he was like fuck this, Like, oh yeah, we're gonna
curse on this show. We're gonnasay whatever we want. Yeah. So
if you don't like it, fuckyou. Yeah. Yeah, And so
that sort of segue that was doinga sci fi show. He realized that
(14:39):
he could, you know, writeabout themes and things that he normally wouldn't
be allowed to write about, butunder the guise of like it's another planet
or it's an alternate reality or whatever, and in the sensors would let a
lot of stuff fly. And thus, you know, the the idea for
the Twilight Zone was born. Soyeah, I guess let's get into this
episode. This is the the WestinghouseDesilu Playhouse, which is a horrible name
(15:05):
which just rolls right off the Yeah, it's a lot of house, right
Westinghouse. Yeah. Um. Itis hosted by Desi Arnaz of of Lucy
and Desi Fame. And did youguys see the movie the one that came
out like last year? Yeah?No, I didn't see that. Yeah,
it was worth my time. No, I didn't hate it. I
(15:26):
thought it was really well written.But it also neither one of them looks
anything like it sounds like, hein particular looks like I don't know,
like he's so he's so much biggerand his head is so much larger and
it is so much ugly. Well, I've seen a lot of Javier Bardem
and other things. Yes, I'mgonna see him as haven't seen him playing
(15:52):
a bongo though, because I'll tellyou that's when he really comes along.
I've actually seen I've actually seen everycelebrity play a bongo. I have a
collective of Matthew McConaughey, shrine um. Yes, speaking of casting, were
you guys as excited as I wasto see William Bendix and Martin Balsam in
(16:15):
this No, I don't know whothe fuck. I was thrilled that that
there were two actors that I wasso familiar with I like so much in
this in this TV episode. Right, yeah, I mean, well,
okay, so we should get intothe actor. So Martin this Martin Balsom
because he was Fear. He wasin Psycho. That's this guy. Oh
yeah, he is psych this guyhe was actually the detective in Cape Fear
(16:37):
and in Psycho he was a privatedetectives the Psycho he's the guy who falls
down the stairs and Psycho right,yeah, he gets stabbed and yeah,
and he's like he was also theforeman in Twelve Angry Men. He was.
He's in a ton of stuff andhe usually played like cops or but
he could also play like intellectuals.He sort of had a real um,
you know, sort of wide varietyof range. William Bendix, in the
(16:59):
other hand, was very much likea big oh fish kind of bruiser,
and he was in a bunch ofstuff. He was like he played Babe
Ruth in the Babe Ruth Story.He was What I know him best from
is he was in a couple ofAlan Ladd movies, The Glass Key,
where he plays this like psychotic thugbully and The Blue Dahlia where he plays
(17:19):
this psychotic thug bully who's actually AlanLadd's friend who turns out to be the
real killer. But he's he's great. He's like a great old fashioned heavy
and he's really good in this becausehe gets to play like a little the
like more sensitive emotional side of himself, which he had he but he played
the bad guy so often that itdidn't really I gotta be honest with you,
(17:40):
this character is so annoying. Likeif I was there, I'd be
like, I don't care if theJapanese are gonna bomb us, shut the
hell up, like Hiroshi, takeme. What was the most annoying thing
about this character? Because I agreethere's a lot of annoying things. It's
just I don't see. I thoughthe was really good in this. Oh.
(18:03):
I think the actor's great, butI think the character. The most
annoying thing is how long it takeshim to figure out that he's that he's
time traveling and he's in nineteen fortyone and not nineteen fifty eight. Oh
my god. He forgets. Heconstantly forgets. He's trying to convince the
newspaper people and they asked him whothe vice president is, and it takes
him like five minutes to not realizethat he's in the past. Again,
(18:25):
Well, if you had to namethe vice president of what is this,
it's supposed to be like seventeen yearslater. Who was the vice president seventeen
years ago? Seventeen years ago?Probably Quail. I don't know. No,
it's probably right al Gore. Yeah, it was probably had to be
al Gore, It had to bemid nineties. If someone asked me who
seventeen years ago, that's no,it's um no, that's actually in the
twenty two thousands. No, uh, Joe Biden, Dick Cheney, Dick
(18:49):
Cheney, Cheney, yeah, Cheney. Yeah, that was so this is
actually vice president harder than we thought. Yeah, we honestly our problem was
not knowing how long seventeen years is? What president? Who was the president
in two thousand, two thousand?Right? That? No, that's too,
(19:10):
that's not even Yeah, we stillcan't do the math of but what
year is it now? George W. Bush one with the first time in
six Yes, in the Hanging ChadFlorida recount. If we all remember that
was my nickname in high school,you can't. So here's my thing is
(19:40):
that in today's world, if someonecame around and was like, you know,
I'm from the future and like tomorrowthere's gonna be like a terrorist bombing
or whatever, we're so much moreas a culture entrenched in the idea of
time travel that I think people wouldbuy it. You know, if you
threw a couple of things out there, like oh, yeah, in the
future, h Patrick Schwarzenegger's president anduh know I buy that. Yeah,
(20:03):
we'd be like oh yeah, yeahyeah. Um, Whereas in this time
he told me that some famous generalwas president in the future, I'd be
like, I don't know, yeah, reality team, the minor league celebrity,
that's the son of somebody even morefamous. Yes, yes, definitely
President Shore President Paul. Now he'ssaying an actual general or like he was
(20:26):
the general for General Car Insurance.He's a CGI character from a commercial character
from a car commercial. Yes,we would elect that. Everything he says
is in a jingle. Yeah,he addresses the nation like in jingle it's
it's really hot to talk about AIright now. But who's who's talking about
an AI president? Yeah? Wellno, this is exactly why I voted
(20:48):
for the general, not chet GPTEAM. It was a tough election, but
I made my call. I'm I'ma party loyalist, but I had to
draw the line somewhere. Um.Yeah, I think this. What I
think is the most frustrating thing abouthim is he he knows that all these
people are gonna get killed by theJapanese and his first thought is I'm gonna
play some bets. Let me getmy bookie on the front. Yeah,
(21:11):
well he is a bookie. That'sthe whole thing. Also, like it
takes him, it takes him foreverto say anything. He spends a bunch
of time in the psychiatrist's office likejust saying like, oh, this is
what my dream is, and likeit takes him forever to go through.
The whole thing is like, well, I know about the future and tomorrow
we're all gonna get bombed. Buthe takes forever to say that. Also,
his solution to like any conflict orproblem is either like drink some more,
(21:34):
or I'm gonna suck you one,yeah, or threaten to suck you
one, or just insult you untilyou suck me one. That's his conflict
resolution involves a lot of sucking.Yeah. So should we get right into
like who if we were to recastthis today? And like if I want
to, yeah, I want toknow, Hey, let's recast it.
And what would you change if youhad to change something? Because I have
I have huge ideas and you're notgonna beat my idea. Really, I
(21:56):
have a good one about Jack Black? Is this guy. Now, I
think one thing is I think weshould acknowledge that there's like realistic casting,
and then there's like, you know, you're not gonna get Tom Cruise in
this movie or this show, butlike, I think you could probably so
maybe cast it for like tell Ihave one for television, or if this
were made into a movie. Butit is a one off, so if
(22:17):
this is kind of a if it'slike enough of a prestige TV show,
I feel like you could. I'mwas just thinking of television, but I
was thinking, like, who couldyou get if this was like an anthology
series and you were just trying toget actors for one episode. So maybe
not an A list celebrity, butyou could get somebody that is a film
star. Jack Black. I thinkJack Black is a possibility. Which this
(22:37):
guy, this guy in the roleof Jensen or whatever his name is,
right, Okay, yeah, Isee I went down an interesting rabbit hole.
So this guy kind of reminded me. He's like a he's like a
wise cracking, like New York guy. So I'm like, who is this
guy? Like who would play himtoday? And then my mind went to
Don Rickles, and I'm like,he's dead but if they made this in
like the eighties, I feel likeDon Rickles could do it, and he's
(23:00):
got let's let's let's about today.But yeah, yeah yeah. So then
I kept going and I'm like,he's like a simulation of Don Rickles and
the little face. I was like, who's a modern comics or like why
not get running? Who's the modernDon Rickles? Yea, yeah, yeah,
I'm telling them that the Japanese aregonna bump. It's no respect,
no respect. Uh So then Istarted thinking about maybe like kind of flip
(23:23):
it on its head and have itbe like a black actor and like bring
kind of a race thing into it, where like they don't believe they don't
believe him because he's not a whiteguy. Yeah, by the way,
what are you even doing this far? Get out of here right, you
don't belong here. Um. ThenI was like, maybe Hannibal Barress someone
like that. Is he a moderncomic who would fit the bill? And
then then I was like, ormaybe like a Denzel Washington, you know,
like if this were a movie,um, and I put all over
(23:47):
the place, but they don't believehim because of race. And then then
I was like, Okay, soif you change it for a modern thing
instead of Pearl Harbor, maybe it'slike nine to eleven, right, he's
like tomorrow the you know, theWorld Trade Center is gonna get bombed.
