Episode 39: 20/20 Vision / There Was An Old Woman

Good evening, and welcome to Night's Gallery. Thank you, Rod, and I want to welcome everyone to Midnight Viewing, where once a month we talk all about your follow up to the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's Night Gallery. They say it's Rod through Ling's Night Gallery, and it isn't really Rod through Las Night Gallery. It's somebody else's. Oh we know, we talk about it a lot.

Your curators at Midnight Viewing are the projection booths. Mike White, What can happen to human beings when trust is wife dog by suspicion and culture casts Chris Stashue, small boy incased in the Crystal Ball, and I'm Father Malone, the kind of thing that usually infest nightmares, joined us monthly at Midnight Viewing. The Night Gallery podcast at weird Ingwaymedia dot Com doesn't remotely belong to me. I have no proprietary interest in that at all. Weird Well there, I'm Chris Dash, I'm Mike White, and this is Father Malone, and we are the host of Dreams for Sale, a once a month look at the Twilight Zone from nineteen eighty five, which was good, all, yeah, yeah, it was it was good most one point, mostly great series.

Is it unfortunate that this show has some really good episodes and some really bad ones? Or is that just anthologies at synthologies all the way? Yeah, I mean we've said this before, but go back and watch the entire run of the original Twilight Zone, as great a series as it was, there are some dogs. Ye. Speaking of dogs, these episodes may or may not be dogs.

We'll see here. In about five minutes, we're gonna be talking about the twelfth and thirteenth episodes of the third season twenty twenty Vision, and there was an old woman focus on Warren Cribbins, a myopaque little man, precise with figures, awkward with people, his horizons a bottom line dotted with decimal points, but his safety in numbers is about to be erased. So twenty twenty Vision aired December tenth, nineteen eighty eight. It is directed by Jim Purdy and written by Robert Walton Walden. It stars Michael Moriarty as Warren Cribbins, a nervous little man who works at the bank processing loans, and his glasses break and then he can see things, maybe the future, maybe an alternate universe.

Who knows? All I know is this episode was just okay, yeah, continuing the genteel tour of the Twilight Zone. Just kind of stories that are mostly heartwarming at this point, like without very much twilight Zony kind of twists, like you know, and I don't need a twist in a show, but I need it to have some sort of not necessarily a reason behind the paranormal or supernatural thing occurring. But like they're just so toothless this season, like that, you know, you're toothless or bad toothless and yeah, and no point of view other than like what we're seeing, like you know, I've been Twilight. So there was a Twilight Zone episode with a guy flips the coin and it lands and then he can hear I mean for your thoughts, right, which is what this one reminded me of.

Except it reminded me that that episode was awesome and this one is just slight at best, which is a shame because you know, Michael Moriarty is one of those guys like he must be a real dick to work with because he just didn't seem to get further than television. Well, him and Larry Cohen got along really well, but yeah, there there aren't too many people that did. Yeah, and you know, look if you go watch him on Law and Order when he was the disc journey on there, like, yeah, he is so good. Like I've never seen an actor embodied decency in a way that Michael Mariotti does. He seems to be if it's just an act, like even more props to him, because he seems like a really decent human being and that kind that comes across here as well.

I mean, I love him and everything he's in. It's just that, you know, as we've said on many episodes of the show, this episode just does him in disservice. It's it's so slight. It doesn't really give him anything to like latch onto other than this guy who seems decent from the beginning doing the decent thing at the end, Like the only quandary is like, you know, should I do this thing and lose my job? Like I don't know, it's not like he's whatever like experience these glasses are giving him, Like it's only sort of reaffirming like what he already knows.

It's not like he's he's a miserly dickhead. And then finally sees something from somebody else's point of view, it's just like, yeah, this is kind of shady what I'm engaged in. Oh yeah, yeah, it really is shady. I mean it was the mortgage industry, especially back here in the eighties. You know, this is way before the Frank Dot Act.

