Episode 43: A Game of Pool / Room 2426

Dark Destinations. He's maybe end Times night creature. Why would a few more casually struggling me because their blood will join yours a radio drama anthology. You are wrong how you figure every mark on Mango's hunting You don't not you your partner, he said, I didn't have a ray gun polecast performances set in the haunted corners of the globe. Darkness is coming for you.

Ye, that's the fear that haunts me. Dark Destinations by Father Belowe at Weird e waybedia dot com weird Hello there, I'm Chris Dash, I'm Mike White, and this is Father Malone and we are the host of Dreams for Sale, show about the Twilight Zone, nineteen eighty five. Welcome, folks. You're here for the journey, as are we. On this episode of the show, we're talking about the twentieth and twenty first episodes of the third season as we round the bend into the home stretch of this special occasion.

On this episode, we're gonna be talking about a game of Pool and Room two four two six Jesse Cardiff Pool Shark, the best on Randolph Street, who will soon learn the trying to be the best in m thing is its own special risk. In or Out of the Twilight Zone. A Game of Pool was directed by Randy Bradshaw, written by George Clayton Johnson and William Bermander. It originally aired February fourth, nineteen eighty nine, and it is a remake of the episode from the original series the exact same name. I loved it.

I loved this one. I'm sorry, this one was really good. Wow. I just you know, I like Morey Jakin, I like East Time Morales quite a bit. That script was good.

Then I thought that script work now. And this one actually has the original ending that George Clayton Johnson wrote for The Twilight Zone that Rod Stertling made him change in the original one, which I went back and watched after I watched this one. He wins at the end, and Fats is like, I'm glad you won. You know, I wanted you too. But then what happened in the original was when he wishes, when the pool player wishes for Fats to appear.

The actual cut to a shot of heaven and it's like it's a smoky heaven and there's just a pool table and it's shot from on high and you can see Jonathan Winters was the Fats in the original one, just playing pool and they're like, Fats Brown, Fats Brown, You're wanted in Chicago on Rudolph Street, and like he packs up his stuff and like leaves. At the end of this episode, the the pool player beats Fats, and then the next time they show the heaven scene, it's him like he has to go play all the punks who are like challenging him, which makes no sense, no, because it turns the story from or into like heavy you know, hangs to the head that wears the crown, instead of like the burden of trying to be the best in avoiding your entire life, like like which is what we get here, Like the idea that he gets beaten doesn't die, but he's like, yeah, but you're dead anyway, you never lived at all.

I thought was great, like really a thoughtful story being told by the Twilight Zone. I mean they had to go back to the fucking sixties to finally get up a good one. I was about to say too much credit now. All I could think watching this one was like, why didn't they just do that for this entire last season? They knew what they had to burn through the season just to get to syndication.

Right, just go back and find the scripts that people had, you know, weren't allowed to do what they wanted, and like make them correct. Like it's you're guaranteed, no matter what, to be better than what they were coming up with. I guarantee you, though there was probably some sort of mandate that they couldn't do too many retreads of the original show at this point. Nobodys I agree, but I am playing merely Devil's advocate because that's the literal amount of stupidity that had to have been involved. Because there's a because the answer is what you said, that's what they should have done.

It's like fucking easy. Most people haven't seen the original show in eighty five, at least not the people that are watching this, and even if they have, so what dude, like you said, do something different. It is a possibility that you know, because at the time, people like George Clayton Johnson was still alive here and so was Richard Mathison. So we're most of those guys um and probably they would have been had to be paid like an outrageous amount. I don't think we saw Richard Mathison episode read on, but we did we did see a Rod Starling one, so I don't know, well you, Mike, Yeah, I enjoyed it.

Button Button was mathieson. Oh that's right, but that wasn't on the original Twilight Zone. That was an adaptation of an of his short story, right, yeah, okay, and that fantastic feature film. Yeah, yes, yes, Richard Kelly dude, good director, great so what he was doing. Uh yeah, I enjoyed this as well.

And yeah, I fucking love Morey Chicken. So it's so good to see him and one of those like taken way too soon? What he was sixty years old? I mean, the guy was just incredible and everything that he was in I thought EASTI Morales was little too much at times, little too you know the director there because he can he can be restrained if he's got somebody on top of him. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I enjoyed this one, nice tight story and yeah, the whole idea of how he has wasted his entire life that he is, that he is so single minded playing pool and has sacrificed, sacrificed everything else.

It's like, who really is the dead person here? And it's him? What about you, Chris, you hated it. I actually really like the subtlety of the ending, like you guys have said, I mean it's it's that little twist of like you're already dead. You don't have to actually be dead to be dead, though.

