Episode 33: Song of the Younger World / The Girl I Married

Hello there. I'm Chris Stashu, I'm Mike White, and this is Father Alone, and we are the host of Dreams for Sale, a podcast about twilight Zone. Which twilight Zone you might ask, twilight Zone nineteen eighty five, But at some point we're going to cover the two thousand show because Father Alone just loves it, loves and loves it, loves it, loves it, loves it all lies. This is lies. Well, on this episode, we're not talking about the two thousand show.

We are talking about nineteen eighty five twilight Zone, and we are rounding out the second season of the show. And I think I speak for the three of us and saying, how did we get here so fast? Yeah? Blinding speed. It feels like we just started recording about the second season, like someone just jumped in a trash canon pushed it down to hill at full speed.

We're just going down fast as possible. Man. Well, I think in this case it was definitely that they cut the season in half instead if we're going to save the back halfter season three, So yeah, and no, that's fair, but it just it feels like it's still these episodes are just flying by. Well yeah, but you know, compared to season one. It took it took a while.

Yeah, well yeah that's fair. So, yeah, we're gonna be talking about the final two episodes of season two. They would have been put together at one point, they're not now, but we're going to talk about him as one, talking about Song of the Younger World and the Girl I Married. So Song of the Younger World is directed by Noel Black, written by Anthony Lawrence and Nancy Lawrence. It aired July seventeenth, nineteen eighty seven, and it stars Jennifer Rubin, Paul Benedict, Robert's Blossom again second time be shown up on the show, and Pete Kowongko.

You know, everybody's favorite, Pete Kowongko. Was that the that's the main kid. Yeah, he's real great, He's so good. He's like so good that he was like, you know, oh my god, I've never seen grief displayed so just actually amazing that that. I'm shocked we haven't heard more from him.

Where is he has he done any? Oh? He did nothing else. It's okay, Hey, not everybody is going to have a great acting career. We can't all be Roberts Blossom.

It's true. We can't show up twice in the same show. Yeah. Also that So what did you guys think of this segment? It was had an interesting setup.

It's like this kid loved Jack London, sure, and I felt like the weirdest introduction. It's like he likes Jack London, yes, and he pays off, come on he sure? Oh well he turns at wolf. Oh spoilers. I will ask though, does him turning into a wolf have anything to do with Jack London or is that just the most convenient, stupidest animal they can transform?

Well, there is like white fang and all those things from the Jack London books. I guess I can see that, But why Jack look like why Jack? I don't get it. And I don't get that like ancient book of evil that she's reading from them. I don't get focus on it long enough you'll see the door.

I don't get why I said fred Gwyn instead of Paul Benedict. I'm just completely confused about that. Yeah, I was too, I didn't I was. I just assumed you were mentioning Fred Gwinn because Fred Gwinn's awesome. Oh yeah, that's what tall man with the rectangular head.

I'm just as Gootten made me, sir, exactly the best Paul Benedict line of all time. Oh my god, but I will you know what. I will tell you. That door that they see on the page, I expected it to open and the dream worms to come out from Freddie's dead, because that's all it looked like, was that weird like ancient door in the three D part that they tried to shoehorn into that movie. Because I would be appropriate here given Jennifer Ruben's involvement, That's why I thought about it.

Yeah, Jennifer Ruben. Though, poor lady, this episode is a mess. I say, poor lady to Jennifer Rubin because of how bad this episode. Yeah, I mean it. It just feels like they stuck a bunch of ideas in a blender and this is what kind of came out of.

It came crawling out, just going yeah, we're somewhere in like a love story and the father doesn't like her and him and I'm like, okay, yeah, okay, we've seen that before. That's good. Stick with that. It's a pretty tried and true formula. And then yeah, there's the Jack London thing.

There's the Ancient Book of Evil thing. Yeah, I'm like, Okay, she's reading the Necronomicon, all right, but it doesn't seem to have any ill effects other than they get turned into wolves at the end. But they're together forever, and in her dreams she's beautiful and bad. That's true. What an extensive library this Boy's reformatory has, huh, Yes, that they have the necronomic on there.

