Night Gallery S02E21 (Sins of the Father - You Can't Get Help Like That Any More)

Hi, This is HP from Noise Junkies and this is Falling Alone from Dark Destinations. Please join us as we examine one of the greatest sitcoms in television history. Taxi on Night Mister Walters a taxi podcast. Good night, mister Walters. We're way me.

We deal in pat pig light and shadow realism, surrealism, impressionism, endlest stories, an interest in the add law, a predilection towards the desire. And this place is nothing if it isn't desire. There's no admission, no requirement of membership, only a strong and ablided belief and would die at the top of the stairs or things that go bump in the night. The name of this place you have command your accidentally out of her rank is the Nightgown. Welcome back, all right, Leverson Midnight Viewing the Night Gallery podcast, where we discuss Night Gallery they Rod Serlings follow up to the Twilight Zone.

I'm father alone and with me here in the gallery are the projection booths. Mike White, I got a hunger, a hunger for sin. Also joining us is the Culture Cast's Chris Statue. I'm just a robot looking for love. God.

We got both segments covered. This is season two, episode twenty one, which aired on February the twenty third, nineteen seventy two. The episode is split into two segments, The Sins of the Father and you can't get help like that anymore. Now this one here, unabashed and unashamed, I submit to you as a dandy. It does into an ancient funeral rite having to do with a personage called a senator, one who attends awake and partakes of the funeral food, and in the process digests all the transgressions of the deceased, so that he departs the earth a much cleaner and sweeter little item, proving that we've become a bit more sophisticated in our tribal rights, but we are much the poorer for our twentieth century chromium intellect.

You might agree with me after you've seen Sins of the Fathers. The Sins of the Father written by Halsted Wells from a short story by Christiana Brand and directed by Jenno Zwark or Jean Zwark. He's Jean Zwark. Now it stars at Geraldine Page. Richard Thomas, Michael Dunn, Alexander the Star Trek.

People will recognize him from Plato's step Children. He was also in Eure, Big Boy Now, the coppolas first film, but I will always know him as doctor Migolito Loveless. For so many seasons, he was Jamee West, central antagonist on The Wild Wild West, rounding out this massive caster, Alan Napier, Cyril de Levante, John Barclay, and Barbara fucking Steel. This is okay, this tale. It tells one of my absolute favorite Old World rituals.

This is a Weals tale. We had in our last episode, we had a Wales tale. This one is also from Wales and the Men. The myth is the Sin Eater, which we'll see it play out dramatically here. But the actual tradition was there would be an outcast in a village and he would be given a feast every time somebody died, so that he would take on their sins of the deceased, and the deceased would go to heaven and he'd be given the feast.

No matter how much food that village had, if there was if there was a famine there, it didn't matter. Every morsel needed to go to the Sin Eater. He always was eating like royalty. The downside of course was he was going to burn in hell for eating all of those sins. Now, I heard about this tradition long before I saw this, and it's always fascinated me.

And recently I was talking to a friend of mine named Jasman, who is Welsh and lives in Wales. I asked her about this tradition and she had no fucking idea what I was talking about. Anyway, this is the tale of the sin eater, or the son of a sinader. Richard Thomas has prodded into a sin eating con game where he's to spirit away all the food from the corpse and thus sidestemped the whole damnation thing and feed his family, which actually sounds like a pretty good idea, except it's a double cross. Chris, what'd you think of this one?

You forgot to mention the most important sin eating piece of media, the two thousand and three classic The Order, starring Heath Ledger as a sin eater in there, I think investigating sin eating in the Vatican. Wow, actually not bad, not a bad movie, but I digress. I'm with you. I like the whole sin eating angle, which is why I mentioned The Order. If anyone else is interested in seeing something not this old world like.

That's the thing I appreciate about this is that it is an old world tale that feels proper disgusting and grind, I mean, and weird. I think again, I go back to the well of the things that I've said before, the well of brevity. Here, they just don't want to tell three stories anymore. They just want to tell two. And it's I can see in these episode segments where they just needed to chill out and maybe maybe take your story through two or three more passes, because it's just there's just too much going on here again, and I don't think all the pieces that are moving around, the main moving pieces needed to be there to get the main moving pieces story told in an interesting way.