So yeah, Dot Frank act. Sorry, but yeah, yeah, it's you're right, there is no change. He wants the girl, he doesn't get the girl. I mean, but what was about that, Like, it's so obvious that they should be ending up together at the end of the episode, and he just walks out and it's like, Okay, cool, Yeah, I guess I'll have to find another job after I loaned this hay seed all this fucking money. And it's like, oh my god, dude, are you a fucking moron loaning all of your money to this dude?

Who h Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm not getting that money back. No, No, he's going to die penniless destre he probably steps in. Yeah, you should have lifted his own bank account with that. With the glasses, and it's so weird how he just like he uses the glasses so sparingly. It's like, man, if I had those glasses, I'd be wearing them all the time and checking out what the future brings.

What's like the power in the dead zone right, like you would be touching everyone like come here, it's gonna break. Yeah, I want to know, Like come here, let me tell you something. Five bucks and like no, it's just like hold on, hold on, let me just put these on now, Like right, dude, like you have this power that you could use for good or bad or indeterminate gray area in between, and you're just like hold on a second. Yeah, at least in the dead zone, Like it's it's physically painful for him, right, he touches somebody Like yes, it's there's no consequence whatsoever, Like leave those glasses on, find out everything you can. Yeah, and been given the sight is again, is it is he seeing the future or is he seeing up future possibility?

That's what he's seeing the future all the time. Yeah, and then currently written right right, and then it's up to him to change it. So I guess that farmer just looks like a undead zombie once his farm folds up. I was kind of scared by that, and then I guess it's okay because I don't remember if he actually looks at the farmer again and it's just like, oh, okay, everything will be okay now that I loaned him this money. I don't think he gets that confirmation.

Yeah, that's funny because, yeah, I mean maybe even the writers were like, well, you know, this isn't going to go anywhere, right, right, it's just him performing a good deed. I mean, we're I guess we're just being led to assume that because he lend him lends him the money, everything turns out okay in the end. Sure, Like most government subsidized farms in the mid to late eighties, they were totally not just gonna buy up the land anyways and run the high way through it because that's the way it goes, and pay him not to farm, pay him not to grape drops. Yeah, it's a very weird episode because if you think about the reality of what's going on, even with the glasses on, he makes some bone headed decisions that don't make any sense, that do not serve his character positively.

There's the one moment where that woman is counting the money and she drops a twenty into the trash and he staring and staring and staring, and then she's like, oh, I dropped a twenty. Like what was supernatural about that? I mean, I don't even know what was going on, Like we should have just said, like, hey, you dropped a twenty, right, Well, he sees her do it, that's the first time he puts on the glasses, sees her do it, goes over, Hey, you drop this money. He looks in the garbage can. It's not there.

He's like, oh, okay, after he freaked her out, Like he could have just come over and been like, oh, I guess it's not there. But instead it's like you didn't drop money in there. It's like, oh my gosh, dude. Yeah, and then he leaves, takes off the glasses and then it actually happens, right, and so we it's kind of what we talked about last month. We as the audience have figured out, Oh, his classes all allow him to see in the future, Right, shouldn't take four more times for that to happen for him to figure it out.

It's like, come on, buddy, let's pick up the slack pretty quickly. Are this season they seem very concerned with convincing our protagonists of the powers that are in play. Yeah, you know what I had twenty two minutes to do it. I'm almost missing those episodes where it's like what really happens when you get a wish from a yard sale? Like I remember that was a shit episode, But it's like I'm missing those things now.

I'm missing like the curiosity shop that you go into because you hate Asian people, like whatever. Those things were old fashioned emporium. Yeah, God damn. Those episodes played fast and loose with their rules, but man, they were dumb and like dumb and kind of like looking at them now, it's like they were dumb in a fun way. This is just like dumb in a very boring way.