And nothing makes me hate a lead character more than watching them mutilate a book. And he's cutting these pictures of wolves out of this book, and all I can think is, like, is that your book? Son? And as it turns out, it was not well. With a name like Mordecai hawk Line, one one would expect that he doesn't care what the law has to say, sir, But all Mordecai hawk Line.

Look, when you have a segment this nonsensical, it gets to the point where by the end of it, I don't really have any expectation what's going on or what's going to happen. So you have farts Blossom just shooting a guy point blank, yeah, and then about to shoot another guy point blank who's tied up on the ground, and then he turns into a wolf maybe or he doesn't. Who knows, I don't, because this episode is operating on this like wishywashy logic that the show all of a sudden seems to be operating on, which is no rules matter if we don't establish them, and if we don't establish rules, we could do whatever the fuck we want. And that seems to be all of a sudden, what this show is doing. It's just like magical logic, like, of course there's a book that can transform you into wolves.

It's twilight Zone, like rubber stamp with twilight Zone. Let's move on. It's really lazy. It feels like a bunch of writers came in second season after everybody else left and they wanted to get their magical romance story out. And I don't know what was in their head that they thought that this was in any way interesting.

That it's very writer early with the Jack London thing and you know, the sort of overbearing religio, so reform it or warden, which, by the way, if by the end, he's pretty convinced that this kid is a Satanist or a minion of evil in some way, So when he goes to aim at the kid and sees the supernatural thing happening. Why wouldn't he just pull the trigger immediately, Like that might have actually redeemed the episode in my mind where it has proven that in this guy's mind that he's a Satanist and he shoots and kills him and he doesn't get to go to the other world. But good lord, just you know, I don't know it. Occasionally we get episodes where I feel like these are people who have no business writing speculative fiction.

They're just telling whatever story they would have told on any series, and they just throw in a magic book and there it is. Yeah. Yeah, And to your point, it feels like some sort of some sort of an exquisite corpse where those writers came in. One guy started the story, had to know, had to run out for some cigarettes. Next guy started going for it.

My favorite thing is at the end, they're like Paul Benedict's like, they're going somewhere where you can't hurt them, Like, yeah, except for the fact that they're turning into wolves. Yeah, are they magic wolves? Are they wolves of the Earthly Plane? Because if the Wolves of the Earthly Plane, history would suggest that being a wolf is pretty target painted on your back. For a lot of reasons, be they real or perceived.

Allah werewolves, so I was kind of Again, I assume that they're being transported as a magical plane. But again, because the show doesn't take a stance, I can't take a stance either, And I'm not going to do the work for the show because that's not our job. Our job is to critique it, not fill in the blanks or try to make it into something somewhat halfway intelligible. Seed, you can't Paul Benedict's character's name Hokey, perfect there it is everybody the whole episode. I mean I caught it because they said it a million times.

Is the name is Hoki a person's name or was a job? I think it was his name. I've never I don't know what before. Ye, well, I don't never Hokey before, So you say hope mostly yes? Yeah, okay, good, I'm trying to reference anything better than what we had to watch.

Mike already Mike already beat beat us to it with Paul Benedict's line from spinal Taps, So yeah, which I quote more often than I would like to admit. I've just God made me, sir, who is just fruit? That's all fruit. I mean Jesus Christ. I mean, I look, I have no frame of reference for Paul Benedict other than that seen in spinal Tap.

I've never seen any of the Jeffersons. I've seen him on Sesame Street, but as a child. So if I would go as far as to say that he has better things to do than be on this show with how poorly his characters written, Yeah, give him the full episode. I mean, I love the guy. Yeah.

And Roberts, I mean, Robert's bossom got one of the better episodes of the entire series in season one. Um, and you know, god damn him because he walks on screen. I'm like, oh, I get excited, like it's been bad up until he walked on, but now are just here and like all right, and he can't even save it. Nope, nothing can save this. This is this.

I wouldn't classify this as like one of the worst segments we've seen, but it's just so forgettable. And the second last time we're gonna hear Charles Aidman do the narration, yeah damn it, which is a real shame given what we get out of Robin Ward. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Boy. Yeah, boy.

So do we want to move on to the next segment? Please? Yes? As if, as if it's going to get any better, Let's talk about The Girl I Married. It has been said the eighties are just the sixties twenty years later.