Then it would make sense if itwas like a Middle Eastern guy, so
like a pick like a Japanese Americanperson and stilled on it with right right,
(24:08):
because they'd be like, they'd belike, oh, are you with
them? Like right? Yeah,that's h um. Yeah. I thought
I thought that would be pretty cool. I like that. I like that
a lot, so so I wasthinking of casting it sort of the same
period piece, same kind of roles, and my two were like for the
psychiatrist, I was thinking, likePaul Giamati, I think would be a
pretty good what do you mean you'retraining? I think he's got that like
(24:32):
Martin Balsamy thing of like kind oflike he could play the sort of I'm
not gonna shut the guy down,I'm gonna hear him out and then try
to guide him in the right direction, but then he gets more concerned and
frustrated. But my my kudigra isuh John c Riley, I think would
be a great like kind of asthis as as this guy is like the
kind of officieness of it, butalso like the sensitivity when he actually sort
(24:53):
of feels sympathy for people, andwhen he can't like articulate, he plays
inarticulate guys really well where he can'tquite express himself well enough to like get
his point across, which I thinkwould be great. But I love transposing
into nine to eleven. The changeI would make in terms of whether you
change it to a different time ordid the period piece at Pearl Harbor,
(25:15):
I think would be really interesting.Well, first of all, you could
have the guy wake up now andgo back to Pearl Harbor and now try
to think of who the vice presidentis when it's like something that happened before
you were born, right, Thatwould be interesting. But I think the
biggest thing is and you're sort ofa fish out of water, like culturally,
Yeah, you don't understand the waysof the world, and you will.
And you could do away with allthe bullshit where he doesn't know that
(25:36):
it's not nineteen fifty eight. Youknow, you could just cut that all
because I figured that out quickly.The things that bug me the most about
this or how long it takes themto figure that shit out, where it
really feels like they're trying to stretchthis story out to fifty five minutes to
the Desilu Playhouse runtime, rather thanjust have it be what it is and
all the bullshit with like the gamblingand there's all these different scenes that just
seem like fat that I think theycould just cut out and have it be
(26:00):
what it is about him trying tosave the lives of this guy and his
new wife that he like feels sympathyfor these people, and he makes it
about like trying. He can't hecan't stop the whole attack, but he
can try to save these individual people. I think the one other change I
would make is the ending. Iwould have him actually somehow succeed in saving
(26:21):
those people, but he gets killed. So when this is so, we
find out later that they actually survivedand went on to have a happy life
and he got killed in their place. So how do they show up at
the bar at the end and theysee his picture? Yeah, Well,
I think that the psychiatrist is theone who's got to like put it all
together. Yeah, And he sortof makes you know because they have the
moment where he tells the psychiatrist.I looked those people up and here were
(26:44):
their names, and they died onthat day. And then I think at
the end, when the psychochiatrist istrying to figure out, like I remember
this, dude, but I don'tremember why, then he looks up some
of these names that he remembers andrealizes that they are alive, and maybe
he even goes to see them.It's like, yeah, I like that.
I'm sorry, but doing this asnine to eleven would be so so
(27:06):
good if he woke up on likeone of the top floors of the World
Trade Center. So every scene,every interaction, every choice he makes is
like whether or not he's like gonnaget out of the building or not,
and it's like super claustrophobic. Well, engineer Chris Kill has something to say,
Engineer Chris here, I have aquestion. So it's the year two
(27:26):
thousand and one. How do youalert people that nine to eleven is happening.
I haven't seen this episode, butyou just run around screaming they're gonna
do a nine to eleven. They'regonna do Yeah, tomorrow is nine to
eleven. Yeah, you idiots,don't you know tomorrow's nine to eleven.
I feel like where I've known aboutnine to eleven, I'm trying to tell
(27:47):
people about it, but I don'tknow. How are you saying we're living
the modern version of this episode.There were cell phones, but they weren't
good and not everyone had them.Maybe you like calling a bomb threat.
Yeah, because this is a problemas this guy has, and he basically
handles in the dumbest way as possible. He doesn't go to the army.
He doesn't go He goes to anewspaper and he tries to get them to
publish the story the day before,and but he doesn't. He's not like
(28:11):
very convincing in the way that hetries to explain it, Like he doesn't
even try to explain how he knows. He doesn't even tell him he's a
time traveler. He's just like,I know, trust me, I'm I'm
in on this. You know.That's why he's so annoying. I feel,
Yeah, but that's part of whatthe conflict is. I said,
he's the wrong guy to be tryingto save everyone. Yeah, so I
actually have We wrote down our likefavorites and least favorite scenes, and my
(28:32):
least favorite scene is when he goesto the newspaper. It's like so stupid,
you know. It's like he doesn'tsay the right things, and you're
like sitting there like say this,you know yeah um. But also I
had read that that was one ofthe censors of this show, is that
he Sterling wasn't allowed to have themain character go to the army or the
navy or whatever to warn them becausethat would make them look look like they
(28:53):
didn't take a stupid yeah exactly.So that's why he goes to the newspaper,
and that's why they actually ask him, like why didn't you go to
the army? You know? Um. One of my favorite scenes is this
one that's coming up where he sitsat the table with the couple and kind
of like tries to convince them,but he's so bad at it. He's
drunk and they're sober, and theyalready think that he's got like a screw
(29:15):
loose because he's already actually seems likea normal perfect they're so like sympathetic to
him and they want to help him, and he basically in trying to convince
them, not trying to convince thisguy not to go to the um because
the guy's Arizona stationed on the Arizona, and he's an engineer, so he's
below deck. So basically he's goingto die. He's fucked if he shows
(29:36):
up to work tomorrow. And thisguy's just trying to convince him to like
call in sick for a day orsomething. He doesn't even say that,
Yeah, no, he doesn't.That's the thing. He's so bad at
trying to convince them. But it'slike he's he wants so badly to save
them and he can't. And that'swhy I think that would be like,
that's the emotional context of this,you know of this port y. Darryl
Hickman is the name of the youngactor who was a famous child actor in
(29:59):
like movies and stuff. I likehim in this he's like very much like
I'm in the navy, Sir,I must go. His brother, Dwayne
Hickman played the lead in The ManyLoves of Dobe Gillis and was like a
famous TV actor. Yep, doyou know that the same adobe from Harry
Potter exactly exactly? That was hislater Dwayne Hickman, much later on played
(30:19):
Doobe and Harry Potter Harris. Didyou read who the bar Fly? It
is no the bar fly. There'slike another guy, a drunk at the
bar who he talks to you atsome point. That guy is he's the
replacement Curly. Of the three stooges, So there was Curly and then it
was Curly Joe Besser or yes,yeah, Curly Joe Besser was one of
(30:41):
the replacement Curly's and the other onewas Shemp. Well, no, Shemp
was Shemp was actually an original stoogewho came I thought it was Curly then
Shemp. Shemp was in their vaudevilleact before they got their film deals.
He's the most brother. Yeah,well, and so was Curly. Curly
Shemp and Moe were all brothers,right, But there was another one besides
(31:03):
Curly Joe Besser. There was Um, isn't there another studge? Like didn't
shimp replace another? Well, there'sLarry Larry right, Okay, no Larry,
Yeah. I think Larry was forthe Larry and Mo were for the
duration. But there was another replacementCurly. I can't remember who it was,
but there was two bald guys thatthey used for Curly. Joe Besser
was the more famous one. Soone one Mo one Harry No, no,
(31:26):
no, Harry one Mo one Larryone shimp and three curlies three,
three curlies three. I thought itwas two. Well, I think that
one was just briefly. I thinkone of them might have just been for
like they did a movie. Becausethe original Curly might be the Joe Besser
one, because he is if he'sthe one that went like you know yep,
(31:47):
yea, yeah, no, that'sthe that's the original Curly Howard.