Yeah, and as fast and loose as they're playing with their rules, like everyone was on board, like you know, we didn't need to spend any time going like, oh well, I don't understand I'm in this emporium. What I need confirmation? Let me go back out and come back in and tell somebody that they will think I'm crazy, Like who cares? Get on with it exactly, and especially given the fact that we are now at a twenty two minute runtime and they spent how long showing him do this over and over and over again, Like oh my it's at least half the run time before everything starts sort of coming into the focus. And I don't know if you guys know this, but if you fall off of a ladder back bump, you break your neck.

Oh my god, that ladder is so dangerous. She's got to be at least three feet off the ground, falling flat on her back and breaking her neck. Yeah, oh yeah, that's instance instant death. Yeah, definitely doesn't need to be anything that would cause her neck to snap. Just hitting the ground hard enough snaps your neck.

That's why I will only live in a ranch home. It's it's weird, yeah, because he saves her life and then he doesn't need her even no, Like, yeah, he loads out the money once again, Like the authors are expecting us to fill in all the fucking gaps, and that's actually their job. Nobody gives us a tile floor and we just have to grow in it. It's our job to make it look good. He gave us the basic building blocks to get there.

Yeah, that's works at all. Here's some rock, salt, and some cream. Now make ice cream. Yeah yeah, don't you love ice cream? Love making it yourself?

Like no, that's at the point of this, do you like, Angelina Jolie, I think for me with this show, and look, we're what in the we're in kind of the home stretch here, We're about halfway through the third season. You know that that means that we're like going somewhere good like that, right if if if Tales from the Crypt is any indicator. Yeah, the longer the show goes on, the better the episode skit. Like that's true of every show. Yeah, remember the end of Dexter God I do so good?

Yeah, so good that they're literally redoing the show. Yeah, it's man, it's depressing, right, Yeah, I think it's okay. The question is is it depressing on its own or is it depressing knowing how far we've fallen with this show? Um, a little bit of knowing how far it's fallen, Because if I had to if this had been the first season of the New Twilight Zone, I would have gotten not as far as we are now and and not revisited it until somebody went, oh, they did a really fucking good one last night, Like that That's what it would have taken. Whereas watching from season one here, it's like holy shit, like that one kind of was not good.

But I remember just two episodes ago that scared the shit out of me, Like like, I'm gonna definitely keep tuning in. This is just so there just doesn't seem to be any bite to it, which makes me sound like I'm you know, I want the sort of bitter, angry Twilight Zone and that's not the case. Like I like the sort of more gentle episodes, but it has to have something going on, like this has nothing other than what's going on in the world today. Let's make a comment on that. Does that almost make this more similar to the Jordan Peel Twilight Zone than we realize?

Yeah? Yeah, I mean the Jordan Peele Twilight Zone, in my opinion, fails because it's too topical for its own good. Like a child president in the vein of Trump, isn't that weird? Like yes, But twenty thirty, forty fifty years from now, when people are watching it on their CRT TV and the apocalyptic wasteland, are they really gonna care? Like, you know, Like that's the question that I have, is like, is this still a message that everyone can understand?

Which those original show episodes, even episodes in this season or this this series, this new series they still have some sticking power because they're not hyper topical. Well you know what, like, uh, wordplay was very topical at the time, and it picked a topic that was so relatable that it is as relevant now as it was then, Whereas like you go back to the original Tiles and there was an episode with Fritz Weaver which is sort of this like this takedown of Hitler. I'm like forty years on, you guys are taken down Hitler, Like it's not topical. We know you all went through it, but it's even like it's unwatchable now, like other than I love Fritz Weaver and we'll watchum. So, you know, unless you have some thing to relate what's going on, like in the zeitgeist to a greater sense of things like the past and possibly the future, like don't bother and certainly don't bother if you don't have a fucking story to tell, because that's what it seems to be more often than not.

It's just like there's this savings and loan kind of situation going on, or you know, the women are being abused, like you know, we gotta make a comment on that, like what am I wrong? Was the was the Georgia arm Mart was not this season. The Toys of calabam was not the season. Yes, yeah, it was like right at the beginning. Oh that that was halfway through last season.