How about you, boy? You and Mike I prefer the sin Eater enemy of I believe he was the enemy of both ghost Writer and Spider Man, but I mostly remember him from Spider Man comics, so that was my familiarity with Sin Eating. I love Michael Dunn, he was great in this. Richard Thomas, Wow, what a performance. Really screamy throughout this whole thing.

I was so confused at parts because they were talking about eating the food out of the guy's chest. Right. They said that like two or three times. Right, Yes, yeah, there's no food on the chest, it's just around. It's just a bunch of plates around.

I didn't get that. Well, yeah, and even further the way they kept saying it, I thought they had hollowed out his chest right, put the food inside it. And then when it wasn't that, I thought that if it's on his chest and he has to take it all off of it, that would be something. But you're right, it's just ringed around the body. Very nice plates.

I mean, the presentation could have been better. I don't know about the taste myself, but yeah, definitely the plating needed some work. I tried to find out what else was filming on the Universal lot around this time, because in this episode, in the previous episode as well, they're clearly using an amazing set, this old the Old World set that's an interior set, interior for exterar. Look's fantastic. It looks better here than it looked in the previous episode where that it was directed very clumsily.

But you know, Sark makes this one look great. I love Barbara Steele, always glad to see her wish she was in the episode more. Quite frankly, she's got like maybe two lines in the whole thing, the mom in it, Geraldine Page. This is a very recent return here. She was in a previous episode Stop Killing Me here on Night Gallery, and I thought she was really good here.

I speaking to what you were saying, Mike. I can't tell if Richard Thomas is good or bad here. It's a thankless role. This like muling petulant child. So he's nailing that part of it.

Should is it good? Though? I don't know. Also, I don't need to see his saliva. Does anyone see Richard Thomas's saliva at the tongue just lolling around in that mouth of God Almighty?

Did portray hunger very well, but well, I believed he was hungry, but he made me completely disgusted. Yeah, well, I don't think that he needed to ride that horse, sell twelve miles and have poor little Michael Dunn who looks like every step he takes hurts him. I mean, it was painful to watch Michael Dunn walk because you know, he's got the dwarf legs and it's just not very easy for him to do that. And I was like, now, let this guy ride on the horse with you. He doesn't need to walk twelve miles with you over hale and Dale and through this mountainous, treacherous pass.

Just give the guy a lift. Man conboy doesn't share no horse. No, that's true. That negotiation occurred when we were talking about her ailing husband. It made sense that he was probably going to be sprawled out on the horse, so I agree.

I kept wondering why you wouldn't just reach down and go, come on, let's go, just so he can get there quicker, like what slowly can do beside this dwarf? Like it's a bit cruel. It is. It is the makeup on both the corpses. Oh, spoilers looked pretty good.

But yeah, I saw that twist coming a mile away. So I was just like, okay, yeah, why aren't you eating the food? Why are you saying I won't eat a morsel? Why are you saying that your son will eat all of this food because there's another sin eater and now you have to eat the sins of the sin eater. I like that, honestly.

It's a good twist, but it is a good question. It was just a little telegraphed. Yeah, but it posed an interesting solution to the sin eating lifestyle. You just have to have a relative that'll eat yours, and then you got to keep that thing going right and someday you'll have a son. I love when she says horrible, horrible.

I did wonder a little bit how long has he been living there with them, this Richard Thomas's character, and have no interest in the family business, Like he doesn't know the words, he doesn't know anything about it, Like how can you not? It's all they do. Should be the first thing they taught you was that prayer you're supposed to scream out when you're about to eat the sin. You would think, right, you pick it up just by osmosis, right right, Yeah. I agree with you that Jeraldine Page was very fun in this.

She with that head thing around her head. I was just like, she looked very much like a tale from Canterbury Tales or something like from the story from the artwork, I should say, Yeah, I thought she gave a great performance as well. And I agree with you that I wish there had been a lot more Barbara Steele because it was just like a tease at the beginning in the end once again, the end with Geraldine Page, where she has effectively tricked her son into eternal damnation, all the while assuring him of all these different ways that she will prevent him from being damned. I just loved it. I thought it was so good that she did it to him, and you know what, Yes, it is twenty nine minutes, but I think even if it went a little long, as weird as Richard Thomas's performances, I think it's an interesting performance.