He's the more famous most brother.Yeah, that he's the guy you think
of the shaved head. Yeah.And even when you see other pictures of
like Mo and Shemp and Curly,you realize that without the haircuts, they
would all look exactly the same.Yeah, they just look like regular guys.
Um you guys Stooges fans. Ilike, I kind of like it's
(32:09):
okay, but like I feel likethey're their time is done. Like you
know, like I don't think wecould make it three Stooges today, and
like, well they did, Yeah, we certainly could, and it would
be yeah. Um, I lovethe three students. I think it's um
brilliant physical comedy and so you believestooging lives on. Well, I don't
(32:30):
know if you can really, onlyonly if you do it thrice times.
I like the Three Students, likesometimes they have the they said the marathons
on like Year's Eve, I think, and you'd watch a couple of them
and then you'd be like, ohmy god, they really like got hurt.
There's no jokes at all. They'rejust beating the shit out of Chara.
(32:51):
They're just carts. They're live actioncartoons. That's it. It's like
literally watching Looney Tunes. It's likepeople bonking each other on the head,
poking their eyes and stuff. It'sgreat. And they act like kids.
I guess. So I didn't realize, like I was reading about the Three
Stooges a little bit and like howmany jokes, Like how many times the
Simpsons riffed on the Three Stooges,And I like, there are so many
(33:13):
things that I say in my lifethat are from the Three Stooges that I
didn't even like, No, Iprobably picked up from the Simpsons. Like
sometimes I say sweetanly, like justlike to be an ass, Yeah,
which is something that I think Bartsaid a few times. Yeah, Yeah,
there was always this is one linefrom The Three Stooges that I'm sure
was a reference to something that waspopular then. Which is my favorite thing
about the Three Stooges is they allthese jokes and lines sort of like the
(33:34):
Bugs Bunny cartoons, where there's allthese jokes that were based on like a
specific movie or catchphrase that was hotfor a minute and was so period specific
that it has not aged at all, Like it's aged terribly. It's like
even a decade later, nobody knewwhat the fuck they were talking about,
and yet we all know these things. So there's this one episode of The
(33:55):
Three Stooges where they were like theyhave this thing that like sets them off
when somebody says Niagara falls, theygo on a murderous rampage. And I
think it was based on a movieor something. And every time somebody says
Niagara falls, they go Niagara fallsslowly. I turned step by step,
and they just like attack whoever saidNiagara falls. And it doesn't make any
sense, but every time I hearNiagara falls, I think Niagara falls slowly.
(34:17):
I turned interesting, frenzied, murderous, mania, really stupid. I
looked up like the world series wasgoing on at this time because this premiered
in October. Nikita Khrushchev just gotgot in there as the number one guy
over there at the Sobian Cold Warwas big. Cold War was big then
they were all they were all about, like figuring out like how how pissed
(34:40):
off Germany had to be about theother side of Germany and stuff like that
cold war is so hot right now, it was so cold right now,
it was so cold. Um,what else do we have here? Yeah,
my worst scene was the newspaper andthey try to commit him like they're
actually like trying to like capture jukebox. Though that jukebox is beautiful. I'll
(35:02):
say that my favorite scene is thejukebox. My favorite scene is the jukebox.
It's gorgeous. Um. I alsothink it's funny when the uh I
kind of like my favorite scene iskind of the ending too, when the
when he gets killed in the pastand they what they did that was smart
was because this is too long,and they did they are patting the runtime
with a bunch of bullshit. ButI love that they plant like if you
(35:28):
get killed in the past, doyou stop? Do you not exist?
Do you cease to exist? Yeah? Do you cease to exist, and
that kind of happens where this guygets killed in the past, he ceases
to exist in the present. Andeven the you know, the shrink like
his lighter that he used the lastof his lighter to light this guy's cigarette
at their appointment, but all ofa sudden it's got fluid in it again
because he didn't use it. Andhe checks his appointment book and it just
(35:52):
says no appointments today, which Ithink is hilarious because like, clearly,
first of all, why is hethere, Martin Balsom? Yeah, why
is he his office? Also nota great psychiatrist, and clearly everyone knows
it because the only guy he gotwas this nut who probably got rejected by
all the other shrinks. And secondly, he's got no other clients, right,
Like what psychiatrists you know who likeit's like a random Tuesday or whatever,
(36:13):
they have no clients as well.But or hit the bar maybe like
therapy wasn't as big back then orsomething. I don't know, but yeah,
I thought they did a really goodjob at the end when he so
what happens is he dies in PearlHarbor or he gets blown up, and
then it cuts back to the psychiatristwho's sort of like, you know,
(36:35):
jolts awake from whatever. And helooks around and he's sitting right in that
chair and in front of him isthe patient like bed and it's empty,
and he kind of looks around.He doesn't say anything. He doesn't do
that thing where he like talks tohimself, which like so many things of
this time, did that. Butyou get the sense that he's kind of
wondering why am I here? Likewhat was I doing here? And that's
why he checks what the audience isthinking. Yeah, he checks his appointment
(37:00):
book and everything. You know,I thought they did a good job of
him seeming confused and like not knowingwhy he's there without saying it or like
being too overt about that. Andthen he goes to the bar next door
and he sees the guy's picture onthe wall and he recognizes him but doesn't
know from what. And he askedthe bartender and he says, oh,
(37:20):
that's so, and so you knowhe used to tend bar here. He
died in Pearl Harbor. And myquestion is, what the fuck is that
all? Like what does that?How does that work? Like logistically,
this guy was born in sometime,you know, in nineteen well, let's
say nineteen thirty something. He livesto this age of nineteen fifty eight.
(37:43):
Yep, he goes back in timeto Pearl Harbor. So is he a
bartender in New York at this time? I would say yes, because he's
got his picture on the wall.So when the guy says he died in
Pearl Harbor, does he mean hedied in the past and Pearl He was
working here up until a couple ofweeks ago, and then he died in
the pass in Pearl Harbor. No? No, does he mean here a
couple of weeks ago, and thenhe went to Pearl Harbor and died somehow,
(38:05):
And we don't know how he howhe got there, how he died.
He was so beloved as a bartenderin seventeen years, seventeen years prior
that his pictures stayed on the wall. That is kind of stupid. If
you think that'd be like if hewent to a bar now and a guy's
picture and who's that guy, Oh, he was a bartender here seventeen years
ago, you'd be like, tobe fair, there is some like stuff
on the walls of bars that hasjust like been there for since forever.
(38:30):
Yeah, I could see it happening. But also he was so beloved as
a bartender in the nineteen thirties andforties where he only existed in Pearl Harbor
in his dreams. No no,no, see wasn't prohibition then? Come
on? No? No, ButI mean just saying he was he was
a child then or like a seeright, the stage the way he affected
(38:51):
time goes backwards through the timeline.So not only did he go back to
Pearl Harbor, he also was likea better man in his pre Pearl Harbor
life because the ripple goes backwards.I do not think that makes sense perfect,
I reject. I think Rod Serlingwas drunk when he wrote that.
(39:13):
Yeah, I feel like this isuh. I feel like, I mean
a lot of this logic holds upin the weird like time loop logic,
but that does not. This isan interesting take on the time loop movie
though, because it is it isvery much like a time loop movie like
Groundhog Day or um source Code orwhatever. Yeah, where the guy is
basically going back in time and tryingto relive the same day and change the
outcome, which is a really coolformat. I wouldn't be surprised if this
(39:37):
was like one of the first instancesof like a time travel storyline seen by
the masses. Yeah, yeah,probably. I can't think of anything.
I don't think there's a movie.I mean, I do think there was
some like short stories and stuff inthe forties and written in literature, sure,
but like on television and movies.Is probably one of the first.
Like the time Machine was a filmrepresentation. Yeah, so they made that
a movie though, but that wasprobably like in the sixties. But it's
(39:59):
also not like, you know,time travel is one thing, but this
is a time loop of reliving theseries and trying to change things, which
is kind of unique. It's notas much of that, so very interesting.
Yeah, I think we kind ofglazed over that this episode was a
part of the Desilu Playhouse, whichwe mentioned, but it acted as a
backdoor pilot. This is sort ofRod Serling saying like, look, I
(40:22):
want to make this sci fi show, and this is what it's gonna be.
Like the sensors said, backdoor pilot. You can't say that. And
this episode received over six thousand letters, like more than any other show that
was on the Desilu Playhouse that year, and it was like immensely popular.
(40:43):
People loved it, and based offthat, CBS was like, okay,
sure, let's do this Twilight Zonething. People have spoken, people have
spoken, they want more cigarettes.Yeah, so I think we kind of
touched on everything. I mean,you guys want to rate we nailed it.
