Tales from the Darkside S03E21&22 (Let the Games Begin - The Enormous Radio)

Way wait. A welcome back to Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology podcast, where this season we're taking a look at George Romero's nineteen eighties television series Tales from the Dark Side. Sharing the Midnight view with me are the projection Booths. Mike White I heard it on the radio. And also joining us the Culture Cast, Chris Statue.

And the tail on me won't you follow him alone? We are looking tonight at the last two episodes of season three. Those are Let the Games Begin and the enormous Radio. Let the Games Begin is season three episode twenty one. It originally aired on May tenth, nineteen eighty seven.

Written by Peter O'Keefe also wrote that ghost Writer the Vampire episode this season, and directed by John Lewis. This one stars with David grow, Jane Summerhayes, Earl Hindman. That's Wilson from Home Improvement, y'all. He was also mister Brown in taking of Pellam one two three. I prefer to remember him me too.

Actually, my experience with him began with he's a voice on talk radio. He does a lot of voices in the Eric mcgojun's film Talk Radio. So I got really used to him being a fucking neo Nazi piece of shit, and then the next thing, I know, he's the nice next door neighbor on fucking Home Improvement. I was like, yeah, I don't know. You shouldn't trust that guy.

To be fair, you didn't know if you was never confirmed whether or not he was a neo Nazi on Home Improvement. That's true. Trip. I didn't stick around for the entire run of that show, so I didn't. I could have had like a Confederate flag in the front yard.

Let's just say he was there on January sixth, You. Know, Wilson, and lucky for Wilson, only half of his face showing. This is a story of an angel and devil fighting over the soul of a recently deceased salesman at a motel. What do you think of this one, Mike? Oh boy, oh boy?

Did this one really outlast It's welcome. I was so excited when I saw Earl Hinman. I was like, yeah, great, I love him, Dave grow Oh, I really enjoy him. Now. Was he wrote his husband right?

Yes? Okay, that's pretty much where I know him, mostly from really like him. I wasn't too familiar with the guy that played the bell hop or the lady who played the demon. But as soon as it started, I was like, oh, okay, a wager over Saul. All right.

I think we've seen this probably what fifty sixty times maybe, and I was there for it at first. This whole thing of whoever gets out the door with this guy, we are good. He's either going to heaven going to hell. And then just all the antics start and it just I'm going to sound like Chris here and probably myself now because I think I've said this almost as many times. It's a blackout skit, and it stretched out to thirty minutes.

Once they hit that first commercial break, I was like, oh Jesus Christ, there's two more breaks coming I or one more break. I just I wasn't here for it. I was done within the first ten minutes. Clever concept, but just dragged on and no twist. It's nothing to throw some wrenches in there at all.

Yeah, I wasn't impressed. What'd you think, Chris? Yeah, put it pretty succinctly, and I will echo that as well. This was a blackout sketch, drug out to ten times as long as it needs. It's like a two minute sketch from Fuck so it is, Yeah, one panel comic in a Playboy magazine for fuck's sake, like this, look all a devil and an angel or a demon an angel or fighting over a guy's eternal soul and then they fall in love, Like okay, did we need that for twenty two minutes?

Like it was fine? This show, all of a sudden, is doing the thing that the other shows have done, which is just run headfirst into a fucking wall, and not only run into a wall, keep smashing its head into a wall too, just like I'm doing the same thing over and over again. It's not working, stopped working a while ago, if it ever worked at all. It's a love triangle story, which I'm kind of love, don't it's not a love triangle, but again, like what the trying to do is they're fighting over someone, so it feels kind of part and parcel to that, and that one of them takes the identity of someone that was romantically pushing away this time sister. Yeah, piece of shit.

I don't know. Like, at the end of the day, I liked the concept. It's just they never really did enough with it, in my opinion to warrant twenty two minutes of screen time. The whole thing of grow threatening to sorry, I should say, the angel threatening to kill himself multiple times, not just once, like that should have been a tactic. Didn't work.

