Episode 35: The Crossing / The Hunters

Hi there, I'm Chris Stash you I'm Mike White, and this is Found Them Alone and we're the host of Dreams for Sale on the month one the month one the month. I'll just drop all the hs so far off to a terrible start. Yeah, today has been great as it is on one Jesus, Okay, we are the host of Dreams for Sale, an leave it all in. We are the hosts of Dreams for Sale. A once a month look at the Twilight Zone nineteen eighty five, otherwise known as the best version of the show that isn't the original, though Father Malone would say the two thousands is pretty good, but you know, no, that's the best.

Oh Forrest Whitaker, for As Whittaker, Oh my god, he just makes it. He just makes it. O Guy's effortless. I mean he is, but he's not in the show. But put on this episode of Dreams for Sale, we're going to be taking a look at the third and fourth episodes of the third season of the show, otherwise known as the Downhill Run.

That is the finale of this show. The third season. We'll be taking a look at two episodes, The Crossing and The Hunters. There dwells within this parish, a modern day apostle and master builder who lists among his tools of trade a bible, a rosary, and a calculator. His name father Mark Cassidy, age forty two, a fair and nobleman who's about to discover one of his accounts is still open.

That account is labeled guilt, and it's sealed in a ledger stored in the Twilight Zone. So both of these episodes are directed by Paul Lynch. The Crossing is written by Ralph Phillips. It stars Ted Shackelford as a priest, a father who something something happened. Do we know, look these episodes that we're talking about this episode.

In the next episode, I think we're gonna have a lot of questions about what was going on in these episodes, because all of a sudden, the show decided that we don't need to know what's going on anymore, at least not in a way that any of us could talk about. So I guess this father is haunted by something that happened to him in his past, and that haunting is manifesting itself in his daily life. Right, Yes, sure, it seems so weird because if the stuff happened already. You would think you would be like, why is this happening again, because it just seems so surprised when it happens, this car being on fire. But then he's in the confessional confessing to anybody is there anybody in the other booth, talking about how he couldn't have saved or why was I the one that was thrown from the car.

But then at the end, she's alive, and he's then yeah, god, was she alive? Five the situation, she's the one that put the flower on the casket. I just assumed that she is like a ghost, Yeah, a googlie who the fuck knows this? This episode just um exists in this weird realm of nothing matters, there are no rules, and we'll do whatever we want. Yeah, I just wrote down this is one of the worst I've seen at all.

Um, Like, there are absolutely no stakes, there's no drama. It's just a slow progression to figure out this thing that already happened that the lead character already knows about, Like what is the point of this? And then he does and yeah, and his solution is to like go get in the ghost car with her and then take her place, I assume, which, by the way, for Catholics, that suicide. So father Mark is burning in half. But it's not suicide because he didn't drive the car.

But if he was, he knew what was going to happen. No, but he wasn't driving the car, Dude, that he knew that kill yourself to go to hell. No, that's not that's like saying, well, I didn't kill myself, it was the ground after I stepped off that ledge. Well, I just assumed that's how all Catholics justify it. Yeah, I mean, if he was Blackett could have just gotten shot by a policeman.

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

It gives us nothing, Like it is his shock long to get there. Well, yeah, well those are the best kinds of stories. They give you nothing and they take forever to get there. Oh my god. Yeah, it must about the hospital wing.

We spend a lot of time on fundraising in this episode. Yeah. Important, it's important. That's what people who watch Twilight Zone are into fundraising. Yeah, And is it like, I guess we're supposed to believe that, like he uh like feels so guilty about his friend dying that that's what's driving him and you know, forcing him on.

But like, it doesn't seem like there's anything really deleterious going on other than he's remembering something that are already happened. Yeah, comment on that, Chris, Well, I don't know. What I don't understand is what's the point of showing is something that's already happened when it happens again at the end, and it's not given any context as to why it happened the first time, who had happened to the first time, and why the father is seemingly on the hook for what happened. That's what I don't understand. The throne from the car, right, That's that's what we're supposed to So, yes, is the survivor's skill is the idea here?

And and if that's the case, if this is an examination of survivor's gill, the way to cure that is to kill yourself. According to the Twilight Zone, he's doing good deeds building the raising two million dollars to build this hospital wing. But he just feels so guilty about this thing in his past, and it's just like, maybe you should have some therapy. I personally think that this is the obvious, clear prequel to Fraggle Rock, because you have Gerard Parks who plays Monsignor Perrault. So what happens is Ted Shackelvert kills himself, he retires from the Catholicism, and he goes and opens a store, changes his name to Doc and then you have Fraggle Rock.