Yeah, yeah, let's let's ratethis. I think we should rate
it on like out of ten,out of ten Pearl Harbor bombs, what
(41:08):
like we could do like a uniquething for every episode. Yeah, they
have to do with killings. Well, what battleships. Yeah, ten sunk
battleships. That's a good one.Dead sailors, I give it ten dead
sailors. I give it one hundredUSS Arizonas I give it, Yeah,
(41:31):
ten empty lighters. I give ita million hero hetos, eight megawatt nuclear
bomb. I mean, I thoughtit was pretty good. I thought I
was going to be bored by it, and I watched it in bed last
night and I was pretty entertained.When I saw the runtime was almost an
hour, I was like, fuckthis, and then it actually did it
(41:52):
did find ways to make that hourkind of go um. Yeah, I
think the time element worked. Yeah, I think there are some Twilight Zone
episodes going forward that are an hour. Most are a half hour long,
but I believe there aren't some hourlong ones. But anyway, I give
this eight out of ten Pearl Harborbombs. I really I enjoyed him.
(42:14):
I was I was impressed. Ienjoyed elements of it. I thought,
like the overall, the time elements. I thought the overall premise was really
good. I love that it wasa time loop story before I really thought
those existed, um, and Ilike I said, love the cast.
I thought the very ending where he'sinexplicably a bartender that got killed in Pearl
(42:38):
Harbor bothered me. And I thought, like, like you said, the
news room stuff, A lot ofthe hemming and hawing. He's got a
scene where he harasses a maid forsome reason. It's just very oh yeah,
just very weird shit that seemed likecalls her mo and then totally the
white maid who comes. Yeah,it was all very confusing. So there's
not a person of color in thisentire episode, which I'm sure will be
(43:00):
all be a recurring with all theTwilight Zones. Um, So I'm going
to give it a little more.I enjoyed it, but I'm going to
give it a much more modest sixConfused Psychiatrists. That's pretty good. That's
pretty good. Yeah, my scoreis a six. I just the guy
really annoys me. Like the character. He's really not a William so six
(43:20):
six sad William Bendix, he ssix harassing William bend better season Um,
all right, yeah that's good.That's our first episode. So thanks for
listening to zoners, and uh,you know we'll be we'll be doing this
for a long time. Stay inthe zone. So dumb. And now,
(43:47):
by the way, Auto Zone ison the phone and there there they've
got their lawyers drug off the paperworkright now. Well, on that note, M
Submitted for your approval. A mangoes to a psychiatrist complaining of a recurring
nightmare where he wakes up on Decembersixth, nineteen forty one in Pearl Harbor.
But it's not a dream. Theman is a time traveler, and
when he can't prevent the Pearl Harborattack, he is killed by Japanese fighter
planes, leaving his confused psychiatrist togo day drinking in a bar in New
(00:52):
York City in the Twilight Zone.That pretty much sums it up. That
is a story. This one hadan intro by Desi arn Is. Yeah,
well we'll get into that. Ohyeah, well, I you know,
you know why he couldn't come backand do the intro to all of
them? Too much, too muchexp planning to do. That is an
awful lot of splay to do.Oh, welcome to the Zoner's podcast to
(01:19):
Do. Yeah, this is Zoners. We are I'm Matt McGregor. Nailed
it. Let's try that again.I'm Met McGregor, I'm Colin Shaw,
I'm Harris McCabe and we you mightremember us if you are a fan of
the License to Watch podcasts. Weare the same guys on that show.
If you've never listened to license towatch, it's free. You can listen
(01:40):
to it wherever you listen to podcasts, and God have mercy on your soul.
We you know, we're usually chattingabout movie franchises, but we decided
to focus our efforts on the nineteensixties, fifties and sixties classic television program,
the Twilight Zone or the t Zas well to call it the Zone.
(02:01):
It's the Zone and were t TZ? Well do you say? I
usually pronounced it phonetically, so I'musually like, nobody knows what I'm talking
about. Yeah, I got aNissan Z and an aut Et T and
I cut them in half and Iwelded them together. Um, front and
(02:22):
back or side to side? Uhquarters, Okay, so it's got a
front right right is one thing.Yeah, front left, left, back
left is the other. Audit andbut yeah, okay, complicated, Yeah,
more work complicated. Man, it'sa good thing. This is an
incredibly long episode. So the waythis show is going to work is we
(02:43):
decided we're going to go through chronologicallyfrom the air date of the very first
episode all the way to the verylast. There's five seasons. There's like
thirty something episodes per season, sowe're gonna be doing this until twenty forty
six. I'm hoping I outlive thispodcast. That'd be something. Right where
when we started the show, Harriswas alive and there now underground from Harris
(03:07):
is great. We just didn't launchchairs on a dedicate all the later seasons
to my memory. In his contract, he still has airtime, so we
just hold the microphone up to theheads are like our podcast logo has like
our three faces, like in anold fashioned movie, like in circles,
like you know, like starring thesethree, but Harris is black and white
(03:29):
and has an X over. Y. Um, should we talk about this
episode? Yeahs lou playhouse episode ofthe Twilight Zone, right, so the
first episode. We're not talking aboutthe pilot episode of the Twilight Zone.
So there's a little bit of historyhere. So this show is created by
Rod Serling, who I have detailednotes here. Um. He is one
(03:50):
of the more famous writers from theera of the fifties and sixties. Uh.
He died pretty young, but um, before that, he had an
illustrious career of writing plays and TVshows and even movies. Um. He
famously wrote a draft of Planet ofthe Apes, which we covered on our
other podcasts. But so he's fromupstate New York originally. He actually grew
(04:15):
up in Binghamton, which is whereI went to to undergrad. And it's
weird because the town, like there'smany like Rod Serling, you know,
points of interest around the town.It's also the birthplace of like, um,
the carousel or something like that.There's carousel shit all over the place.
I don't know, it's an interestingtown. It's very cold and rainy.
(04:35):
Um anyhow, Rod Sling he wasborn on Christmas Day in nineteen twenty
four, and uh, he enlistedin the Army the day he graduated high
school. And he was in theUS Army Airborne Division paratroopers, the sorry,
the eleventh Airborne Division paratroopers. Hesaw battle, he saw action,
(04:57):
I mean in the Philippines. Hewas injured, uh, and in war
and he came back and he waslike, I want to be a writer
and or actually I have here.I never want to be in war.
Well, he was like writing inwartime too. He would write poems and
mail him back and write like,I don't know when he had time to
write. I guess do you havea lot of time, and I think,
like when you're not being shot at, I think it's a lot of
(05:18):
sitting around. Yeah. Um,so it's a pretty interesting guy. I'm
trying to like bullet point the goodstuff here. Um. He came back,
he got married, he had somekids, has two daughters. He
went to a place called Antioch College. Am I saying that right? I
don't know where that is. Ididn't look upwhere that. I think it's
(05:40):
in New York somewhere. Maybe,Um, eventually, we've only had a
New Yorker here to ask if onlyI've never heard of it. I don't
know if it's it's probably in deepupstate New York, or maybe it's maybe
it's somewhere DC area. I don'tknow, maybe why he eventually moved to
Cincinnati, so maybe never Maybe it'slike in Ohio or something like that.
We've got to three or four states. I will look it up. Um.
(06:01):
You know, he tried to Hewas always interested in writing for television
and radio, and he tried todo that, um at the same time
as being a dad and like,he also worked at a radio station and
he found that it was just toomuch, couldn't do it. But he
really wanted to write, and sohe quit his job to focus solely on
writing. I'm sure that was thenext listen, kids, I don't like
(06:26):
it. I don't like this.Um. He sold scripts to all,
you know, all the shows likeof the time. There was a lot
of like um shows much like thisthe Desilu Playhouse, which we'll get into,
but there was a lot of oneoff shows back then. There was
a lot of like playhouses and drafttelevision theaters there and like the Hallmark Hall
(06:47):
of Fame, and a lot oftimes they would adapt like stage plays and
stuff like that or short stories orwhatever. Yeah, And um, I
don't know if I mean, Iguess like if you wrote good tells,
you became a household name. Likewhat other writers of the era did people
know about, Like Gene Roddenberry thatwas And I don't even know if he
was he was a little later andwas he considered a writer. He was
(07:11):
sort of just said he was likea show creator, Yeah, which I
don't know. Um, isn't thisthe time of like Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah,
but again not really a writer.He was just sort of like a
brand. Yeah. And he's aninteresting one because he did movies, and
he had a television show around thistime too. But this is that when
his movie career waned, is whenhe started branding himself for the show,
(07:32):
and then it was actually using histelevision production team to make Psycho. That
kind of put him on the backon the map because he was people thought
that he was kind of old fashionedand irrelevant, right, So eventually Sling
and you know, we don't haveto talk about him as in depth in
the other episodes, but I feltit was natural to talk about him in
this first thing, just to getsort of the backstory of how this what
(07:57):
is this episode called the time Element, how this came to be for the
folks at home who are just listeningand aren't aware of Matt has a legal
pad that is like eighteen pages oftiny chicken scratch. So once we get
through this, which you know,if you want to just skip ahead to
like the thirty minute mark, Ithink we should have Rot Sterling's autobiography out
(08:20):
of the way by that. Yeah, continue, Okay, So there was
a show called Playhouse ninety which was, like, you know, again,
every week it was like something newthat was that that might have been the
one that the Casino Royale was apart of the original or whatever his name
was starting. Yeah, so itwas Playoffs ninety or one of those,
because Playoffs ninety was one of themost famous of these, you know.