The costumes may change, but the cast remains. The arrogant, the radical, the naive, and the cynical, the miss placed and the space, each a stage in the growth of a generation as it treads the tail end of the twentieth century on a long journey through the twilight zone. So The Girl I Married is a story about fucking your wife while not fucking your wife, while your wife's fucking you but she's not fucking you. It's written by J. M.

D. Mattis. It's directed once again by Philip Degare because I guess he was bored. It stars Linda They're running out of money at this point. Yeah.

It starts Linda Kelsey, James Whitmore Junior and Dennis Patrick. And as I kind of led on at the beginning of us talking about this episode, James Whitmore Junior plays a man, a yuppie who's married to Linda Kelsey's character, and they're falling out of love. They're they're remembering the days of past, of how they used to be, and all of a sudden, the next day, James Whitmore's character sees his wife from the pictures in the park by why I like great success, You know, Chris, when you described it initially about a guy fucking his wife who is his wife, and like to me that there was actually a germ of a good idea on this episode, Like the idea of cheating on your spouse with your spouse could have been an interesting thing if they had gone into like a science direction with clones or something, but instead they wrapped it in this like nostalgic fantasy for baby boomers, And like I didn't think they were going to get to a level of pure hatred on my part for this show, this episode.

I fuck, this is the worst one. I fucking hated it. I you know me, Chris, I'm not one. I'm not one for nostalgia, like in general, but like there's something particularly grading about baby boom or nostalgia, Like they shoved their goddamn youth down our throats and then turned into this other night And think, by the way, these are not yuppies, because these people are not young so fuck them. Um, but then like get to this point where then they're gonna wax nostalgic and long for this thing and okay, putting all that aside, just on a like a weirdly sort of plot level at the end, they kind of is the is the idea that they've accepted what total fucking dead dreamed assholes that the entire generation had become Like that was that was that was what we're supposed to take away with it, right, Like correct?

Fuck are you? That was all stupid? Your wide eyed, bushytailed ship heads. Don't you know it's all about money? The bombs lost Lebowski, Yeah, it's um what what?

What cracks me up about this entire premise is if you were to explain to your significant other that you had spent the day with them as a younger version of themselves, like father Mullen said, that's an interesting idea, but you don't just like stop there, right, that's where it stops. It'd like stop said that. It's like, man, you're such a fucking drag because you don't want to do LSD anymore. Like okay, most normal folks aren't just gonna do LSD on a week day anyways, Like, well, weird moment when I lived in the nineties. Yeah, it's that weird moment when he's talking about like penia coladas and and and something in the rain and then just like what what are you guys talking about?

This is so strange? Well what makes me laugh? All right? It was you. I edited you earlier today, Father Malone, on an episode of this show talking about Aqua Vita, the episode featuring yuppies.

Right, yeah, yeah, that was definitely a yuppie. This is worse than that. It is. It is like if this had been, like I said, on just a pure plant level, these people like conjure up their younger selves and then we get something like the younger selves murder them and take their place or something, if something had happened instead of this ugly and astoundia trip. By the way it starts off, the opening scene is the lead character sitting at a business lunch and he's staring at a photo of his young wife right when she was when she was younger.

How natural is that has a setup? How often I mean I find myself constantly just taking out photographs of my wife and staring at her while someone's trying to talk to me. Yeah. Yeah, like actual physical photographs, not even like looking at stuff on your phone, right, just carry around. I take it out of the wallet, hold it up, and I stare.

All it makes me think of is that gag and naked gun? Why does he have a picture of your wife? Martha? Martha? My wife?

Who carries around pictures of a significant other? Oh? I mean, I guess people in the eighties could have. But my favorite thing, actually, father one about that opening scene is the guy goes, who's that? Who is that in that picture?

Bro? That's that guy's wife. Her hair is still red, bro, Like, it's still clearly her. What's happening here? I didn't know where it was going.

I thought that like there was like a weird like mistaken identity thing going on. And then when it gets back to their house, I was like, Okay, this is where this stupid ass episode is going just going to be stupid. How about that super cool woodstock like split screen triumpter? Oh my god, what the fuck was going on with that? I was just like, down please, Oh my god.