Oh he buys a dog, Yeah, and I'll go you on better. He loses his mind over the sudden disappearance of Father Mark, who ends up dead, and the reappearance of a woman from years ago, and then imagines Fraggle Rock happening and in his shop. But does he ever actually laugh the cares away or does he just imagine that he's doing it? Is this Marjorie the trash heap? Does she live in his yard?

Oh? Yeah, the trash No? I don't think so, because they have to go through Fraggle Rock and then they end up in some outside i'd some other area. Okay, I just want to point out that the fact that the three of us grown ass adults are talking about Fraggle Rock as seriously as we are, I think is much more important than anything that this episode does. Yeah, you know, I tried to think of a way that this episode was a success, and the only way I could figure is if the creators of this episode were attempting to make me feel like I was actually in the Twilight Zone, that this is the best that the Twilight Zone had to offer, then yeehaw, you guys win.

Otherwise, what in the It's like it's even more offensive than the sort of overtly Modlin and Schmalsey episodes we've gotten before, because at least those had something to say. I don't know what this was about. Also, she's so go Steve Kelly comes back from the dead at the end, and then it must be tough to get a driver's license after you've been legally pronounced dead, right and then you just reappear. So I wonder, between the three of us, since our opinions are kind of the only ones that matter at this point except for mine, obviously, I am curious where do we come down on this episode. Is she a ghost?

Doesn't matter? Has the episode given us enough information to make that assessment, because honestly, I think I fall into the ladder. I don't know, because the episode doesn't even know what the fuck it's going for. It feels like to me that history was undone and now he's the one that died. But then that again, it undoes all of the shit that he was working on, the raising of all that money for this hospital wing.

It's just like, Okay, you're undoing all of your good deeds because you feel so guilty about this, and now you're, like you said, committing suicide by replacing yourself with you know, and now she's alive. Okay. That's what it feels like to me, is that he is rewriting history. Yeah. I mean, that's the only way it makes any sense at all if this is we've now traveled back in time to the point of the accident, and then this is his funeral and she did not die, because otherwise it's a cluster fuck of a fucking episode.

It's a cluster fuck anyway, but at least it makes more sense with that ending, and for me, the thing I ultimately don't get is why do you want to have it both ways at the end? Why can't you just make a determination on which one it is, because honestly, it doesn't affect the story. Actually, it would probably make you if they came down on either side, he would probably have to make the story make even less sense, frankly, because then they are taking aside. So with their kind of ambiguous interpretation or ambiguous presentation here, it makes very little sense. But it could make even less sense if she was a ghost or she wasn't.

So we're just left here kind of wondering why I don't even know what the story was. What would the point? It's a story about survivor's guilt, that's nope, yeah, I don't kill yourself survivor. Once again, we're bringing more to this story than the story brought to us, Like, yeah, that's because we actually can understand that it's not a good story. What's strange to me is how anyone who worked on this filmed it did anything else said yes, this is a full story, because I don't think they did.

Oh yeah at this yeah exactly, yeah, And I thought of that too, Like there has to be like a writer's room of some kind here and Jay Michael Straczynski's the story editor, and he had worked in the previous two seasons at least this sort of a junior writer. So somebody had to come up and pitch this idea to him, and he said, yes, go do that, and then they turned in this script and they went yes, and then they mounted a whole production. At what point does anyone goes, what does this mean? I don't know. It's crazy when mediocrity sort of gets funneled through the system.

To me, I don't know. Well, it's crazy that this was on you know, actual television station and actual actors are involved. Well, I want to say too that this it looks so fucking cheap. Oh yeah, it's like the cheapest looking episode of this show. We see bizarre.

And the crazy thing about that is it's like these they're like doing location filming, like that's you know, they were in some house and then they were outside and for some reason, like earlier episodes which I've you know, called out because it's so set down like it, at least they were enlivened in some way. Now, I actually wanted to say this about the next episode, but it's true with this the same guy not directed, but um edited this episode and the next episode we're going to talk about. The pace is so crazily glaciale like in between things, just nothing is happening. The camera takes forever. It's just like on and on and on.

And the other thing I noticed, and this is true of like this entire season, it seems unless people are talking, we have sound, or if like some event has happened to crash or something like that, we have. Otherwise it's dead silent, like not even incidental music. It's just like it feels weird. It feels like a like a community play or something. Yeah, it reminded me of like stuff I would have seen on the early days of Nickelodeon when they couldn't afford programming and they just bought like weird shit from England and I'm like, okay, sure, yeah, go ahead.

