Episode Spotlight: "In Praise of Pip" (9/27/1963)

Season 5, Episode 1 (121 overall)

Cayuga Production #2607

Originally aired September 27, 1963

The Twilight Zone returned for its fifth season with a heartbreaking bang: Rod Serling’s “In Praise of Pip” is an aching study of a man’s love for his son, and the lengths he’ll go to save his life.

Max Phillips (expertly played by TZ favorite Jack Klugman) is a low-rent bookie, living in semi-squalor in a boarding house, marking time between drinks and letters from his son Pip, who is serving in Vietnam.  When he receives word that Pip has been injured in combat and is hovering between life and death, he revolts against his crime lord boss and gets a bullet for his trouble.  Wounded, he wanders down to the locked gates of a nearby amusement park and asks God for the chance to talk --- just talk --- to Pip.  This is only the setup; the real story takes place during act two, inside the amusement park, where an unexpected visitor awaits him.  

“In Praise of Pip” resides squarely in TZ’s gentle fantasy category (other occupants of this sub-genre include “Walking Distance,” “The Trouble with Templeton” and “The Fugitive”); it’s also one of the series’ subtlest outings.  It could be argued that the events in act two are simply hallucinations experienced by Max as he slowly bleeds to death. If we take the episode at face value and accept that God grants Max’s request (actually requests, plural), then we’re moving outside of The Twilight Zone and into fundamentalist Christianity (which my agnostic self refuses to allow for). I suppose that the fact that Max specifically calls on God doesn't necessarily mean that it’s God who answers, so it’s not necessarily a conundrum after all.  And ultimately it doesn't really matter: emotion is driving the story, not the entity stimulating said emotion behind the machinations.

There’s a nice montage featuring Max and Pip taking in the assorted pleasures of the amusement park (rides, cotton candy, etc). We’re reminded of the carnival in season one’s “Perchance to Dream”; here, however, the nightmarish aspect is confined to the House of Mirrors, and even that is ultimately more disorienting than frightening.

Max voices regret about all the times he flaked on his parenting time with Pip, which indicates that Pip didn't live with him, but it’s interesting to note that there isn't a single mention of the child’s mother anywhere in the episode. I suppose it doesn't change anything, since we’re really only interested in the father-son relationship, but just a quick reference might’ve been nice.  Is she dead?  Remarried? We’ll never know.

THE MUSIC

“In Praise of Pip” features an original music score by Rene Garriguenc (conducted by Lud Gluskin). It’s fairly generic aside from a couple of nice jazzy cues but, overall, it supports the drama well enough (I almost wonder if using stock cues from “Walking Distance” might’ve been more effective…?). You won’t find Garriguenc’s score on any TZ soundtracks; however, it’s conveniently included as an isolated music track on both the Definitive DVD and blu-ray releases on season five from Image Entertainment.

FAMILIAR FACES

“In Praise of Pip” is Jack Klugman’s fourth and final TZ appearance: he previously headlined season one’s “A Passage for Trumpet” (in which his Joey Crown is something of a dry run for his Max Phillips here), season three’s “A Game of Pool” and season four’s “Death Ship.” Klugman is my favorite actor to ever appear on the series, so I was naturally devastated when he passed away this last Christmas Eve.

Pip is played by Billy Mumy, who attained TZ Legend status with his portrayal of the Godchild Anthony Fremont in season three’s “It’s a Good Life” (he also appeared in season two’s “Long Distance Call”). Observing how much Mumy changed over those three appearances (see pic below) effectively underlines Max’s lament over how quickly his son has grown up.

Several other TZ vets are on display in "In Praise of Pip." Max’s boss Moran is played by John Launer, the Lieutenant Colonel in season one’s “The Purple Testament” (memorable for his unfortunate “War stinks!” line; Launer also provided voice work in “And When the Sky was Opened” and “Third from the Sun,” both from season one).  That’s Ross Elliot as the doctor who first examines Private Pip in South Vietnam; he appeared briefly in season four’s “Death Ship” as Kramer, the hunter in Lieutenant Carter’s vision of home (Elliot never crossed screen paths with Jack Klugman, however, who had the lead in that particular episode). And Russell Horton, who we saw in season three’s “The Changing of the Guard,” is effectively twitchy and pathetic here as ol’ black-eyed George (for whom Max takes the fateful bullet).

Kreg Martin is sufficiently menacing as Moran’s silent, unnamed gunman. This is his only TZ appearance; however, he appeared three times on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and three times on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.  The IMDB only lists acting credits for him in 1962 and 1963, so he evidently came out of nowhere, scored a bunch of TV roles, and abruptly dropped off the face of the earth. I can’t explain why, as I couldn't find anything in the way of biographical info on him.  Anyone?