Really, Oh Jesus, Okay, so I was gonna say, like that one was you know that that's pretty good If that was in this season, I can't really discount the season overall, but I guess not now this one. This season started with a Jay Michael schri Strasinski episode, and it started with that one about Harry Morgan collecting all the junk in the room. Oh right, I mean, and that's kind of set the tone, yeah, kind of set the tone for the whole thing. The next one was the Baseball one, another quaint little episode. Yeah remember the Baseball one for them alone?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good one. It's it's all sort of no teeth season twilight Zone, like the barest of plots and the barest of supernatural intervention? Is it? This isn't the Twilight Zone at all. It's like some like retirement home from the Twilight Zone where all the food is pre chewed.

Go, we don't watch you anymore. Harrie and Henderson's style let's move on to the next episode. There was an Old Woman, must we we have to not so very long ago, before computerized toys and cathode raid characters did our speaking and thinking for us. One of a storyteller's most important tools was imagination, the imagination of an audience. That was how it used to be once upon a time.

There was An Old Woman air December seventeenth, nineteen eighty eight. It is directed by Otta Hanus Honness I assume probably Otta Harness, written by Tom Jay Astell, and it stars Colleen Dewhurst as an old woman who writes children's books, but she's disillusioned with all those darn kids in their darn vhs. Yes, yeah, yep boy, And that's it. Good night folks, Like I mean, that's the whole message of the episode is like, don't fight technology, because there's still place in the world books and ghost children, yeah, like books not movies. Yeah, because they died before the video revolution.

This reminds me of an old Twilight sound. Just the feel of it kind of reminds me of the Kick the Can episode, like that type of whimsy, which that was a remake of an old story right that they used in the movie and the movie version was just so Sacharin. I think I contacted diabetes from watching it. We all did. Thank you Spielberg.

Oh that was bad of old people, and I love kids. I'll do this episode. Yeah, I didn't mind this one, but that's pretty much all I can say about it. Like, I thought the acting was very good, especially our main character. I thought it was really kind of a shocker when she finds the book that she had dedicated or inscribed to the dying child.

And when she finds it and she calls up the parents like what the fuck man it gave me this book? Only to hear that, yeah, our kid died today. We're just coming back from his funeral. It's like, oh fuck. But you know what, like whatever attempt at like pulling heartstrings, like that's like a fucking total failure.

Like as sacronics, like the Spielberg kicked the can one was like I filled some emotion with those people, and you know they're younger selves, Like here, I don't feel anything for anybody. Like it's just sort of endemic of that this season where they won't take a point of view like if you want to make me cry, then fucking go for it like even if you fail, like and I see through it, like I at least know you're intent here. I don't know. I honestly don't know what they were trying to say. No ghost children like books.

I don't know, Like what what is there to internalize in the message from the end of this episode, I'm gonna have to move away these things, you know, and I just can't deal with this modern world. And then that yeah, that yuppie. Yeah, I wanted to stope slap them, like and they like kids, No come upance for them? Oh yeah, that's just I just you know, I don't know. It's nothing they love in this show anymore.

Nothing happens this episode. Nothing has happened in like the last five or six episodes. Good lord, it's like that fucking remember that that opera one the Peter Meat Act. Oh god, it's like an entire star Selena is dying. Yes where where there's just nothing.

There's no steaks, there's no drama. It's just here's an idea I have. This season feels like walking out to Old Yeller's barn to shoot him. This whole season is us walking out to the barn to shoot Old Yeller. Which made me cry because that was their intent and they fucking achieved it.

Yeah, that's what this feels like, like an old rabid dog that's still screaming out in the shed and you're just like being quiet out there, and then you have to go shoot it because it's just like they shot this show. I mean, they essentially have already canceled this show. We're having to deal with the way that they canceled this show and still offloaded the episodes as it is. So it's just like this old rabid dog, just like growling, we need another twenty episodes. What are you got, Well, we have all of these rejections right here, Like that'll do?