Move on to the next tactic. Oh you know what, I'm gonna try to kill myself again. What the fuck are you doing? And then when it comes to the woman who's like or sorry, the demon, it's okay, Yeah, I'm gonna try to seduce this guy, but he's got somebody who he wants in another hotel room, somebody that he was interested in in high school. Because he's coming back drunk from a high school reunion.

It sounds like, hey, how about we pay another actress and get the demon to portray her for a little bet. Again, no other tactics. We're just going to try, like you said, run ourselves into that wall time and time again. Father alone, tell us how much you loved this episode. Yeah, I'm waiting for I see the scowl on his face.

He's like, you guys just don't get it. You missed the whole point. I know. It's funny that the phenomenon you mentioned, Mike, as far as recognizing the trope that we're in for and locking in and accepting. I think we all do that, right.

I know that every time we get another Deal with the Devil episode, or even a love tryinggle episode, you recognize it from the opening credits and go, okay, now do something interesting, because there's a reason we go to those stories because they're fucking good. They can be fucking great. Like every single series that we've seen has done have done multiple Deal with the Devil episodes, and I've enjoyed them across the board. They keep innovating and keep making interesting choices. They didn't make any interesting choices here other than the I think they fell in love with the idea that these two are gonna fall in love, that an Angel and the Devil are going to be in love by the end, And they thought, and the best way to get us there is to do everything at the most phrenetic pace possible.

I'm all for a wager episode, a job episode. I'm gonna make a I'm gonna make job, curse you no you're not. That's a situation can be fun. Not only was he using the same tactic over and over again, it was like all very just like screaming in his face like I'm over here. Come on, love me, Let's go outside walk with me.

All right, I'm over here. I'm really depressed. Like at one point, Earl Hinman is like I've had enough of both of you, and I was like, thank god the character saying that, like, for once, someone is doing something real here on the dark side. I didn't look. I didn't love it.

I thought I thought it was okay. I do like that twist, and I liked some of the weirdo asides, like the way that she brings him back to life is she basically jump starts him with a bunch of electrical components that she's cobbled together. I thought that was really fun. And then when the debt, when the Angel brings him back, it's by saying this hyped up hyper version of al Lujah with this spotlight on him and stuff like I don't know that there were enough weird touches that it's telegraphed a promise of something bigger and weirder and cooler, except it wasn't interested in doing any of that. Like I said, I think it.

I think whoever wrote this, and it was Peter O'Keeffe, once he thought I'm going to get an angel and a devil to fall in love. That's the coolest thing, and obviously has never seen another anthology. Shit. Yeah, it's like he wrote page one and then he wrote page thirty and then was like, all right, how do I fill the rest of these pages? Yeah, it doesn't really matter because the beginning is strong and the end is drawn.

Yeah, betterest us, Sorry, Peter, try. Get anyway anything more on this with Chris, because I ain't got a goddamn thing. It feels like a Twilight Zone nineteen eighty five episode, or even more so Night Gallery, Like it doesn't. This feels beneath this show. Gluinely that this doesn't feel like this show's caliber of storytelling.

No, it's shocking. Really. It reminds me of some of those Better Deal with the Devil episodes that I would just much rather be watching. Give me Sherman Helmsley trying to solve a math problem and Ron Glass just torturing him. You know, give me Dan Hedeia playing poker like I want those episodes.

But yeah, this one seemed to have a lot of promise and just didn't know what to do with. It or even John Aston trapped in that the record station or the radio station, you can have a lot of fun, just you actually have to want to have fun. Yeah, yeah, I just I it became wrote and twenty minutes shouldn't Field wrote, No, twenty minutes is not that. Twenty minutes should be in and out and we're done brisk, lean storytelling. This is not that, and this should have been that, because that's the requirement for twenty three minutes.

So I kept waiting for his I kept waiting for the bell Boy to actually be some sort of a twist. Yeah. That never happened. Yeah, yeah, there's no introduction of components here beyond the initial three, and that's surprising. I was waiting for the Bellboy to come back in and somehow lead him out the door and be like, okay, I want and have a twist of him representing some other agency completely, maybe his Buddha, I don't know.