Well it was so strange too, where it was just like it's kind of a split screen, but not really, it's like two seconds behind. I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm just like I rewatched Sisters recently and I'm like, yeah, this is how you do split screen here, folks. And then you're watching this, it's like, what is happening? And yeah, why is it like four screens going on? And I just hadn't hit their editing budget yet.

Wow, I was They're like, we have some extra money left. Can we just be fucking obnoxious? Yeah, let's get the video toaster going. I was waiting for like some star wipes and stuff. Yeah, let's get let's get Tim Jennison of Tim Vermeer's fame video Toaster out.

He just probably made a couple of dollars by us mentioning it, so video Toaster, there's three more dollars in it. What's sad about this segment is the same thing that I feel like has plagued this season more so than the first one. These just like melancholy, saccharin ass stories that are wish fulfillment stories, like I wish I could talk to my former self and tell him that things are going to be okay. Like, the only people that want to do that are people who are fucking miserable assholes like the people in this episode, right, I mean, we've gone all the way to your point from earlier. We've gone all the way from Shatter Day, where it's like, you know, the guy disappears once his other version shows up and something is going on, and there's stuff going on in that episode.

It's very interesting, it's fascinating stuff. And here we have two people from the past showing up and yeah, maybe they take their places, maybe something happens, maybe there's a fight, maybe there's I was waiting for the old guy to start punching out the young guy, but then his fake beard would have fallen off. Yeah, he was punching something, but he wasn't punching the other guy. He was punching that man's wife on the grand it was tongue punching her, but not like that. But maybe because the other guy was tongue punching is why.

H Yeah. I loved how like he got outraged at his wife with the younger version of himself while he spending day after day with the younger version of her. Yeah, and like I mean, if they had done at least something like maybe they remembered themselves as idealistic and then they meet themselves and realized, no, they were assholes from the get go, Like at least there would have been something here, but this was just like like a longing for a time that no longer exists and then repudiating it for I don't I don't know this, this is very bad. Well, all they did was bang the entire episode more or like, yeah, I mean that's that's the funny thing is like, given the opportunity to talk to your past self and interact with them, you're just like, yeah, I want to bang.

Yeah, okay, I mean I'm surprised he didn't his younger self and she yeah, younger self. Sure there would have been something interesting the version that they would have now, right, it's like I'm actually bisexual. I want to have sex with myself. Yeah, it's it's black mirror Andrew Mackey kind of thing, right, right, pannacle of quality. But that would even be more interesting than this.

Yeah oh yeah. Instead, what we're getting, or what has slowly donned on me, is that every writer on the staff of this show has a time travel lost love or like you know, lost youth episode in them, and now that they're like everyone really good is gone everyone's going to get the trot. There is out. We had an episode earlier this season like this or wait, we're going to see this more in the next one. I'll talk about it.

Judy J. M. Maddis is de Matis is really good at writing comic books. That's the sad thing. Oh yeah, yeah, but comic books are comic books, and teleplay is a teleplay.

This is not a comic book. They're apples and oranges. I mean, you know, everyone gets a little too hung up on like, oh, this is just like a storyboard of a movie, and it's like, yeah, kind of is. But the dialogue blows like say it all out loud, you'll see what we're talking about, right man? Great?

Can I just say yeah, I in my notes this is this is the one thing I wrote that I'd like to share with everyone. Baby boomer nostalgia. There's nothing more disgusting in the world. I thought you were going to like have a whole poem there, baby boomers feed them to the wolves. Yes, I said it, feed them to the wolves and seeing I mean, look, ultimately, at the end of the day, like let's not kid ourselves.

The baby boomers. The reason we're in the situation we're in financially in so many ways. So yes, watching a nostalgic waxing wistfully about your lost love means go fuck yourself to me, because I know where you end up as a generation. You're ending up on Facebook. Tell me about your maga hats and how the election was stolen.