Sorry, no, no, I'm done. This feels like this feels like the Twilight Zones response to the seventh season of Tales from the Crypt. Let's just fin our wheels because nobody cares anyways, Like, yeah, I mean we ran into it. In Tales from the Crypt, they literally just shit out a second season and said you dumb. Fans will just eat it up because you're stupid, and that's what this feels like.

It's like this, you will eat this up because we think you're dumb, and it's like, No, the Twilight Zone, the Twilight Zone brand holds too much importance to be treated like this. It really does. It's an important part of like American pop culture, especially when it comes to television and the way television anthologies are told now. And the fact that this is the best you can put forward on a show with the pedigree of the Twilight Zone is really disappointing for a number of reasons, namely the fact that this is the same show that had Shatter Day as its first episode. Like wow wow.

So speaking of that, let's talk about the next episode, The Hunters. Oh I think you mean still Life from season one, right, Jesus. A beautiful summer day full of adventure for a young boy on the surface, a field like any other, soon to be covered with neatly arranged family homes. But today this curious boy is about to discover and a terrifying secret that could only be shared within the confines of the Twilight Zone. Oh boy, isn't that the case.

Oh well, instead of a camera, we found these cave paintings, and we're gonna take forever to get to anything again. It just takes ever so long for them to get to things. I was, I mean, what a waste of a Louise Fletcher. You know, I was under the impression that when that kid fell down into that hole, all of a sudden, Moldern Scully, We're going to look down there and be like, is that where the aliens are? That's what it looked like.

That is straight up. That entire set looked like a scaled down version of the X Files Fight the Future set where the where Lucas Black falls into that alien bit. And yet this episode, what does it do, like you mentioned, Mike, nothing, absolutely nothing. It does so little that it's a five minute episode stretched out to twenty minutes. It's it's but fucking insane.

I My tolerance with this show all of a sudden as skyrocketed into nowhere because I just I don't want this show to go the way that it's going, and watching it do it is so disappointing, like just massively disappointing. The frightening thing about this particular season is you know, I want to kind of let the entire series off the hook and say, well, the third season was just a cash grab and thrown together. But the fact remains that they cut season two and a half and shuffle half of those episodes into this season so that they would have a season to sort of get US asyndication. So a good number of these we were going to get as legitimate shot in the US with American talent instead of this cheap Canadian knockoff.

Now, I do want to see some good things in this episode. First, in foremost, it's Leslie Carlson is Jim, the sort of the real estate developer guy who was in Black Christmas as the the operator trying to figure out where in the house or where the calls are coming from. And then he was in a Christmas story he was trying to sell them the tree. I like that guy, so I was happy to see him. The other thing is I didn't think in my lifetime I would ever see Louise Fletcher stabbed to death with a caveman spear.

So well you've seen it now. That's what you get for causing Billy Babbott to him a suicide. So I didn't under Okay, so explain to me, like I'm five, exactly what happened. They find a cave underground with cave paintings, and the cave paintings are somehow living cavemen who come to life when no one is around. No, yeah, no, no no.

I think that particular spot was a bridge, like a time machine type portal between their world and hours and the cave paintings were changing because they were doing different things now, because now there was this new a time that they were sort of running into. That's what I got, and I got that from the very um uh well thought out and delivered line. This looks like a spiritual doorway, which is naturally the first thing anyone would think when they look at a you know, several million year old cave painting. I think it's a doorway. I'm glad, Mike that you and I both misinterpreted the episode together, because I'm glad to know that it wasn't just me who had no idea what the fuck was going on.

Yeah, I mean I was, Yeah, I was kind of more under the impression that it was that they could escape from the paintings and do their mischief when they needed to, and then It kind of reminded me of like, what was that the Mischief map where you could see like where Professor mcgonical and oh mischief managed. Yeah, what is that called marauders map? Yeah? They say you have an awfully big nose? Is that?

What is that? What the thing says at one point? Come on, you guys have seen Harry Potter. That's what he says. It's like Professor Snape, it says that you have an awfully big nose.

And he's like and then David Thulis comes in. He's like, what's up, guys, I'm in this movie? Remember No? Okay, Well, Harry Potter's dumb, so never mind. I like the first two yeah, well the ones that people didn't like.