Yeah, that would have been fun. Oh my god, we're just off the top of our head making this thing better. Those people received money. Yeah, anything like something more than they. Did, all right.

The Enormous and Radio Is season three, episode twenty two. It aired originally on May seventeenth and nineteen eighty. This is written by Guy Galler from a story by John Cheever and directed by Bill Travis. This one stars Christine Easterbrook, Rothman, Kate O'Toole, and as one of the voices I noticed Beth Broderick. She plays one of the aunts on Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

This is a story about a new radio and enormous radio being delivered to a home in the nineteen forties that allows the listener to eavesdrop on the intimate conversations of their neighbors. Which you think of this one, Chris. Yep, that is the story. It sure is. It was fine.

I don't want to sound like a goddamn broken record at this point, but this is a twenty two minute sketch. There aren't a lot of moving parts once again, and the execution just isn't there. If your execution is there, you don't have to have a lot of moving parts. You can have three people talking to each other in a room for an hour and a half. You could do that.

You can make that interesting and exciting. Fucking Aaron Sorkins made an entire career off of writing sizzling dialogue at for characters. This is not that this is two people at odds with each other because their radio might be transmitting them to other buildings the way that a radio is being transmitted to their radio. That's the entire conceit. And then the episode ends when it gets interesting on top of everything else, Like it literally ends with the shot of oh, so there is more going on here, but it doesn't fucking matter because we spent the entire time with these two people that I think, while I appreciate what the episode is trying to do and getting us over this logical hump of in this world, this radio is allowing it to be like a walkie talkie or kind of an open microphone, I just don't think they do anything particularly interesting with it and setting it during the Great Depression.

Also, I get it for the sheer aspect of the radiooness of it all, but I don't know they don't. It doesn't feel like they do much with the premise, and the premise is somewhat interesting, but they don't get themselves into any sort of interesting situation with it. It's just the people might be listening. Okay, that's about. That's about as much as we mine here.

So it's fine. I just think there's a lot left on the table with this episode. For sure. This is a radio transmitter to God. Yeah, yeah, look at the size of that radio.

It's enormous. It's so big. I read most of the John Cheever story that this is based on. It ends the exact same way. It's six pages, somewhat double space at times.

It's a pretty short story, and it pretty much ends stilly to what we have here, and yeah, starts to get interesting towards the end because they're fighting and they might be now stars of this radio, but yeah, give me something else here, because it takes too long to get set up, takes too long for the husband to hear what she's hearing. And then once she does, she just stays up all night listening to the radio. And I'm like, okay, and what do you going to do with this information? What's gonna happen here? And not very much at all happens.

They just start to fight about her listening to the radio all the time, and I'm like, this could have been so interesting to start to, I don't know, solve people's problems. Or there's one part where she's oh being beaten and stuff and I'm like, Okay, yeah, that's interesting. Go stop the beating, and then like, how did you know this was happening? I heard it on the radio, But you can't say that those kind of again. It feels like the last episode where it's like, hey, there's a world of possibilities here, take that six page short story and blow it out into twenty two minutes of pure bliss.

But instead, it just was so frustrating watching this one. And yeah, I really wanted it to be better. And I'll be honest, I'm so stupid. It took me a while. Even though it's a big, old, big fucking radio, the time period of it still felt foreign.

It just didn't id and by that it was that age. And when they started like making more references, I was like, Oh, they're really going for it. They're really trying to set it in this sage. Okay, I just wasn't getting it. How about you father alone?

I loved this one, Okay, yeah, top to bottom. I bought it wholesale. I have no problem with a gentle episode. And I found it refreshing that I found it refreshing that this was not a transmitter to God, that this wasn't a Oh my god, the truck is gonna turn over and he's gonna die. We gotta stop Timmy from going on that trip.

I like that there were no stinks beyond the realization that all of your neighbors and everyone you know are fucking horrible people. That's what she's learning, and that's what the fight is, right because that's what she keeps arguing with her husband. Every time he starts to give a shit about anything. She's like, Okay, but let's not do it this way. Don't yell at me about it.