So there I said it because Mike won't because some sort of left I mean, that's that is where these characters would be if they were alive. Now yeah, yeah I'm not. And what's funny is that the thing that they end up sort of discounting are the only good things from their generation, which was the sort of cultural things and that the you know, the the shift away from sort of conformity of clothing and whatever, like all the good stuff that still remains from them. This episode of saying like that was all crap. Yeah, but yeah, to your point, I would have loved like he meets his younger version of his wife and yeah, she's all about boning.

But then she starts talking about like fucking crystals and you know, drugs and just take yeah, let's just do you know our thing, man, let's see, and suddenly she becomes like one of those horrible girls from One Spot a Time Hollywood, where you're just like, get out of my car. I don't want your your stinky feet on my dashboard, thank you very much. Like she says, the older version of herself says, I used to look like a bag lady, really bro, really bro. Really you'd think a bag lady. Oh yeah, because there's nothing worse than the homeless in mid eighties.

Well, and now, to be fair, because who doesn't hate the homeless, But every major city in this country, when they take away benches for them to sleep, one put spikes on them. That's even better, give them somewhere to sleep, but make it inhospitable for them. Yeah, it's it's this this segment for whatever reason, like you've said, Father Malone, it really rubs me the wrong way, more so than a lot of the other baby boomerish nostalgia episodes have. And I wonder, I wonder if, with like the newer stuff, twenty years from now, thirty years from now, forty years from now, how it'll be received Maybe the same way. I can't imagine it won't be.

Look, nostalgia has its plan, and it can be done skillfully and artfully. And you can get something from it. But so far, what this series has shown us as far as traveling down the nostalgia avenue is it's all bullshit. Please don't do it anymore. Yeah, boy, that should be the tagline for this season.

This is all nostalgias. Stop it. So with season two in our rear view mirror, we should do a little bit of a wrap up here. So starting with you, mister Mike White, favorite segment of the season, least favorite segment of the season. That's tough, man, Oh, because this season, like you're saying, it feels very short.

I guess it has to be saucer loneliness. Going all the way back to that episode with shelleybu Val, that one actually really hit home that one. And I'm gonna also say I actually liked the Convicts Piano quite a bit because it was short and sweet, a nice little story, and he got Norman fell in it. What you fund them alone? I echo that a definitely saucer of loneliness.

Like I thought, that was what I want from the Twilight Zone, particularly what I wanted from this new version of the Twilight Zone. There are a couple others that I liked. I think are still passively good. Even that the Eldest One I think is fun in its own bizarro way. But we just watched and we're talking about my least favorite episode of the season.

It was just utter garbage. So I actually would go with the Toys of Caliban only because it completely subverted my expectations, given I watched like the first five minutes because I just had left it on and I needed to stop it, and I saw whatever the fuck was going on in the first five minutes, I thought this is going to be the train wreck that I had been waiting for. It turned out not to be. It was very good. I would say it barely eked out The Road Less Traveled.

I know, I liked that one a lot and can go back and listen to our episode on that. But Toys of Caliban was good and the worst one. Man, there's a lot of competition the season. I mean, it feels like half of the episodes this season could be considered just bad. I'm gonna go with Nightsong because that is just like, what was that?

Even Yeah, I'm still stinging so much from Grace Note and then I'm like, oh, that's the first season, So I can't count that, but I'm just like, what's the worst one I've seen in a while? That one. I was really disappointed that none of us said joy Ride as the worst, because boy, that's up there too. Yeah, I at least like the concept of this stationary car and if you know, existing in another time, like barreling down roads. For some reason, that image alone, And it was a short one too, It wasn't.

It wasn't this half hour of my baby boomeruging nostalgia man like age christ ladies and gentlemen. Father Malone a huge fan of baby boomers, you know what? You know what, I don't think my generation is any great shakes either, But like, I will dope slap anyone who traffics in this kind of nostalgia. It's gross. And they were trafficking in it like twenty years after it happened.

I mean, it's interesting because I'm not remembering this season being particularly strong, but there are some good episodes in here, you know, you guys have mentioned some, even thinking about the one with George went, what was that the world next door? Or something z another one exactly, And I think if memory serves like the idea behind the card was good, but it didn't it wasn't executed prop I agree, Yeah, that's a very good one. Yeah, yeah, you know. I think though this season is probably much less successful than the last one, which is fucking strange given that the last one has twice as many episodes. Yeah, what's in too, because all of those ones that we've mentioned have some sort of a twist to it and some sort of supernatural thing going on, and too many of these just don't have the twist and they just start in one place.