Even if it is just overdo it. He's over it. I feel like he's slabbering yeah, and a lot of just like big decisions. But I like it in this because it feels a little different than all these other episode segments we've seen in the Old World, where there's not like one kind of big performance. He's just going for it, which I appreciate.

Again, I just it is a thankless, completely thankless role for someone having to just lick their tongue constantly for half an hour, and a thankless role for us having to watch it. Offered to you now an item having to do with labor and management. An employment office, whereas offered a collection of potential employees whose skills are unique for in addition to their loyalty, industriousness, punctuality, and impeccable cleanliness, they also run at least one hundred thousand miles without a loob and an oil change. It's no wonder we call this when you can't get help like that anymore. You can't get help like that anymore.

It was written by Rod Serling No Surprise, and directed by Jeff Corey, also Somehow No Surprise. This one stars Cloris Leachman, Broderick Crawford ten four to ten four, give Me some Black and Whites, and Alta Wood and mister Severn Darden. This is the tale of robotic domestics and the scorn and brutality they've inherited from human domestics. Now, I've been attempting to shed a spotlight on some of Night Gallery's talent here this season, and in this case it's in front of the camera, not just sound. He actually appears.

This is his only appearance, and my only opportunity to talk about mister Severn Darden for a moment. Now, every working, flexible and funny comedic actor working today has probably had some improv training, whether that be to the Groundlings or Second City or UCB or any dozen improv schools. All of those schools, all of those students can trace their lineage back to the Compass Players from the University of Chicago from nineteen fifty five that was created by Paul Sills and David Shepherd. Some of their original members were Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Shelley Berman, Barbara Harris, del Close, ed Asner, Ron Liebman, and the s Severn Darden. Paul Stills went off to found Second City.

When he did so, seven Darden went with him, making him a founding member of that organization. He was a frequent television guest star, my favorite being Monkey versus Machine on the first season of The Monkeys. But he was in Barney Miller. He was in the greatest six million dollar man episodes of all time, the ones with Bigfoot. He had a few notable ty film appearances, The President's Analyst, Vanishing Point, He was in a couple of Planet of the Apes movies, and of course he was the befuddled doctor Meredith in Real Genius.

Always check their references. He has two recordings that you can track down, and if you can, I encourage you to do so. They were the Metaphysics Lecture and Football Comes to the University of Chicago. Those were both recorded in the early nineteen sixties. They are hilarious.

Anyway, back to the episode, Chris, what'd you think of this one? I enjoyed it. It's Mike just recently had me on the projection booths to talk about Blade Runner twenty forty nine, which talks about humans and robots and androids and interacting with each other. And this, this is what reality would be if these kinds of things existed, horrible people treating them horribly, because horrible people treat people horribly, so there's no reason to think they wouldn't treat their robots horribly. Their robot kind of house servants.

But boy, Chloris Leachman just fucking goes for it, and I am here for it. She is proper terrible in this episode, and I loved it. I loved I loved her character and her husband, and I liked the twist. I guess, I don't know. I'm sure we'll get to it.

But Broderick Crawford and Cloras Leechman Loras Leachmand carries the episode segment. She is fantastic and a force when she's on screen. I thought that twist at the end was a bridge too far. I just, yeah, don't understand, like what actually happened. So, is Broader crawl Crawford and Philis Dollar not Phyllis Dollar, Jesus from Phyllis Cloris Leachman, Are they now robots?

Are they were they robots the whole time? Unclear? Okay. It kind of reminds me of that TV show Humans, which I think was from Scandinavia at first, and that was very much about I was Sweden. Sorry, That was very much about the way that humans would treat robots if they were to show up and be our servants and stuff, and it's always an interesting question.

But yeah, I thought it was interesting when Severing Darden was talking about how these robots are now starting to feel and they're going past their programming, I thought it kind of should have stopped their sure go aheads show Cloris Leachman and show Broader Crawford about to be mean to this new servant that they have, because they just totally destroyed the last one. The shot of the hand without the fingers was really upsetting to me for some reason, and just the big, massive wires coming out of the head that we don't really see the face of. I thought that was disturbing as well, But overall I was like, okay, yeah, this is good. But then when they went past that hump and then we had the what's the children's zoo?