Can we just have a conversation, like, don't be frustrated like this. That's what everyone is doing and it's tearing everyone apart. And for some reason, those stakes just really hit home for me. In fact, the ending, the climax when they cut to another household where they where they're turning on the radio and we're now hearing their conversation, that was like a gut punch to me. I don't know this one.

For whatever reason, I just completely vibrated with it. That made me gasp at the end when when another set of neighbors were starting to listen to them. It's that's a good ending. It's just I wanted more, and maybe. There is no more because you know what I know.

But they now are exactly what she's been worried about the time. They have been the whole time. Is the other thing that I think could have been explored again, like there were avenues to go down. I think maybe my complaint is a little hollow actually, because it could be perceived as a success of the story that by the end it's making me want to know more. However, I do think same coin, different side, that also is a failure because they don't give you enough, But it's also twenty three minutes.

How much can you expect anybody to give you in twenty three minutes? Per the last so they gave us so much that I was sick and tired of what they were giving me. So this one has a different problem. I like Christine Esterbrook and John Rothman. I think they're good together.

I think they're believably terrible to each other back and forth, but also like a believable situation where they would continue to cohabitate if they even if they are being terrible to me. I think that's maybe where the great depression of it all comes in, is to reinforce the gender roles and aspects of it so that the woman couldn't just theoretically just leave the husband. Because again, like I guess, if you want to have that conversation about the Great Depression, that maybe was a little less socially acceptable than a little less easy to do. And so maybe that's why. But to your point, Mike, like the Great Depression of it all seems to serve really no purpose.

Other than they're sitting in it because it's a radio like people weren't gathered around their radios prior to that. Yeah, that's a yeah, there would have been tea, right, And frankly, wouldn't it would it not have been more interesting if it's like you turn on your TV and it's just a shot of another like the essentially like you're seeing like what the TV would be seeing of the other room. Isn't that how you would do this story for the TV age it's just the TV is showing you the living room of the other people, or hidden cameras in the walls. You could have done that, I guess it wouldn't have been as interesting maybe, but same idea, same concept. We like the Harvey Pittnick wedding or rather funeral on Amazon.

Woman on the Moon. Hey, honey, I'm on the so show about me on the TV. They're talking about me on the TV. Come in here the roast. Oh god, that was so good.

That. Yeah, I think this feels more Tails from the dark Side than the last episode. This one actually feels original Twilight Zone to me more than anyway. It verges on yeah, because it's so gentle in it's breach. Do you want to say one thing about Christine Easterbrook If you haven't seen this episode in your fans of the television series mad Men, you really ought to check this one out.

Christine Easterbrook plays Joan Hollowell's mom, Christina Hendrick's mom, and it took me forever to figure out that that's who I was watching because I just watched mad Men again recently. But she's so young and vital here, and she's like kind of a Herodin on the TV series. So anyway, it was nice seeing her and seeing her range. Yeah, I suppose I like it better these days where you can just go into a a certain website and turn on a person's webcam and just watch them that way. That's more fun.

Truman Show. Yeah, all those weird that never up their camera with a posted note. And I'm just like, yeah, I have ogl on all the time. I'm on Omegle right now while we're podcasting. Oh, I'm just on Heroin.

What the fuck Jesus your guy, you're cranking out the bangers tonight, Mike. If you remember there was a twilight Zone eighty five came out at the same time, but that there was a guy who had cameras all in his house who was part of the PATA show. Remember we haven't really mentioned that Twilight Zone eighty five is on concurrently to this fucking show. Yeh yeah, Neck and Neck. So far is this show where Twilight's one eighty five?

Because we're what we're coming into the last season of this show. Yeah, this show over over time, this show because first season Twilight's doone eighty five? Was it? I mean, first season twilets on eighty five? I think might be the best thing we've collectively watched together.