Man, I know, and I guess it was kind of inevitable. Yeah, like no, none of us. Well no, like the show like we were going to get to a point where like I don't do any of us. Like, I know, I'd never seen the show before. Do you guys remember having seen these episodes or is this all new territory?

Yeah, this is actually a new territory for me. I thought I had seen the entire run of the show, but I think I got through season two most of it because there were some episodes that I hadn't seen in their initial run, then rum but I my knowledge of the season is woefully division. I don't think I've seen one of these, and I feel no guilt in not having seen them at the time, because I think it would have tarnished my opinion. No, that first season is so fucking good. I can't nothing can take take that away.

But this season's it's bad, right, I mean it's it's not even bad in a insulting way. It's just sort of blah, like you know, it's like a Yeah. I think the last episode I remember seeing in the original run was probably the one that had joy ride, shelter skelter, and private Channel, which I ronically had a kid dropping a walkman and then able to hear people's thoughts. Yeah, yeah that was good. Yeah, we better better than this, better than twenty twenty, but yeah, and better than this.

This old lady who lived in a shoe, I mean, like I said, I liked her and I liked her performance, but yeah, then it just made me mad. Yeah, the yuppie couple may agree, And then in the fucking real estate agent who starts up raiding her, I thought, yeah, turned to go you know you work for me, right exactly? Yeah, like something that she needed to take a stand somewhere around here. She just doesn't. She just goes to visit a sick kid and then that kid dies, and then she's got ghost children.

Like there's no rhyme or reason to any of this, and she doesn't seem to be scary at all by those ghost children, completely nonplussed. She's so happy to finally have an audience, because you couldn't find an audience for children to read books too. In nineteen eighty eight it was all over and it continues to this day, Like what it doesn't even make sense, like kids are still reading. And also like you're gonna tell me that she couldn't just like go on like public access and read these stories like a mister Rogers type thing, which was so big in the eighties. Yeah, Like she's a famed author we're led to believe, right, like of children's books, like like a like an R.

L. Stein or Shell Silverstein or something like all right, No, now she's going to be a shut in in her house reading to ghost children. What that doesn't seem like a positive outcome here? It's the best we can all hope for so are we led to believe by the end that she is done writing but will only read to ghost children now that one book. Yeah, just the one book over and over again for the rest of her life.

Oh my god, it was she in hell because then I like this stuff. I mean again that I don't. The way that they tell this story is very strange because it would seem like punishment at the end. Yeah, like that way I interpret it, Like your stuff. She's like, I'm going to be useful now and read those kids go deep after the story, wanting her to read it again, read it again, read it.

I love the idea of that episode. Where was that Yeah, one way out? Yeah, like no one has been cursed to hell. And the last few episodes it's like, come on, give me something, something like you know, And that was the thing, Like sometimes things happen to you in the Twilight Zone and they just don't there's no rhyme or reason to it. You were a good person and you had a bad day and now you're in hell.

Like we can deal with that. In fact, I kind of crave that from this show. Yeah, I mean, you just made a left turn and you ended up in a cursed village, or you ended up literally on the road to hell, or you invited or you I did the Devil over to your house to play cards, Like why did the devil show up? Please tell me why? Oh wait, they never mention why.

And you know what, I don't fucking care that they don't mention because the episode is so fucking good, right, Like why did you know? Or he just shows up because you're trying to solve a math problem? Yeah, okay, yeah, Like there you go, Like I make sense to me. Yeah, I don't question it. It's the Twilight Like, it's the Twilight Zone.

Don't tell me why things are in the Twilight Zone. It's the Twilight Zone. You don't have to. We are really assume weird things are going to happen. I'm not tuning into this show because it's Desperate Housewives.

I'm tuning into the show because I want to see flights of fancy or flights of terror or somewhere in between. That episode with the kid on the plane with the walkman, he drops the walkman into the sink and the plane gets hit by lightning. They give us that reason. I remember thinking, I don't need that. He could have just been sitting in his chair and suddenly he hears a guy's thoughts.