(08:41):
Yeah, So Sterling would write abunch of scripts and he would sell them
to that and he kind of turnedthat into a living and none of them
really took off until he wrote thisone called Patterns, which was based off
of a play that he wrote thatwas a huge hit. People wrote in
like we love this, and itkind of was based off a wallpaper he
saw. Yeah he uh, youknow, and so based off that success,
(09:03):
everybody wanted a piece of him,and he started writing scripts all over
the place, and none of themreally took off until he again wrote another
one called Requiem for a Heavyweight,starring Jack Palance as a you know,
boxer on the decline. It sayshere, Um. It was the first
original ninety minute show ever written forTV, and it swept the the Emmys
in nineteen fifty six, winning allsorts of awards and again like just you
(09:26):
know, making Rod Sterling more ofa household name. And so, you
know, in nineteen fifty seven rolledaround and they were like, Rod,
you're doing great, we love youhere at playoffs ninety what do you want
to do? And he was like, I want to create a science fiction
anthology TV show. And people werelike, uh because yeah, because at
the time science fiction was more orless relegated to B movies and uh,
(09:52):
you know, just considered for children. No one really took it. It's
basically it was like it was itwas genre stuff, which you know,
you could get away with if itwas like a thriller or something, or
a crime show, but not somuch like this was like fantasy. It's
like if you were going to pitchdoing a show about elves in like the
nineties, people would have been like, what fu No, we're not spending
(10:15):
a billionaire. I mean, like, look at what it's on. It's
on the Desilu Playhouse. Our DesiArnez and Lucy basically made the same show
four times. Yeah, exactly.Yeah, the creativity and daring challenges were
not like necessarily what people wanted.What if we get Lucy again and we
do a show where maybe she's marriedto Desi Arnz, we have a kid
(10:37):
this time, she's got a differentboss. She could have a job,
a job I don't know about that. Yeah, that's not is this science
fiction? So something I think we'regonna keep coming back to on this show
is we're gonna try and really placeourselves in the time period. And uh,
(10:58):
I you know, it's it's interestingfor us. I think too.
That's why we're all smoking. Yeah, we're all wearing three piece suits.
Um. Yeah, I think it'sinteresting for us to sort of put ourselves
in the time period to understand,to better understand, you know, why
things were done a certain way.That's why you guys been acting so sex
system. Yeah, that's it.Um. So one thing I so,
(11:22):
I got this Twilight Zone companion bookby a guy named Mark Scott zickrie Zygree.
I don't know how to say that, but it's, uh, it's
really it's really interesting. It hasa lot of cool details. So it
says here that or something I gleanedfrom it is that one of the reasons
why Rod certainly wanted to branch offand do a totally different thing that was
(11:43):
out of you know, the ordinary, is because he was so stifled by
the censors of the time. Everyscript that he wrote, they would have
him make like ridiculous changes and Ihave an example butt plugs. They haven't
been invented yet. So when youcouldn't have two people sleep in the same
bed on TV, right exactly didn'thave a toilet, so there's no toilets
(12:05):
in this Yeah, I know.The whole time I was watching where shs
happening? Why are we not seeing? We could modern dv um. There
was one script he wrote and hehad to change the word He had to
remove any use of the word Americanand any use of the word lucky because
that particular show was sponsored by acigarette company and they thought that those words
(12:30):
would remind viewers of rival cigarette companyand lucky lucky strike or whatever. Yeah.
Um, and and they had tochange them to United States and fortunate
instead of American and lucky, andso really stifling his creativity there. Yeah,
this boiled down to a script thathe wrote about. It was like,
(12:50):
I didn't write this one down,but it was, um, oh,
actually I have it right here.It was really interesting and it was
a lot of words. So Itook a picture of it. So it's
called Noon on Doomsday and it wasfor the United States. Steel Hour Wow,
brought to you by Steele. Seethe metal the metal, keep being
(13:11):
entertained, and keep buying that damnedsteel. Brought to you by Steele,
the comic book character. It saysthe plot concern of violent neurotic who kills
an elderly Jewish man and then isacquitted by residence of the small town in
which he lives. And it saysbefore the show is broadcast, a reporter
(13:33):
asked him if the script was basedon the Emmett Till case, in which
a black fourteen year old boy waskidnapped and murdered in Mississippi and his murders
were acquitted by an all white localjury. And his reply was, well,
if the shoe fits, meaning yes, this is exactly what I was
referencing. And so because of thatthey had to make changes, and I
(13:54):
wrote, I have the changes here, It says the murder jew was changed
to an unnamed foreigners of Coca Colawere removed from the set, and the
word lynch was stricken from the script. It was determined that it was too
southern in connotation. Characters were madeto say this is a strange little town
or this is a perverse town,so that no one would identify with it.
And finally they wanted to change thevicious Narada killer into just a good,
(14:18):
decent American boy momentarily gone wrongly gonewrong. Yeah. So once that
happened, he was like fuck this, Like, oh yeah, we're gonna
curse on this show. We're gonnasay whatever we want. Yeah. So
if you don't like it, fuckyou. Yeah. Yeah, And so
that sort of segue that was doinga sci fi show. He realized that
(14:39):
he could, you know, writeabout themes and things that he normally wouldn't
be allowed to write about, butunder the guise of like it's another planet
or it's an alternate reality or whatever, and in the sensors would let a
lot of stuff fly. And thus, you know, the the idea for
the Twilight Zone was born. Soyeah, I guess let's get into this
episode. This is the the WestinghouseDesilu Playhouse, which is a horrible name
(15:05):
which just rolls right off the Yeah, it's a lot of house, right
Westinghouse. Yeah. Um. Itis hosted by Desi Arnaz of of Lucy
and Desi Fame. And did youguys see the movie the one that came
out like last year? Yeah?No, I didn't see that. Yeah,
it was worth my time. No, I didn't hate it. I
(15:26):
thought it was really well written.But it also neither one of them looks
anything like it sounds like, hein particular looks like I don't know,
like he's so he's so much biggerand his head is so much larger and
it is so much ugly. Well, I've seen a lot of Javier Bardem
and other things. Yes, I'mgonna see him as haven't seen him playing
(15:52):
a bongo though, because I'll tellyou that's when he really comes along.
I've actually seen I've actually seen everycelebrity play a bongo. I have a
collective of Matthew McConaughey, shrine um. Yes, speaking of casting, were
you guys as excited as I wasto see William Bendix and Martin Balsam in
(16:15):
this No, I don't know whothe fuck. I was thrilled that that
there were two actors that I wasso familiar with I like so much in
this in this TV episode. Right, yeah, I mean, well,
okay, so we should get intothe actor. So Martin this Martin Balsom
because he was Fear. He wasin Psycho. That's this guy. Oh
yeah, he is psych this guyhe was actually the detective in Cape Fear
(16:37):
and in Psycho he was a privatedetectives the Psycho he's the guy who falls
down the stairs and Psycho right,yeah, he gets stabbed and yeah,
and he's like he was also theforeman in Twelve Angry Men. He was.