I liked the second one a lot, Yeah, a lot. The third one I was just like, wow, this it kind of sucks. It's awfully dark for a children's film. It's what's sad about this episode is twofold A. Obviously, you know Louis Fletcher, great actress, wasted, criminally wasted other than taking a spear through the back, which to me, Father Malone is similar to when David Warner had a dummy thrown at it on a stairwell.

It's like, I never thought I would see this, but yet here we are someone chucking. Oh yeah, so Mike, there's in an episode of Tales from the Crib, David Warner is walking up a staircase, a rather narrow, pretty Steve staircase, and someone just takes a dummy body and fucking hurls it at him and he eats ship backwards down the stairs. It is glorious. This is the equivalent of that. Unfortunately, similarity to that episode.

Louis Fletcher is wasted here and the other thing is again it's another twenty three minute episode that does nothing like the story that it's telling. Could have taken five minutes. We look back at the earlier two seasons when they would do like a ten or fifteen minute like quick snippet, sometimes only eight minutes, and I look back at those and go, god, I could have dealt with a half hour of that. Yeah, Like these are just like the one note punchlines. It's like there's nothing to them.

It's just like obviously whoever wrote this was obsessed with those cave paintings in France and was like, I want to write a story about that, Like the cave paintings come to life, like okay, cool and where it could have been cool, It could have been cool, absolutely, but you know what, the fucking the last one, the priest one could have been cool if they had anything at all to say. So, yeah, like that's a harder uphill battle than this one. This one, you could add like all sorts of wacky shit going on, like they just I think in the last one, if they had in any way touched on the stuff that we brought up, like this sort of moral quandary about this priest maybe committing suit like that could have been something.

But here it's just you know, flight of fancy like I've always when I was a kid, I saw cave paintings and I always wanted them to come to life. I'll write that it's very it's very strange. It's we've gone from the show taking a simple idea and really blowing it up into something exciting and grand, and now the show has gone has gone to taking an interesting idea and just like trying to do nothing else but use the idea as the entire jumping point. And it's like, you guys have to do more than just punch us in the head with the idea over and over again. So telling us about the cave paintings, tell us something more, please anything literally literally anything, anything would suffice other than nothing.

It's very strange. I don't I you know, I'm disappointed by where the show is going. I am. It's weird that the third season is taking this big of a just a nose dive. Yeah, yeah, it's not that unusual for a television series, but certainly when you have something as varied as an anthology series like there ought to be some highlights.

You would think maybe they're coming up. Fingers crossed, Yeah, keep crossing him. Cut back to Father Malone five years later. His fingers are crossed and he's skeleton. Just I'm still waiting, are still yeah?

The bones are still crossed, cross still waiting? We done with this one? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. So, with these two episodes out of the way, on the next episode of Dreams for Sale, we'll be taking a look at the fifth and sixth episodes of the third season.

Those two episodes are aptly titled dream Me a Life and Memories. So until then, oh yeah, it's it'll be good. Dream Me a good episode. Until then, where can people find you Father Malone. When you're not here, you can find me at father Malone dot com.

I've got links to all my stuff there. But I do have a half hour audio drama that I put out basically once a month called Dark Destinations. You can check me out there. And well, that's it. According to someone that I pointed at your podcast on the internet, they said, I love the first episode, couldn't get into anything else.

My response was, sorry, how about my thing? Yeah, I pump your show when I can. Man, come on, it's not our child, you know what. Yah? Fuck that person.

Wow, you said it not me, So there you go. Yeah, don't listen anymore. I don't I don't want you. I don't want your downloads. Take it back your one, take your one back?

Here you go. Yeah, man, what about you, Mike White? What's going on at the Projection Booth Podcast. Well, as I have no idea when this episode is coming out, we are covering movies every week. We talk about movies, and that's what we do.

And you can hear us talk about movies at Projection Booth podcast dot com. I really set you up for failure with that one. Huh. It's okay, that's my man who knows what we're going to be, who knows when this will come out, feels like we're like a year and a half ahead right now. I feel like we might be rather far ahead.

I do not. This may be coming out at Christmas time, so you know, I don't know. As for me, you can find me on Twitter at Christmas clause. I do the Culture Cast. It's where I talk about movies once a week.

That's it. As for this podcast, Dreams for Sale Twilight Zone eighty five on the Internet, Dreams for Sale on Twitter and Big Thanks as always to roxy Drive and Neutron Dreams for the intro after music for the podcast. We'll catch on the next episode. I