Right, we had the brider Crawford with those big shears and stuff, just like what, wait, what what is happening here? Wait? Severn Darden is a robot as well. He wasn't just the guy that made the robots, but he was a robot making robots. Jeffrey Wright was a robot all along the whole time.

That's how that made me feel. At the end of the episode segment, I was like, I just don't whatever the point is. If it's what you're saying in their robots, now, how what okay? And then yeah, the other thing is they now just making robots in the image of people that they killed, and now they're just like these people are subjugated. Now.

I just don't get it. Like it's again, it doesn't really hurt the episode because Chloris Leachman's so much fun and so just enjoying herself at being a miserable human being that you are there for that kind of performance. But yeah, the way that they treated that robot. Oh my god, it's the painting. The painting is fantastic for this one.

Oh yeah, I really like the painting. I think it does hurt the episode, the ending of this episode, honestly, because certainly wanted to attack a twist onto it for no good reason or give us a come up, and that he thought was commensurate with the crime. But all it did was make the viewer go, what the fuck? Wait? Yeah, yeah, okay, so are these humans now robots?

Are they actually still human? And they keep them like frozen until they beckon them out. What's going on in the outside world here? Is there a new regime? I have robots taken over the whole planet.

I don't know. It's a lot to process. And what is just a slight tale of awfulness of rich white people and it look like it, Like to mention again later in her twenty forty nine, there's a scene in that movie where one of the robots comes and hits a osensibly a human in the neck and severs that character's neck immediately. Like I the robots are a threat because they're made out of metal and they can swing really fast and fucking kill you. I don't know why there needs to be more than just they're dead, Like the robot took its hand, went like this with it and cleaved your head in two like it, and that to me seemed like I know that they couldn't show it here, but the steaks are These are robots and if they don't like what you're doing, they will turn on you.

Like why is that scary enough? That is, we don't need to see the end of the robot revolution, like, yeah, throw up a title card at least to let us know that this is now two years later or something right, really jarring? Yeah, it me a little bit of creation of the humanoids? Have you guys ever seen that one the old sci fi phone? No?

No, okay you, of all people, father alone, I think would enjoy it a lot. I think Chris you would like it as well. But of all people, father alone, I think you would really like it. It's basically the robots in that are not very humanoid. They have this silvery skin and stuff.

But it's very much probably what Serling was going for as far as robots are great, but I wouldn't want one to sleep with my sister kind of thing. And it's this woman who is in Congress with her robots servant and treats him like a person. And it's very much like the people that are anti clicker as they call the robots clickers. They all wear like the Kepi caps like the Southern Front No, like the Southerners from the Civil War, sorry, the War of Northern Aggression. So it's very yeah, it's it's subtle ish, but you're definitely picking it up.

Oh, robots are second class, it is, and they're being treated unfairly and they're being mocked and stuff just because they're robots, which is exactly what Serling is trying to go for. But that doesn't really get there the robots on both sides. Sakurama episode with don't have sex with robots? No, I don't, Johnny, You're gonna go to school day now, I'm gonna make out with my mun robot. Look, that's the reality that like something like Black Mirror would tackle.

But it's like, yeah, if you had a robot that you could live with you in your house, Like there are some people that would be like where Dave go ducking his robot like forever it's like that Surgate Smoothie with Bruce Willis, which I think a lot of people shit on, but I actually kind of like it a lot. You know, I never saw it same. Yeah, it's interesting. It's like everybody has their robot avatar that can go out into the world, and so people just kind of stay at home, plugged in. It is very black mirror.

They stay at home, plugged in and they just live life through their robots. And the robots can do whatever you want, and so yeah, there's a lot of it's basically, hey, I'm having sex as this robot, and of course are there men operating for women robots? Yeah, of course, it's just like the Internet, sad. I'm down with that. That sounds interesting.

It is. It's a pretty good movie and very good comic book. It's probably a better comic book than it is a movie. And I know we talk I mean we've talked privately about Westworld, but like West World tackles similar questions in the first two seasons of what this show segment is going for, and so does Blade Runner. Like it's I don't know, like I just wish this Matrix as well, you know, the Matrix.