“In Praise of Pip” is probably the single most heart-wrenching (and tear-inducing) episodes of The Twilight Zone, and Klugman’s performance is truly transcendent. There are several episodes that I count among my favorite filmed productions of all time for various reasons (writing, cinematography, performance, etc), but this particular episode is one I identify with on a very personal and visceral level. As a parent who has watched his children transform into adults (in what feels like mere moments instead of years), I experience a nostalgic twinge whenever I see pictures or videos of them when they were small, and… well, I’m reduced to tears every time I watch this. No other episode in the entire series hits me this hard.

Me and my kids, Isaac and Sierra, circa 1995.

Serling’s daughter Anne recently published As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling, an autobiographical account of her relationship with her famous (okay, legendary) father.  She reveals that some of the dialogue from “In Praise of Pip” was directly inspired by exchanges between the two of them, adding yet another layer of bittersweetness to the proceedings.

“In Praise of Pip” is Serling’s last truly great Twilight Zone script, on par with the general excellence of his work in the series’ glorious first season. There are a few decent Serling efforts still to come, but they won’t reach the heights he achieves here. Truth be told, I wish this episode had been the final episode to be aired this season (which would've made it the series finale). It would've been a nice bookend to close out the series.

Next week:  A three-round bout featuring the original Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Bet a fin, take your seat and tune in.

TZ Promo: "It's a Good Life" (11/03/1961)

Season 3, Episode 8 (#73 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4801

Fifty years ago tonight, the entire world disappeared, save for one little town in Ohio. How? Why? Well, if we must assign blame, we must gaze down at a six year-old boy, who might just wish us away into a cornfield for bothering him.


“It’s a Good Life,” adapted by Rod Serling from a short story by Jerome Bixby, is one of the best offerings in the series’ five-year run (it’s in my top 20 favorites). Anthony Freemont, well played by Billy Mumy (in the second of his three TZ appearances, before he gained fame as Lost in Space’s Will Robinson), appears to be a normal kid. Well, guess what? He’s ANYTHING but normal. He has mental abilities that border on the godlike. As Serling tells us, he wished away the entire world, except for his hometown of Peaksville, Ohio. He can create hideous creatures (a three-headed gopher, for example) or transform people into…. well, other things. He can also read minds, so you’re never really safe.


The performances, particularly those of John Larch (the psychiatrist in season one’s “Perchance to Dream”) and Don Keefer as the unfortunate Dan Hollis, are uniformly excellent. This is a collective of people who live moment-to-moment in a prolonged state of teeth-clenching fear. At any moment, they might say or do (or think) the wrong thing, thereby incurring Anthony’s devastating wrath. It’s like the denizens of Orwell’s 1984, trying not to commit thoughtcrime, teetering ever closer to the bleeding edge. These folks are borderline hysterical, every waking moment. We can only assume Anthony can’t read their dreams, or perhaps they’ve trained themselves to dream only happy, safe dreams.


I like the suspended-terror aspect of this episode. Nothing really changes or gets resolved… we merely spend 25 minutes in this horrific world. There’s no comeuppance for Anthony, and no relief for his victims. There are no character arcs to speak of (unless you count Dan Hollis’s drunken standoff with Anthony, which we presume has been building for years)… funny, I complained about this sort of static storytelling approach with regards to last season’s “The Odyssey of Flight 33,” but here I’m not complaining at all. The only event that could really shake things up would be for one of the adults to, in the words of Dan Hollis, “lay something heavy across (Anthony’s) skull.” But then you’ve got a child getting bludgeoned to death on national TV (in 1961!), so I can kinda see why they didn’t go that route.


But don’t get the wrong idea ---- this episode certainly isn’t soft or sanitized, particularly when you start thinking about bigger-picture issues. Anthony doesn’t just separate the townsfolk from the rest of society… he basically uncreates THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD. Real life is precarious enough (random acts of violence, catastrophic so-called acts of God, etc) but here we have a planet with billions of inhabitants suddenly blasted into nonexistence with a simple thought from a child’s mind? Every evolutionary leap forward, every advance in technology… gone in a microsecond. It kinda renders everything --- and I mean EVERYTHING --- pretty moot, doesn’t it? This is either chaos theory on steroids or a universe ruled by a malevolent deity. Along those lines…. could Anthony Fremont be from the Q Continuum? Wait, wrong show.


A MOIST MOMENT


During Dan Hollis's ill-fated confrontation with Anthony, a very noticeable tendril of drool escapes from his mouth. This is either great acting or an embarrassing mistake. Either way, slobber on, Big Dan!


REMAKES, SEQUELS AND PARODIES. OH, AND COMIC STRIPS!

Jeremy Licht (whoever that is) as 1983's Anthony. Yeah, whatever.

“It’s a Good Life,” along with three other TZ episodes, was remade as part of 1983’s Twilight Zone: The Movie. It, well… wasn’t pretty (only season five’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” was treated well in that particular enterprise). Don’t get me wrong… the film isn’t as bad as, say, the 2002-2003 UPN series… it’s just misguided. The sensibilities are off somehow. It feels more like a feature-length episode of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories than The Twilight Zone that we know and love. Oh, and speaking of the UPN series….