It shows that you can get a twist across that dostn't have to be like, whoa, I didn't see that right with a hammer to the face. Yeah, I mean it's it's essentially just kind of playing in the same sandbox that David Fincher does with Zodiac, where it's like, there's more than one way to lose your life to a serial killer. There's more than one way to lose your life to your hobby is to be all consuming to the point where you're sitting at the pool hall every day of every week of every month, playing pool, trying to be the best at pool. I could be better at pool. That guy's the only best pool player at that place.

Like you know, I actually played on a pool table about a week ago and realized that it's really not my sports I would like it to be. I really like the idea of it, and I'm like, oh cool, Like it's geometry and stuff. This is right nice, which made me realize once again, sciences were never for me, Like I can't even apply them in this fun game that I enjoy, Right, What am I ever going to use as well? If you play pool? Yeah you go, favax.

I enjoyed it. I think it's I think it's it's a standout episode in a sea of problematic bad episodes. This is a a booie, a life ring, as one might even say, for us to kind of hold on to for a moment and then enjoy because it is a very small story in scope and in the way that it's told two actors. It could have been a stage play. Yeah, that and that's something I really like.

It kind of bothered me in the sixties when they were doing these things with just like one person in a room, like it felt cheap there here it felt so kind of eloquent and economical, right well, and it's just weird that they haven't done this more, given that I think they were trying to be quote unquote economical as they were trying to forcibly kick this show out of the airplane to hit the ground. I mean again, like you said on last episode, Father Malone, this is like them trying to get to syndication. I guess it was this episode. Jesus Christ, they're all fucking running. We grow all the same point.

There was a lot Yeah, the last episode of this show, folks. Yeah, but it's it is this idea of like, you could just do this and look what happens. It's a good episode. It's there's not even questionable. There's a good episode of the show.

So the decision from the highers up must have been, you need this many episodes, and they're like, we've stretched Michael, just Makela Michael Jay Spizinski as far as we can. We've got nothing left, Like, just pick one of the old ones and finish it out. God, but what a good one to pick. I mean, it's it's a great it's a great episode. It's a good story and the twist at the end it works less literal than the original.

Yeah, if you I have the DVDs of the original series, which is how I went and watched it, and they had them. The special features on this particular episode was Jonathan Winters reading the original ending oh wow. And I think there was an interview with Buck Houghton. It was one of the producers and the Originals show. And the other thing was Jonathan Winters commentary for the entire episode, which was a lot of Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian, like, Okay, now here I am, I'm picking up my stick.

That's a cube, but we would always call it a stick, and oh Jack Klugman doesn't like that. It was a lot of that, But he was also very thoughtful at times, like the amount he hadn't been at that point, hadn't been given a dramatic role at all, and he really wanted one, so he like went whole hog and like built a whole backstory for Fats and everything. It was really interesting. And this like forty years later they were reporting this, so it was interesting to see how much he remembered and like the amount of effort he put into it. And he's great in the episode too.

I recommended this one, and I recommend everyone go watch the original. But did he do the commentary as Maud Frickert? If only I'm listening to it. Otherwise I was never a fan of Jonathan Winters, except when he was in dramatic roles. It's like, okay, this works, like tone it down a lot.

Yeah, that free association bullshit, Like, I know everyone, I'm not gonna say anything bad about Robin Williams. I almost everyone. I showed up as the Sun. I was just like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah?

But the free let me just say, free association has its ups and downs. It's just like watching an improv group. Sometimes everything clicks, and a lot of times it's like, okay, whatever, we'll give you a laugh because that's what we're here to do. Yeah. Yeah, I love Robin Williams.

Let me make that clear. Don't hate me. People already hate me, so it's okay if I say that. There does jail and half his bad days as well. Yeah, the free association thing kind of was Robin Williams thing, and it kind of worked because you have to do a lot of cocaine to do that.

Yeah, yes, yeah, yes, hey man, just you know, just make sure when you make another Twilight Zone reboot you have people who know what they're doing as opposed to people who don't, because if you have people just don't again, I know, but you get an episode. I mean it's oh no, but yeah, but they've rebooted it twice since this series, and now they need to stop I don't know, another five years, give another five years. Five years is about the memory cycle of most folks. True. So let's talk about the twenty first episode of the third season, Room two four two six.

Current guest in Room two four two six, Martin Decker, theoretical biochemist, checked in for observation he could go. It seems he was displaying anti social behavior, wrong thinking, and other intellectual crimes against the state. Diagnosis schizophrenia curable only by intense therapy sessions followed by a full confession and disclosure of the facts. Once cured, Martin will be released or buried. So Room two four twenty six is directed by Richard Boujaski once again, or Rizard as I called him, Toka and Risk, and it's written by Paul Schitlick and Jeremy Bertrand Finch, and it stars the recently deceased rest in Peace mister Dean stockwell as a scientist maybe who the fuck knows what's going I had no fucking earthly idea in this episode.