So we would have been like, oh shit, Twilight Zone. I mean, that's literally what happened in the Jordan Peel one. He just starts listening to that episode and they don't explain it, like it's just okay. Yeah. I mean that episode is still kind of a bummer in a lot of ways because it kind of squanders a great idea, but at least it gets it doesn't have to do lantern hanging, Like, come on, it's just so fucking lazy.

And now we have a twenty two minutes show that abuses the fact that it's twenty two minutes long by not doing anything anyways. Yeah, and how insulting it is it that, you know, in that first season we would get these interstitial episodes that lasted maybe seven minutes, and they knocked it out of the park. And now you've given twenty two and you don't do anything at all, Like you don't even deliver it like a decent character piece, Like we're just given the broadest brushstrokes of who these people are and why they are the way they are, and now here's a resolution for them. Yeah, this similar lead to Tales from the Crypt. It's it hurts a lot to watch this show because I know how good it was.

Yeah yeah, but those were actively bad and instead these are just kind of there, which is in a way worse. Yeah, I mean those, yeah, those end Tales from the Crypt episodes were a slog, but a real These are just kind of like, what are they going to trot out? Now, here's a pleasant little tale of nothing, right, Like, I can't be mad, and it's not like, you know, they were, you know, insulting me in anyway. But at the same time, like, what are we doing Jay Michael? Yeah, all the roads lead through j.

Michael Straczynski as the story editor. Maybe we can get him an an interview now with all the praise we're heaping on it. Yeah yeah, yeah right, yeah, holy shit. Yeah that. So on the next episode of Dreams for Sale, we'll be taking a look at the fourteenth and fifteenth episodes of the third season, The Trunk, which stars Bud Court, and Appointment on Root seventeen, which stars Paul lamatt I like him too.

Yeah. Those are gonna be good. Yeah, and none of us know if they will or won't be, which is fun. Yeah, here's here's hoping, right, here's hoping. So until then, Father Malone, Where could people find you if they were looking?

If you're looking for fund them Alone, go to find Them Alone dot com. You can check out my show Dark Destinations that is a half hour radio drama that takes listeners to other worldly and uh supernatural towns. Um. You can also check out my YouTube channel you can link that also links off of Found Them Alone dot com. I've got that kind of a review show and weirdo little animations I make these days.

Check me out over there. Obagoul dude. Yeah, yeah, well that one's increasing in popularity. I've noticed over the past month or so, I've got like five hundred new views. So it's like somebody sees it and shares it.

I guess so, Gobba Gooul dude, it's a thing. We're ahead of the Gobba Gooul train. I was, well, maybe it's that that that fucking Newark movies coming out, Like yeah, like searching for Sopranos, now they want Goba, which is delicious. I mean, yeah, what about you, Mike, Where where can people find you? You can always find me over our Projection Booth podcast dot com.

I'm sorry, I don't have a cool little you know, personally you are. I've got Mike White site dot com, but I don't have anything up there. I've got just garbage I worked on years ago. So is that Mike White site or Mike White pych no site site. Yeah, that's psych though.

It'd probably be good though when you get there and it's just nothing nothing type out psych. Wait, spell, it's psyche without the P. Yeah, man's jad you fucker? S I k E? What the what kind of animal are you?

And how about you? Chris? As for me c stashu dot com, C s t A c hiwu dot com. It's unfortunately hard to spell because it's my fucking last name. So there you go.

That's where all the stuff that I work on is on Culture Cast, Chronicles from the Crypt ranking on Bass, Barney Miller, Scary Stories. We tell. There's a lot, but you can find it all at cstashu dot com. As for this podcast, twilight Zone eighty five dot com or twilight Zone eighty five on Twitter or on Facebook twilight Zone eighty five and on iTunes and Google. All those places you can find this show.

Big thanks as always to Roxy drive at Neutron dreams for the music for the show, and we'll catch on the next episode.