He's in a ton of stuff andhe usually played like cops or but
he could also play like intellectuals.He sort of had a real um,
you know, sort of wide varietyof range. William Bendix, in the
(16:59):
other hand, was very much likea big oh fish kind of bruiser,
and he was in a bunch ofstuff. He was like he played Babe
Ruth in the Babe Ruth Story.He was What I know him best from
is he was in a couple ofAlan Ladd movies, The Glass Key,
where he plays this like psychotic thugbully and The Blue Dahlia where he plays
(17:19):
this psychotic thug bully who's actually AlanLadd's friend who turns out to be the
real killer. But he's he's great. He's like a great old fashioned heavy
and he's really good in this becausehe gets to play like a little the
like more sensitive emotional side of himself, which he had he but he played
the bad guy so often that itdidn't really I gotta be honest with you,
(17:40):
this character is so annoying. Likeif I was there, I'd be
like, I don't care if theJapanese are gonna bomb us, shut the
hell up, like Hiroshi, takeme. What was the most annoying thing
about this character? Because I agreethere's a lot of annoying things. It's
just I don't see. I thoughthe was really good in this. Oh.
(18:03):
I think the actor's great, butI think the character. The most
annoying thing is how long it takeshim to figure out that he's that he's
time traveling and he's in nineteen fortyone and not nineteen fifty eight. Oh
my god. He forgets. Heconstantly forgets. He's trying to convince the
newspaper people and they asked him whothe vice president is, and it takes
him like five minutes to not realizethat he's in the past. Again,
(18:25):
Well, if you had to namethe vice president of what is this,
it's supposed to be like seventeen yearslater. Who was the vice president seventeen
years ago? Seventeen years ago?Probably Quail. I don't know. No,
it's probably right al Gore. Yeah, it was probably had to be
al Gore, It had to bemid nineties. If someone asked me who
seventeen years ago, that's no,it's um no, that's actually in the
twenty two thousands. No, uh, Joe Biden, Dick Cheney, Dick
(18:49):
Cheney, Cheney, yeah, Cheney. Yeah, that was so this is
actually vice president harder than we thought. Yeah, we honestly our problem was
not knowing how long seventeen years is? What president? Who was the president
in two thousand, two thousand?Right? That? No, that's too,
(19:10):
that's not even Yeah, we stillcan't do the math of but what
year is it now? George W. Bush one with the first time in
six Yes, in the Hanging ChadFlorida recount. If we all remember that
was my nickname in high school,you can't. So here's my thing is
(19:40):
that in today's world, if someonecame around and was like, you know,
I'm from the future and like tomorrowthere's gonna be like a terrorist bombing
or whatever, we're so much moreas a culture entrenched in the idea of
time travel that I think people wouldbuy it. You know, if you
threw a couple of things out there, like oh, yeah, in the
future, h Patrick Schwarzenegger's president anduh know I buy that. Yeah,
(20:03):
we'd be like oh yeah, yeahyeah. Um, Whereas in this time
he told me that some famous generalwas president in the future, I'd be
like, I don't know, yeah, reality team, the minor league celebrity,
that's the son of somebody even morefamous. Yes, yes, definitely
President Shore President Paul. Now he'ssaying an actual general or like he was
(20:26):
the general for General Car Insurance.He's a CGI character from a commercial character
from a car commercial. Yes,we would elect that. Everything he says
is in a jingle. Yeah,he addresses the nation like in jingle it's
it's really hot to talk about AIright now. But who's who's talking about
an AI president? Yeah? Wellno, this is exactly why I voted
(20:48):
for the general, not chet GPTEAM. It was a tough election, but
I made my call. I'm I'ma party loyalist, but I had to
draw the line somewhere. Um.Yeah, I think this. What I
think is the most frustrating thing abouthim is he he knows that all these
people are gonna get killed by theJapanese and his first thought is I'm gonna
play some bets. Let me getmy bookie on the front. Yeah,
(21:11):
well he is a bookie. That'sthe whole thing. Also, like it
takes him, it takes him foreverto say anything. He spends a bunch
of time in the psychiatrist's office likejust saying like, oh, this is
what my dream is, and likeit takes him forever to go through.
The whole thing is like, well, I know about the future and tomorrow
we're all gonna get bombed. Buthe takes forever to say that. Also,
his solution to like any conflict orproblem is either like drink some more,
(21:34):
or I'm gonna suck you one,yeah, or threaten to suck you
one, or just insult you untilyou suck me one. That's his conflict
resolution involves a lot of sucking.Yeah. So should we get right into
like who if we were to recastthis today? And like if I want
to, yeah, I want toknow, Hey, let's recast it.
And what would you change if youhad to change something? Because I have
I have huge ideas and you're notgonna beat my idea. Really, I
(21:56):
have a good one about Jack Black? Is this guy. Now, I
think one thing is I think weshould acknowledge that there's like realistic casting,
and then there's like, you know, you're not gonna get Tom Cruise in
this movie or this show, butlike, I think you could probably so
maybe cast it for like tell Ihave one for television, or if this
were made into a movie. Butit is a one off, so if
(22:17):
this is kind of a if it'slike enough of a prestige TV show,
I feel like you could. I'mwas just thinking of television, but I
was thinking, like, who couldyou get if this was like an anthology
series and you were just trying toget actors for one episode. So maybe
not an A list celebrity, butyou could get somebody that is a film
star. Jack Black. I thinkJack Black is a possibility. Which this
(22:37):
guy, this guy in the roleof Jensen or whatever his name is,
right, Okay, yeah, Isee I went down an interesting rabbit hole.
So this guy kind of reminded me. He's like a he's like a
wise cracking, like New York guy. So I'm like, who is this
guy? Like who would play himtoday? And then my mind went to
Don Rickles, and I'm like,he's dead but if they made this in
like the eighties, I feel likeDon Rickles could do it, and he's
(23:00):
got let's let's let's about today.But yeah, yeah yeah. So then
I kept going and I'm like,he's like a simulation of Don Rickles and
the little face. I was like, who's a modern comics or like why
not get running? Who's the modernDon Rickles? Yea, yeah, yeah,
I'm telling them that the Japanese aregonna bump. It's no respect,
no respect. Uh So then Istarted thinking about maybe like kind of flip
(23:23):
it on its head and have itbe like a black actor and like bring
kind of a race thing into it, where like they don't believe they don't
believe him because he's not a whiteguy. Yeah, by the way,
what are you even doing this far? Get out of here right, you
don't belong here. Um. ThenI was like, maybe Hannibal Barress someone
like that. Is he a moderncomic who would fit the bill? And
then then I was like, ormaybe like a Denzel Washington, you know,
like if this were a movie,um, and I put all over
(23:47):
the place, but they don't believehim because of race. And then then
I was like, Okay, soif you change it for a modern thing
instead of Pearl Harbor, maybe it'slike nine to eleven, right, he's
like tomorrow the you know, theWorld Trade Center is gonna get bombed.
Then it would make sense if itwas like a Middle Eastern guy, so
like a pick like a Japanese Americanperson and stilled on it with right right,
(24:08):
because they'd be like, they'd belike, oh, are you with
them? Like right? Yeah,that's h um. Yeah. I thought
I thought that would be pretty cool. I like that. I like that
a lot, so so I wasthinking of casting it sort of the same
period piece, same kind of roles, and my two were like for the
psychiatrist, I was thinking, likePaul Giamati, I think would be a
pretty good what do you mean you'retraining? I think he's got that like
(24:32):
Martin Balsamy thing of like kind oflike he could play the sort of I'm
not gonna shut the guy down,I'm gonna hear him out and then try
to guide him in the right direction, but then he gets more concerned and
frustrated. But my my kudigra isuh John c Riley, I think would
be a great like kind of asthis as as this guy is like the
kind of officieness of it, butalso like the sensitivity when he actually sort
(24:53):
of feels sympathy for people, andwhen he can't like articulate, he plays
inarticulate guys really well where he can'tquite express himself well enough to like get
his point across, which I thinkwould be great. But I love transposing
into nine to eleven. The changeI would make in terms of whether you
change it to a different time ordid the period piece at Pearl Harbor,
(25:15):
I think would be really interesting.Well, first of all, you could
have the guy wake up now andgo back to Pearl Harbor and now try
to think of who the vice presidentis when it's like something that happened before
you were born, right, Thatwould be interesting. But I think the
biggest thing is and you're sort ofa fish out of water, like culturally,
Yeah, you don't understand the waysof the world, and you will.