Things were happening, and yeah, things happened. Things definitely happened, and I was thinking he was some sort of like political prisoner. But no, you're theoretical biochemist, yes, right, yeah, and he's he has a cure for something. What it is we do not know. Well, it can be weaponized em asummer, Yeah, what is it?

Though? I don't know. Does it really matter? I mean, it doesn't matter at all. As soon as they bring in the second prisoner and the guard takes pains to punch him onto the floor, I went, oh, so that's that guy's the plant.

Okay, yeah, yeah, I just kept waiting for Dean Stockwell to be like, there are four lights exactly. I did not like this one. I love it. I love Dean Stockwell any time to see him, I mean, I guess I can get I can rate it above most of these Twilight Zone episodes because just watching him do nothing is interesting. Like that's an actor who you look at it and you know he's always thinking and he's always emoting, and like you can see everything on his face.

So it's not a total wasted effort. But at the same time, what a boring story we've heard a million times? Yeah, crack that tooth in his mouth and just blowing it out. Fuck man, Dune has ruined me. For like half of the people in anything anymore.

Well, I ever see I see Virginia Madsen in something and I'm just like, oh yeah, or I see or Kyle mclaughler half of the people in that movie. It's like, oh yeah. You know. This is just a strange episode as it is just narratively disjointed because it's like cutting out into the real world which they're imagining, and then back into the cell and then there's like flashbacks two to a time before. It's it's bizarre because the time it's a nonlinear timeline.

I guess maybe someone had an idea for a novel and then when I'll just put it here because I'm not gonna bother right that whole thing, but I also want to hit every beat then I've also worked out in my potential novel. I mean, some of it worked for me, but I guess it was. I mean, really it this episode was fighting against the cheesiness of the set decoration and everything. When they would cut and show like a cockroach or a rat, I'd be like, Okay, that doesn't look real, Like I know that they were real rats and everything that I'm just like, the walls don't look real. And so it's already lending itself to this very similitude where I'm just like, hmm, okay, this nothing's real in this episode.

So and it was just so clunky when it came to the direction, like when he thinks that he has so that the whole thing is, this prisoner comes in and he's just like, hey, I've got this way that we can teleport ourselves mentally, will teleport ourselves to another place. Okay, So they teleport quote unquote to this other life, and he like burns his hand on the stove just to make sure that it's really real. And then he hears all this noise outside and he goes and he looks and it's speakers outside. He pulls the cord from the speakers and unplugs it, and I'm just like okay, yeah, this works. But then it just kind of like loses the thread after that.

I'm like, okay, what are you doing now? Like it just felt like kind of like how we're saying too many ideas. It just felt like there was not enough direction. It just felt like we were missing a scene or something or many scenes. Yeah, and I like how it just keeps cutting the black too.

It's like, yeah, like and it's like, was this a commercial or no, it actually wasn't a commercial. It was meant to signify him leaving the cell. I guess right, And that he actually does somehow figure out teleportation. I'm like, you gotta be effing kidding me. Yeah, Like that's the big twist.

The twist he's just gone. I don't get it. At night, where did he go? Do you know? We're going?

Yeah? That was my favorite party. Like, oh man, this is a tough regime. Yeah, that man teleported out of there? How is this my ball?

Right? It's not good? And I don't know what else to fucking say anymore, man, Like, it's just a This just feels like ring around the rosy with this show. It gives us a little and then takes everything away. Just come on, just get two good episodes in a row.

That's that's that's what I want. And I think this idea had some legs. Like you said, Father Malone, it has some legs. It could have been a good story, could have if the effort was there to put in Yeah, a moment more than a second's worth of storytelling writing. Again, better than a lot of them, simply by the presence of Dean Stockwell.

That's fair. I might actually recommend this one after all is said and done, because of Dean Stockwell. If you're a Dean Stockwell completest. If you're a Dean Stockwell monomaniac, I'm talking to you, one guy on the internet. We're doing yourself at this service and missing this episode based on yes, doing you a favor, Sir who or madam whoever you are.

After you're done watching Quantum Leap, don't forget to check out Dean Stockwell's turn on Twilight Zone nineteen eighty five. It'll really shuck you. Of course, that's what I thought of two. When he disappeared at the end, I was like, oh okay, Siggy, you know I would have preferred that to this anything. Yeah, I'm not saying it's good.