Like it was so good. Yeah, it was every fucking heavy hitter in Hollywood who like was like, you guys are going to do another Twilight Zone. Let me be pro I would agree this show I think Twilet's one eighty five the first season is still the best thing we've watched. But this show has had some real like high moments. But I would say this third season has had some lower points than either of the first two seasons had, and lower by what I would consider to be a substantial margin, verging into the depths that we had Father Malone with some of our like Tales from the Crypt episodes.

I disagree fundamentally with you. I think it it verges on maybe fourth season or fifth season Tails from the Crypt. Yeah, that's what I yeah, that's what I mean. That's Tails from the Crypt gets really fucking bad. Oh yeah, yeah, but nothing, I guess to be fair, nothing is as bad as that Twilight Zone like last season, other than maybe that's last season.

Fucking god, what was it night Gallery? Was that the one where they filmed it in Canada? They all run together at some point, so last season, yeah, you know, at this pretty bad. This season of Dark Side has been hitting mess as far as I'm concerned. There were too many hits, There were too many misses at the end to to to think of the entire season as anything but unfortunately, but I don't think this is anywhere near the drop in quality we've gotten with any of the other shows.

No, No, I guess in my mind the quality of this show was so high that when it does dip, it does feel like that margin is wider, because this show has been pretty consistently good, almost like the first two seasons. I can't even think of a really stand out negative episode, like those first two seasons were great of this show, like credit to Arrow where credit is due, like he really he knows what he's doing. But once he left, this show has been hit or miss. And as I said, they lost their showrunner and at the end of season two, so they're foundering a bit here. We'll see what happens in our next episode.

We start up season four, our final season, tell us in the Dark, soide all right. On our next episode of Midnight Viewing, we are taking a look at the first two episodes of season four. Those are Beatles and Mary. Mary Midnight Viewing is a proud member of a weirding Way media group. Our theme song was composed by HP with an assist by Donald or Rubinstein.

Until next time? Where can people find you? Mike White? You can find pretty much everything that I do over at Wirdingwaymedia dot com. That includes the stuff that I work on mostly with y'all.

There's not a whole lot that I work on without you, other than the Chasing Chimvy Chase podcast which has Chris but no fatherm alone, and. Yeah, it's typically it does. Yeah, he is Nothing but Trouble that Father. Malone special guest star Father Malone on the Nothing but Trouble episode, which yeah, looking forward to people hearing that, though coming up is going to be our Funny Money episode, which I really think is the natier of mister Chase's career. Might be one of the worst things we've ever watched collectively.

Leave. It made Mark Begley almost quit podcasts. That's not hype, that's not hyperbole. Conversations had afterwards were one words, I don't know if I want to keep watching bad movies with you guys. I want to pack my stuff and go home.

Taking my ball and go and hope folks. Oh boy, oh boy. Yeah. Find that over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. How about you, Chris, same same url Weirdingwaymedia dot com as we can go to see and hear all the things that I work on I've been in a little bit of a creative funk for the last year, and I'm trying to get myself out of it.

So that's fun, and it's not as funky as it sounds. A creative funk, not a funky creative time. But you can still hear all the things that I have done, and we'll continue to Overwirdingwaymedia dot com other than ranking on bond, which is on my Patreon and on your Patreon which is Weirdingway Media or patreon dot com, slash culture cast or projection Booth, but most importantly heading over to patreon dot com slash Father Malone and kick this guy some money because he's doing two episodes of this shit a week. And guess who's not doing two episodes a week. Not me?

So give this guy. Give this guy a cup of coffee a week, or you know, a joint or whatever he gets up to out in the land of gambling, Maria. It's all the marijuana. Hell yeah. As for me, you're listening to everything I do.

Although HP does a show called Night Mister Wallington's Taxi Podcast, I co host that with him. He's got a great show called Noise Jonkies. You should check that one out as well. It's a really good music program. If you want to help us out here financially, Patreon dot com slash father Malone.

As they said, we get early episodes and commercial free episodes and entirely new series that we're doing. In fact, we've got a pretty exciting one coming up in this on October anyway, next to next season four. Thanks for you writing us here at midnight viewing it. Until next time, try to enjoy that daylight, y'all.