And you could do away with allthe bullshit where he doesn't know that
(25:36):
it's not nineteen fifty eight. Youknow, you could just cut that all
because I figured that out quickly.The things that bug me the most about
this or how long it takes themto figure that shit out, where it
really feels like they're trying to stretchthis story out to fifty five minutes to
the Desilu Playhouse runtime, rather thanjust have it be what it is and
all the bullshit with like the gamblingand there's all these different scenes that just
seem like fat that I think theycould just cut out and have it be
(26:00):
what it is about him trying tosave the lives of this guy and his
new wife that he like feels sympathyfor these people, and he makes it
about like trying. He can't hecan't stop the whole attack, but he
can try to save these individual people. I think the one other change I
would make is the ending. Iwould have him actually somehow succeed in saving
(26:21):
those people, but he gets killed. So when this is so, we
find out later that they actually survivedand went on to have a happy life
and he got killed in their place. So how do they show up at
the bar at the end and theysee his picture? Yeah, Well,
I think that the psychiatrist is theone who's got to like put it all
together. Yeah, And he sortof makes you know because they have the
moment where he tells the psychiatrist.I looked those people up and here were
(26:44):
their names, and they died onthat day. And then I think at
the end, when the psychochiatrist istrying to figure out, like I remember
this, dude, but I don'tremember why, then he looks up some
of these names that he remembers andrealizes that they are alive, and maybe
he even goes to see them.It's like, yeah, I like that.
I'm sorry, but doing this asnine to eleven would be so so
(27:06):
good if he woke up on likeone of the top floors of the World
Trade Center. So every scene,every interaction, every choice he makes is
like whether or not he's like gonnaget out of the building or not,
and it's like super claustrophobic. Well, engineer Chris Kill has something to say,
Engineer Chris here, I have aquestion. So it's the year two
(27:26):
thousand and one. How do youalert people that nine to eleven is happening.
I haven't seen this episode, butyou just run around screaming they're gonna
do a nine to eleven. They'regonna do Yeah, tomorrow is nine to
eleven. Yeah, you idiots,don't you know tomorrow's nine to eleven.
I feel like where I've known aboutnine to eleven, I'm trying to tell
(27:47):
people about it, but I don'tknow. How are you saying we're living
the modern version of this episode.There were cell phones, but they weren't
good and not everyone had them.Maybe you like calling a bomb threat.
Yeah, because this is a problemas this guy has, and he basically
handles in the dumbest way as possible. He doesn't go to the army.
He doesn't go He goes to anewspaper and he tries to get them to
publish the story the day before,and but he doesn't. He's not like
(28:11):
very convincing in the way that hetries to explain it, Like he doesn't
even try to explain how he knows. He doesn't even tell him he's a
time traveler. He's just like,I know, trust me, I'm I'm
in on this. You know.That's why he's so annoying. I feel,
Yeah, but that's part of whatthe conflict is. I said,
he's the wrong guy to be tryingto save everyone. Yeah, so I
actually have We wrote down our likefavorites and least favorite scenes, and my
(28:32):
least favorite scene is when he goesto the newspaper. It's like so stupid,
you know. It's like he doesn'tsay the right things, and you're
like sitting there like say this,you know yeah um. But also I
had read that that was one ofthe censors of this show, is that
he Sterling wasn't allowed to have themain character go to the army or the
navy or whatever to warn them becausethat would make them look look like they
(28:53):
didn't take a stupid yeah exactly.So that's why he goes to the newspaper,
and that's why they actually ask him, like why didn't you go to
the army? You know? Um. One of my favorite scenes is this
one that's coming up where he sitsat the table with the couple and kind
of like tries to convince them,but he's so bad at it. He's
drunk and they're sober, and theyalready think that he's got like a screw
(29:15):
loose because he's already actually seems likea normal perfect they're so like sympathetic to
him and they want to help him, and he basically in trying to convince
them, not trying to convince thisguy not to go to the um because
the guy's Arizona stationed on the Arizona, and he's an engineer, so he's
below deck. So basically he's goingto die. He's fucked if he shows
(29:36):
up to work tomorrow. And thisguy's just trying to convince him to like
call in sick for a day orsomething. He doesn't even say that,
Yeah, no, he doesn't.That's the thing. He's so bad at
trying to convince them. But it'slike he's he wants so badly to save
them and he can't. And that'swhy I think that would be like,
that's the emotional context of this,you know of this port y. Darryl
Hickman is the name of the youngactor who was a famous child actor in
(29:59):
like movies and stuff. I likehim in this he's like very much like
I'm in the navy, Sir,I must go. His brother, Dwayne
Hickman played the lead in The ManyLoves of Dobe Gillis and was like a
famous TV actor. Yep, doyou know that the same adobe from Harry
Potter exactly exactly? That was hislater Dwayne Hickman, much later on played
(30:19):
Doobe and Harry Potter Harris. Didyou read who the bar Fly? It
is no the bar fly. There'slike another guy, a drunk at the
bar who he talks to you atsome point. That guy is he's the
replacement Curly. Of the three stooges, So there was Curly and then it
was Curly Joe Besser or yes,yeah, Curly Joe Besser was one of
(30:41):
the replacement Curly's and the other onewas Shemp. Well, no, Shemp
was Shemp was actually an original stoogewho came I thought it was Curly then
Shemp. Shemp was in their vaudevilleact before they got their film deals.
He's the most brother. Yeah,well, and so was Curly. Curly
Shemp and Moe were all brothers,right, But there was another one besides
(31:03):
Curly Joe Besser. There was Um, isn't there another studge? Like didn't
shimp replace another? Well, there'sLarry Larry right, Okay, no Larry,
Yeah. I think Larry was forthe Larry and Mo were for the
duration. But there was another replacementCurly. I can't remember who it was,
but there was two bald guys thatthey used for Curly. Joe Besser
was the more famous one. Soone one Mo one Harry No, no,
(31:26):
no, Harry one Mo one Larryone shimp and three curlies three,
three curlies three. I thought itwas two. Well, I think that
one was just briefly. I thinkone of them might have just been for
like they did a movie. Becausethe original Curly might be the Joe Besser
one, because he is if he'sthe one that went like you know yep,
(31:47):
yea, yeah, no, that'sthe that's the original Curly Howard.
He's the more famous most brother.Yeah, that he's the guy you think
of the shaved head. Yeah.And even when you see other pictures of
like Mo and Shemp and Curly,you realize that without the haircuts, they
would all look exactly the same.Yeah, they just look like regular guys.
Um you guys Stooges fans. Ilike, I kind of like it's
(32:09):
okay, but like I feel likethey're their time is done. Like you
know, like I don't think wecould make it three Stooges today, and
like, well they did, Yeah, we certainly could, and it would
be yeah. Um, I lovethe three students. I think it's um
brilliant physical comedy and so you believestooging lives on. Well, I don't
(32:30):
know if you can really, onlyonly if you do it thrice times.
I like the Three Students, likesometimes they have the they said the marathons
on like Year's Eve, I think, and you'd watch a couple of them
and then you'd be like, ohmy god, they really like got hurt.
There's no jokes at all. They'rejust beating the shit out of Chara.
(32:51):
They're just carts. They're live actioncartoons. That's it. It's like
literally watching Looney Tunes. It's likepeople bonking each other on the head,
poking their eyes and stuff. It'sgreat. And they act like kids.
I guess. So I didn't realize, like I was reading about the Three
Stooges a little bit and like howmany jokes, Like how many times the
Simpsons riffed on the Three Stooges,And I like, there are so many
(33:13):
things that I say in my lifethat are from the Three Stooges that I
didn't even like, No, Iprobably picked up from the Simpsons. Like
sometimes I say sweetanly, like justlike to be an ass, Yeah,
which is something that I think Bartsaid a few times. Yeah, Yeah,
there was always this is one linefrom The Three Stooges that I'm sure
was a reference to something that waspopular then. Which is my favorite thing
about the Three Stooges is they allthese jokes and lines sort of like the
(33:34):
Bugs Bunny cartoons, where there's allthese jokes that were based on like a
specific movie or catchphrase that was hotfor a minute and was so period specific
that it has not aged at all, Like it's aged terribly. It's like
even a decade later, nobody knewwhat the fuck they were talking about,
and yet we all know these things. So there's this one episode of The
(33:55):
Three Stooges where they were like theyhave this thing that like sets them off
when somebody says Niagara falls, theygo on a murderous rampage. And I
think it was based on a movieor something. And every time somebody says
Niagara falls, they go Niagara fallsslowly. I turned step by step,
and they just like attack whoever saidNiagara falls. And it doesn't make any
sense, but every time I hearNiagara falls, I think Niagara falls slowly.