I mean them turning into wolves. I'm sorry, I don't really consider that a twist, you know, it's just like all right, then she growled at him, though he didn't see that coming. It's father. This doesn't feel as bad as Chronicles from the Crypts fall off, but I feel like given another season, and it might be it's I think if they if they continue letting these writers write the majority of the show, look, it's gonna get worse. There's just no question about it.

Like, I think that the quality drop from season one to season two is kind of precipitous here here in Twilight Zone Land. And I do think that's because when it was announced that there's gonna be a new Twilight Zone show. Like every sort of high and like decent author and television person wanted to get on that show because they loved the show when they were kids. And after their treatment in the first season, they bailed and we were left with everybody else and that's what we're getting, and now we're going to get it's going to get even worse because these people are most are mostly going to go because they're moving the entire production to Canada. Sounds like Tales from the Cript, Yeah, like, let's send it to England.

You know what. Though as bad as any of these seasons could be, nothing will be as bad as season seven of Tales from the Crypt. So I'm hopeful a season that needs to be jettisoned at high speed into the sun, all versions of it. No recordings need to exist, That's how bad it is. But I mean this season, I look, they're like less than half of the season is worth checking out, which is a shame.

There's like fifteen episodes, so they're still good though. I mean, you know, Shelter Skilter and fucking Saucerer Loneliness Lakers as I would I would not see them out of place in season one. No, I would agree, yeah, but man, it's just such a bummer really, just thinking Mike you heep. You mentioned Shattered Day, and I just think about Shatter Day from time to time when I watched the show, and I'm just like, what has happened here? Yeah?

Man? They started as strong, right, I know. It's almost like Tales from the Crypt, Like they start so strong and like you're just like, well, you have nowhere else to go but down. I guess it needed more rock me Abannon, but he left to do sequest DSV, which was almost this show. Remember that, Wait to what?

When you first approached me about doing podcast separately, were liked, no, one's done that. I'm like, no, but there's a guy involved with it that I'd like to talk about. Yeah. Coincidentally, he did leave this show quickly. So so on the next episode of Dreams for Sale, we're gonna be taking a look at the first and second episodes of the final season of the show.

Those episodes are the Curious This Case of Edgar Witherspoon, and Extra Innings. So until then, Father Malone, where can people find you? You can check me out. I just went to Canada. You went to Canada.

Yeah, well, I'm getting ready for the for the next season. You can check me out over at Father Malone dot com. I've got links to all of the stuff that I do, including my half hour radio drama Dark Destinations. You can also find links to the almost over chronicles from the Crypt, the show that Chris and I just mentioned, and uh and my YouTube channel. At this point, it is long over.

Yeah, Okay, it's done, but you can still get it. Yeah, you can still find it. So Father Malone and I and Mike and I have both finished a podcast together, so there you go. And we're gonna finish this one together as well, so sooner than later. Yeah, where can people find you?

Mike? Yes, I wish you can find me over at the Projection Booth podcast, which is available by Projection boothpodcast dot com. You're gonna also hear Chris and I talk about Barney Miller on the Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller podcast, which I think is available at Barney Miller podcast dot com. And yeah, um, and then I sell some dreams with y'all. Yeah, not for long, not for much longer.

We'll be selling dreams until they're on liquidation which I think is coming soon. As for me, you can find me on Twitter at Christmas Clause and at c stashu dot com. That's my link tree, O Mike, Mike, Mike lamenting how dumb link trees were. It's okay, I got one still. Oh do you have one?

Okay? Yeah. I created it for when we did that live podcast. Oh nice, okay, yeah yeah. I don't know if anybody uses it, and I can't track that information.

Do you what I used? Yeah? I didn't like. Oh like, I don't know how many people go to it and click through is what I mean? Oh I say you should Yeah, well you should, agreed, But you can find me here and on Twitter at Christmas Clause.

Big thanks always to Roxy Drive and Neutron Dreams for the music for this podcast, and we'll catch you on the next episode.