Yeah, I wish this kind of went further in the right way, because like it went far, it just didn't go in a sustainable direction. That makes sense because they don't clarify, and normally it's like clarification, is it needed. Clarification sometimes gets in the way of my enjoyment of things, but here it's like what you did almost makes no sense, Like I have a hard time really understanding what the ending of this segment is. And yeah, I think you're right, father alone, it does hurt. It, Like I'm sitting here talking about it.

It is so kind of incongruous with the rest of the episode. Segment. I kind of just like Rod Serling just lost it there at the end. He's like, never mind, it's such a simple story without that ending, right, and it would have worked like Gangbusters. We all enjoyed.

It. Kind of makes me want to see the original episode or read the original story. If it's based on a story, No, it's a this is a Ron Sterling original WHOA. Okay, he chose to make that ending. He wanted that and he needed that twist.

He was like, he's like a junkie, he's got to have his twin fix. So so Okay, So the options are those people are now turned into robots or that's what I was saying, Like there's no explanation that's or there, or they're like they look like them, or it's like they're stay the rope am. I I like the idea that like the robots ripped their skin off and like preserved it and then put it on another robot, and they're like, this is some robot that we're subjugating. Now that looks like these idiots that we can know, but they would they subjugate other robots like that? Probably right?

Well, there's that torture droid in Return of the Jedi that's putting like the hot stuff on the bottom of the little power droid's feet. You know, he was a bad dude, that one. We're talking about this that robot. I don't know why they built nerve endings into droid's feet though, is what I'm trying to say. Mike White asking the questions that need answers.

I'm just asking questions. I'm just robots on both sides, Eh God, I mean, were they self hating robots? Did they not know that they were robots? That Broder Crawford and Claire Jesus Christ. I'm having the worst time with her name tonight, Chloris Leachman.

Were they robots the entire time and they're just like, oh, hey, we are people and work on the torture this robot. Maybe this is an after hour situation like the mannequins. You get to go out and be the rich humans for a little while and beat on robots and then you become them. What if it's like that to cells within cells? What if that's what it is, like the thing in Westworld where it's like we're we locked them in a room and we're running them through the paces to see if they work.

What if that's what it is. And because they're beating up on that robot, then they're put back in as like a gardener with a giant shears because that's somehow more safe. Oh wait a second, now we're giving them weapons. Great, I guess they can't at least they can't shoot anybody, you know, right it just spin in really quickly at the hip with their arms out and just decapitate people at will. Though, so again, robots on their own are scary because metal moving at a fast speed is a horrifying thought.

Yes, it's like a thrill. Yeah, yeah, Okay, I guess we're gonna play a premium. The next episode will be right right back. To wrap things up, there are horror stories and horror stories elements of terror that take myriad forms, but this item has a built in terror which can refrigerate even the most dispassionate amongst us. It has to do with a little beastie known as an earwig, a small bug that crawls into the human ear, and while inside it doesn't whisper sweet nothings, it performs quite another function.

Over do you now? On Night Gallery, a brand new nightmare, which we call the Caterpillar. Our next painting on Night Gallery tells the story of an illusion, an invisible specter which guides and motivates and drives, and though you will never see her as childish wraith, you'll know she's there, and we venture to suggest that you'll be chilled by the knowledge. Our painting is called Little Girl Lost. That's right.

The next Midnight viewing, we're taking a look at season two, episode twenty two that's broken into two segments, the Caterpillar and the Little Girl Lost Midnight Viewing. The Night Gallery podcast is a proud member of a Weirdingway Media group. Our theme song was composed by HP Until next time. What are you working on, Mike White? I am working on.

Actually, this week, I'm doing a lot of work. We're working on episodes of the Life and Times of Captain Bertie Miller as well as The Shabby Detective, a yet another podcast about Columbo. So yeah, that's what I'm working on, as well as the usual stuff like the Projection Booth, which is available at Projection Booth podcast dot com or Weirdingwaymedia dot com. How about you, Chris Culturecast Scary Stories we tell. Those are places you can find me kicking around Weekly Bollywood Cinema Club, all places that I can be found, and they can all be found at Weirdingwaymedia dot com.

As for me, you can also find my shows Dark Destinations and Noise Junkies over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. If you want to check out any of my visual nonsense, go over to followm alone dot com. Thank you all for joining us here at midnight viewing. The gallery is now closed.