I'm just saying it's kind of watchable, just based on them. Never mind, right, sounds like you're just retracting all this praise. Very kind of bamn, now, you know, you know, as a as a conscientious reviewer like you know, I was recommending it for that one crazy human being out there. Well and again, I mean, this is the only time we're gonna get to see Dean Stockwell on this show. So oops, what's weird?

Is so the previous episode this is just a weird coincidence. But in the previous episode was a game of pool, which is from the third season of the original Twilight Zone. If you watch that season of The Twilight Zone, there's also an episode called a Quality of Mercy. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that. It's an American platoon during World War Two and like Kaawa or something, and they have a Japanese gunnery crew like pinned down inside a cave, right, and this is this is pardon Parcela, season three of Everything, I guess because then, like Dean Stockwell is the leader of the American platoon on the original Twilight Zone, his actual Dean Stockwell, Yes, the very same Dean Stockwell we're talking about.

Fay is in this original episode of the Twilight Zone and his like second in command is Leonard Nemoy. Before Star Trek, right, something occurs, they all wake up there now the Japanese and the Americans are pinned in in the thing with makeup with transformative makeup. Oh, Leonard Nimoy, Japanese Dean Stockwell Japanese. I didn't Oh yeah this episode. Yeah, and before I understood cultural significance and theft and just outright wrongness as a kid, I thought it was a great episode because the makeup was good, but like, it's not appropriate.

I want to see Japanese Leonard Nimoy right should The ultimate insanity is that Dean Stockwell was acting long enough to be on the original run of this show and the second run, and theoretically could have been on the second and fucking or third and fucking fourth runs of the show as well. Yeah, you gotta wait for season three though, that's well, hey, well, unfortunately, uh, there probably won't be a season three or fortunately, however you want to look at it if you were a fan of the most recent show. If they get a season three, I think they owe it to themselves to make a CGI Dean Stockwell and put him into an episode. They just need to put a CGI rod sir. Oh wait, oh wait, they already did that.

Yeah, fucking assholes. It's it's not that hard to make the Twilight Zone. I think it's very hard to make the Twilight it is, you know, I think what they're han is or is it's not that hard. What they're asking for is not that hard in execution, clearly it's beyond difficult. But realistically, you're asking for a show with a moral compass, and you get to see where the world compasses or nor not, and you get to see if there is or is the moral compass in every episode, and that moral compass often factors into the twist or lack of twist.

N A, come on, and you have other episodes to draw from, and nobody's gonna fault you if you redo them. As long you don't have to do social commentary either for the Twilight Zone, I don't know what the social commentary and Nightmare at twenty thousand Feet actually was, or the Howling Man or Nick of Time like these are very personal human stories, which to me is what the Twilight Zone actually was. And occasionally the ones that people overpraise, like the Monsters are Due on Maple Street, are direct social commentaries. There's something, stop stopping something time. Nick of Time in the original show is a better episode than night Time is so good?

Let's fast? Yeah? Did they ever remake that? It might have a good part. I want to say that the yeah, I want to say in the Jordan Peel version.

There might have been one that was close to that, the best version of the show, but they did it with the internet. The kid was done on Trump Paul Along, I got this new app. Do you guys know that police have brutality towards African Americans? Let me show you in an episode For forty fucking minutes, I wanted to escape, not have this shoved back in my fucking face for me to remember how depressing a world I actually live in, kapism. Thanks George and Peel, I escaped to the reality that I live in already.

Cool. Thanks for holding a mirror up to it. Yeah, hold right, fuck man god. Yeah. Nick of Time is probably my favorite episode I think of the show period.

Yeah, I'm looking good. I'm leading in that direct to actually howling Man, which I meant is probably my favorite. That one is just being I've seen that one to answers. I remember where the Nick of Time thing is In the original show, they just show the fucking devil thing, don't you guys remember that at one point they just like show it. That's right, I want to say with in that replay episode, it was okay episode the police brutality episode right where they just kept doing it over and over.

It was kind of a little nick of time plus a little Groundhog Day. Yeah. God, oh, folks, I hope you've enjoyed us bitching about everything about with the Twilight Zone in any decade than any media. Have you read that twilight Zone magazine remember in the eighties? Terrible.

I just downloaded almost every episode or issue of that. No, I was I was just joking. I like that, Okay, I I subscribe to it at the time. Hey, you know, not all twilight Zone things are bad. Twilight Zone pinball machine, Oh my god, that's a good one.