(34:17):
I turned interesting, frenzied, murderous, mania, really stupid. I
looked up like the world series wasgoing on at this time because this premiered
in October. Nikita Khrushchev just gotgot in there as the number one guy
over there at the Sobian Cold Warwas big. Cold War was big then
they were all they were all about, like figuring out like how how pissed
(34:40):
off Germany had to be about theother side of Germany and stuff like that
cold war is so hot right now, it was so cold right now,
it was so cold. Um,what else do we have here? Yeah,
my worst scene was the newspaper andthey try to commit him like they're
actually like trying to like capture jukebox. Though that jukebox is beautiful. I'll
(35:02):
say that my favorite scene is thejukebox. My favorite scene is the jukebox.
It's gorgeous. Um. I alsothink it's funny when the uh I
kind of like my favorite scene iskind of the ending too, when the
when he gets killed in the pastand they what they did that was smart
was because this is too long,and they did they are patting the runtime
with a bunch of bullshit. ButI love that they plant like if you
(35:28):
get killed in the past, doyou stop? Do you not exist?
Do you cease to exist? Yeah? Do you cease to exist, and
that kind of happens where this guygets killed in the past, he ceases
to exist in the present. Andeven the you know, the shrink like
his lighter that he used the lastof his lighter to light this guy's cigarette
at their appointment, but all ofa sudden it's got fluid in it again
because he didn't use it. Andhe checks his appointment book and it just
(35:52):
says no appointments today, which Ithink is hilarious because like, clearly,
first of all, why is hethere, Martin Balsom? Yeah, why
is he his office? Also nota great psychiatrist, and clearly everyone knows
it because the only guy he gotwas this nut who probably got rejected by
all the other shrinks. And secondly, he's got no other clients, right,
Like what psychiatrists you know who likeit's like a random Tuesday or whatever,
(36:13):
they have no clients as well.But or hit the bar maybe like
therapy wasn't as big back then orsomething. I don't know, but yeah,
I thought they did a really goodjob at the end when he so
what happens is he dies in PearlHarbor or he gets blown up, and
then it cuts back to the psychiatristwho's sort of like, you know,
(36:35):
jolts awake from whatever. And helooks around and he's sitting right in that
chair and in front of him isthe patient like bed and it's empty,
and he kind of looks around.He doesn't say anything. He doesn't do
that thing where he like talks tohimself, which like so many things of
this time, did that. Butyou get the sense that he's kind of
wondering why am I here? Likewhat was I doing here? And that's
why he checks what the audience isthinking. Yeah, he checks his appointment
(37:00):
book and everything. You know,I thought they did a good job of
him seeming confused and like not knowingwhy he's there without saying it or like
being too overt about that. Andthen he goes to the bar next door
and he sees the guy's picture onthe wall and he recognizes him but doesn't
know from what. And he askedthe bartender and he says, oh,
(37:20):
that's so, and so you knowhe used to tend bar here. He
died in Pearl Harbor. And myquestion is, what the fuck is that
all? Like what does that?How does that work? Like logistically,
this guy was born in sometime,you know, in nineteen well, let's
say nineteen thirty something. He livesto this age of nineteen fifty eight.
(37:43):
Yep, he goes back in timeto Pearl Harbor. So is he a
bartender in New York at this time? I would say yes, because he's
got his picture on the wall.So when the guy says he died in
Pearl Harbor, does he mean hedied in the past and Pearl He was
working here up until a couple ofweeks ago, and then he died in
the pass in Pearl Harbor. No? No, does he mean here a
couple of weeks ago, and thenhe went to Pearl Harbor and died somehow,
(38:05):
And we don't know how he howhe got there, how he died.
He was so beloved as a bartenderin seventeen years, seventeen years prior
that his pictures stayed on the wall. That is kind of stupid. If
you think that'd be like if hewent to a bar now and a guy's
picture and who's that guy, Oh, he was a bartender here seventeen years
ago, you'd be like, tobe fair, there is some like stuff
on the walls of bars that hasjust like been there for since forever.
(38:30):
Yeah, I could see it happening. But also he was so beloved as
a bartender in the nineteen thirties andforties where he only existed in Pearl Harbor
in his dreams. No no,no, see wasn't prohibition then? Come
on? No? No, ButI mean just saying he was he was
a child then or like a seeright, the stage the way he affected
(38:51):
time goes backwards through the timeline.So not only did he go back to
Pearl Harbor, he also was likea better man in his pre Pearl Harbor
life because the ripple goes backwards.I do not think that makes sense perfect,
I reject. I think Rod Serlingwas drunk when he wrote that.
(39:13):
Yeah, I feel like this isuh. I feel like, I mean
a lot of this logic holds upin the weird like time loop logic,
but that does not. This isan interesting take on the time loop movie
though, because it is it isvery much like a time loop movie like
Groundhog Day or um source Code orwhatever. Yeah, where the guy is
basically going back in time and tryingto relive the same day and change the
outcome, which is a really coolformat. I wouldn't be surprised if this
(39:37):
was like one of the first instancesof like a time travel storyline seen by
the masses. Yeah, yeah,probably. I can't think of anything.
I don't think there's a movie.I mean, I do think there was
some like short stories and stuff inthe forties and written in literature, sure,
but like on television and movies.Is probably one of the first.
Like the time Machine was a filmrepresentation. Yeah, so they made that
a movie though, but that wasprobably like in the sixties. But it's
(39:59):
also not like, you know,time travel is one thing, but this
is a time loop of reliving theseries and trying to change things, which
is kind of unique. It's notas much of that, so very interesting.
Yeah, I think we kind ofglazed over that this episode was a
part of the Desilu Playhouse, whichwe mentioned, but it acted as a
backdoor pilot. This is sort ofRod Serling saying like, look, I
(40:22):
want to make this sci fi show, and this is what it's gonna be.
Like the sensors said, backdoor pilot. You can't say that. And
this episode received over six thousand letters, like more than any other show that
was on the Desilu Playhouse that year, and it was like immensely popular.
(40:43):
People loved it, and based offthat, CBS was like, okay,
sure, let's do this Twilight Zonething. People have spoken, people have
spoken, they want more cigarettes.Yeah, so I think we kind of
touched on everything. I mean,you guys want to rate we nailed it.
Yeah, yeah, let's let's ratethis. I think we should rate
it on like out of ten,out of ten Pearl Harbor bombs, what
(41:08):
like we could do like a uniquething for every episode. Yeah, they
have to do with killings. Well, what battleships. Yeah, ten sunk
battleships. That's a good one.Dead sailors, I give it ten dead
sailors. I give it one hundredUSS Arizonas I give it, Yeah,
(41:31):
ten empty lighters. I give ita million hero hetos, eight megawatt nuclear
bomb. I mean, I thoughtit was pretty good. I thought I
was going to be bored by it, and I watched it in bed last
night and I was pretty entertained.When I saw the runtime was almost an
hour, I was like, fuckthis, and then it actually did it
(41:52):
did find ways to make that hourkind of go um. Yeah, I
think the time element worked. Yeah, I think there are some Twilight Zone
episodes going forward that are an hour. Most are a half hour long,
but I believe there aren't some hourlong ones. But anyway, I give
this eight out of ten Pearl Harborbombs. I really I enjoyed him.
(42:14):
I was I was impressed. Ienjoyed elements of it. I thought,
like the overall, the time elements. I thought the overall premise was really
good. I love that it wasa time loop story before I really thought
those existed, um, and Ilike I said, love the cast.
I thought the very ending where he'sinexplicably a bartender that got killed in Pearl
(42:38):
Harbor bothered me. And I thought, like, like you said, the
news room stuff, A lot ofthe hemming and hawing. He's got a
scene where he harasses a maid forsome reason. It's just very oh yeah,
just very weird shit that seemed likecalls her mo and then totally the
white maid who comes. Yeah,it was all very confusing. So there's
not a person of color in thisentire episode, which I'm sure will be
(43:00):
all be a recurring with all theTwilight Zones. Um, So I'm going
to give it a little more.I enjoyed it, but I'm going to
give it a much more modest sixConfused Psychiatrists. That's pretty good. That's
pretty good. Yeah, my scoreis a six. I just the guy
really annoys me. Like the character. He's really not a William so six
(43:20):
six sad William Bendix, he ssix harassing William bend better season Um,
all right, yeah that's good.That's our first episode. So thanks for
listening to zoners, and uh,you know we'll be we'll be doing this
for a long time. Stay inthe zone. So dumb. And now,
(43:47):
by the way, Auto Zone ison the phone and there there they've
got their lawyers drug off the paperworkright now. Well, on that note, M
Popular Podcasts
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com