Pretty banging, one of the best pall machines ever. It's it's weird to me how golden the earring song twilight Zone. That's a good one. It's weird to me how badly everything passed the first show failed, and trying to re even capture the a modicum of the spirit of the original I will say that if you tank all of the bad episodes of this series in total, I think it's still less than the amount of bad episodes in the original run of the show. Like each of those seasons was like thirty six episodes when they ran for like six years.

Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean so it this has sort of room to have more clunkers too, that's the thing. Like this shows the limitation of the anthology series when you limit the number of episodes you're going to give us, like the law of averages says, they're not going to be as good. Although the first season of this fucking show seemed pretty good. Yeah, the first season, this show is real good. Yeah, so on that once again, massively fucking depressing.

Note. Game of Pool was good, Yes it was. Yeah, it was in twenty twenty six or whatever. Wasn't that bad twenty four twenty six, Yeah, yeah, that'sn't terrible. It wasn't awful.

Yeah yeah. On the next episode, though, who knows if they'll be good. We're gonna be talking about the mind of Simon Foster and the Wall. Oh the Wall. I've actually seen it, but I stats with white lettering on them.

Yes, oh my god, they predicted it ahead of time. It's like The Simpsons all over again. Until then, Father Malone, if people were looking for you on the Internet and they wanted to find you, what would be the easiest way for them to go about doing so? Go to Father malone dot com links to my podcast Dark Destinations. It's a half hour radio drama I write and produce.

There's also links to my YouTube channel, where I've got a review show and a bunch of stupid little movies that I make. What about you, Mike? Where can people find the Internet's best the world's greatest movie podcast projection? If they want to find the world's greatest podcast, all they have to do is go over to the Earwolf network and listen to what's that thing called? Just Get Made?

How do this get made? Yeah? Did that podcast get made? How's that podcast still popular? That's the real question.

It's out there? Yeah or unspooled there? That one's higher in the rankings than I am. So we should do a podcast reviewing their shows. I can't listen to them.

I tried, Like, what a waste of time? I mean, crack and wise and having nothing to say is cool. I'll just watched this movie five minutes ago. Here are all my stupid thoughts. I don't do research.

Who's that actor? I don't even know his name? Do you guys? Who actors are? Like?

Jeezus, Oh it hurts at the Internet is hard to use, folks, it really Yeah. It's like when people ask questions like who was in that movie? It would be really nice if we had a way to find out. Oh you'll like this one. Yesterday or a couple days ago, at work, somebody was talking about the really tall guy in Dune in Villeneuve's Dune, and I was like, really tall guy, really tall guy.

And then I realized, oh, do you think that Baron Harkone is really tall? You don't realize he has suspensers on Baron HARKing. Good job. Oh yeah, Baron HARKing, sorry Harkening. Yeah, I got back to that movie.

Yeah, I have a I have a friend who's as nerdy as I am and read the Dune books in high school and everything. And she texted me, wrote she started watching the new Dune Hearkening and exactly what I said. Exactly what you guys say, You know what they say. If you're gonna adapt the source material, make sure you say all the names wrong. Fans don't care, right, It's like that awesome TV thing where they were calling their cheney the whole time.

That hurts. Oh yeah, you can find me on Protection Booth podcast dot com or every week I talk about movies, and I actually try to do a little research, though there's a lot of times where I just go, who is that guy? Why is he doing that? What's up with that? Do you guys know?

Movies? Is that real? Did Danos actually snap his fingers with that glove on? It's like to say that that could not happen. I'm just gonna do that the whole time.

It's a fucking movie like it's it's wild sometimes the ship that people get in their heads on the internet, could Danos have snapped his fingers? Who fucking cares? Who wrote that article, who spent the time, who wrote the piece? And then why did you post it? And why are you sharing it on my timeline?

Actually the real question is why did you waste scientists time with your dumb fucking question? Okay, okay, So there's this guy. He's eight feet, Dolly's purple, he's a titan then, and he's got he's got the glove and it's got all of the infinity stuff. Okay, let me start from scratch, explain the infinities. Don't do because if I don't explain that, none of this will make sense.

But before that, I need to explain the universe that this exists in because it's not our own, because it has magic God and in it this guy has a metal suit and he gets into and he flies around and it just you know, it just happens. Whatever. Yeah, yeah, man, somebody made money off that article. People are making money as we speak, off of that fucking article. Click click click click click click.

Think about that. But you do a listener here listening to us, so you're not reading that article. So you can find my stuff at c stash dot com. That's my link tree, cstachiw dot com. That's where I have the stuff I work on, like Father Malone said, like Mike White said, that's where all the stuff we work on is our on our platforms.

Whatever. Yeah, big thanks to Roxy driving Neutron Dreams for the music for the show. We'll catch you on the next episode. Dear listener, join us, won't you.