A sequel (“It’s Still a Good Life”) was produced in 2003 for the UPN series, starring Bill Mumy and Cloris Leachman reprising their roles from the 1961 original. It’s actually not a bad effort, and it’s nice to drop in on these poor unfortunate souls once again. Anthony is a middle-aged adult, and he’s raising a daughter (guess he wished his wife away at some point… you know, speaking of that, I kinda wish ---- wait, honey, put down that frying pan!). Minor spoiler alert: this new story isn’t static at all. Things change dramatically for all concerned. It makes a nice bookend to the original. Watch 'em back to back.... I will be, as I view the original tonight, on it's 50th anniversary.


Calvin & Hobbes fans will likely enjoy the following gem, which draws a pretty convincing parallel between Anthony and the rambunctious Calvin. It's not an actual C&H work by strip creator Bill Watterson, but it's great nevertheless. Click on it to see it full size:

And of course, who can forget the nod to "It's a Good Life" on The Simpsons? The parody was part of the third season's Treehouse of Horror II episode. Bart Simpson as Anthony? Yeah, I can kinda see it.


THE MUSIC

The music in “It's a Good Life” is sourced from Bernard Herrmann’s score for the CBS Radio Workshop’s 1956 adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” This score (like much of Herrmann’s radio work) was subsequently added to the CBS Music Library, and its various cues found their way into several TZ episodes. The score was released on vinyl in the early 80s by Cerberus Records (Bernard Herrmann: Music for Radio and Television), and on CD in 2003 by Prometheus (Bernard Herrmann: The CBS Years Volume 2: American Gothic).

Next week: What did the Jew say to the Nazi? “Payback’s a bitch.” Okay, bad joke… but GREAT episode. Don’t miss it.

Oh, the shame.

I screwed up. Yeah, I know. Hard to believe, isn't it?

As my good friend (and reader of this blog) Bill Huelbig pointed out to me the other day, I incorrectly reported that Bill Mumy appeared in a total of two Twilight Zone episodes. It seems I'd completely forgotten about his appearance in season five's "In Praise of Pip." Given that this is one of my top 10 favorite episodes of all time, I'm feeling pretty sheepish.

So... I stand corrected. And humbled. The offending blog entry has been fixed.

Bill got Mr. Mumy's autograph a few years back:

Y'now, I would've kept my original pre-Definitive Edition TZ DVDs if mine had cool autographs on 'em...

TZ Promo: “Long Distance Call” (3/31/1961)

“Long Distance Call” (3/31/1961)

Season Two, Episode 22 (58 overall)
Cayuga Production # 173-3667

Fifty years ago tonight, a little boy’s dear departed grandmother reached out and touched him. No, this isn’t a zombie story (those wouldn’t be in vogue for a few more decades). Rather, Grandma bridged the gap between the real world and the afterlife with a simple phone call.

Brrrrring. Billy, it’s for you!


Charles Beaumont’s “Little Girl Lost” offers us the latest in a long line of The Twilight Zone’s supernatural objects. It’s a toy telephone which, for reasons never explained, can somehow connect the living with the dead. The supernatural aspect is actually pretty subtle… Billy could be imagining/pretending that he’s talking to his grandma. Billy’s mom, shocked into near-catatonia when she hears breathing on the other end of the toy phone, may simply be the victim of her own nerves. Billy’s near-death incident may have been a simple accident, not influenced by grandma’s urging. And the climax, in which Billy’s dad pleads with grandma to release her grip on the boy… well, the end result might just be a coincidence. Either way, the chain of events is undeniably horrific. The death of a loved one is hard on a kid, but sheesh.


Forbidden Planet alert! Well, sorta. Billy is played by Billy Mumy, probably best known as Will Robinson from TV’s Lost In Space, the cast of which included the B-9 Robot, Robby the Robot's fraternal twin (Robby himself appeared on the series once too). This is Mumy’s first of three TZ appearances, but most people don’t remember this one. Next season, he’ll return as little Anthony Fremont, the most powerful kid in the world, in the excellent “It’s a Good Life.” Beyond that, he shows up in season five's "In Praise of Pip," opposite the legendary Jack Klugman. I was hoping to snag Mr. Mumy for a brief Q&A before this entry went to press, but he didn’t return my messages. Ah well, he’s a busy guy, with his folk music career and all. He’s still okay by me.


I scoured Google Images for the toy telephone used in this episode, but I came up empty. I did, however, find this:

Bet you weren’t expecting a Toy Story 3 plug here, were you?

Interestingly, another “chat with the dead by telephone” episode will crop up down the road, in season five’s “Night Call,” which will beat this episode by a mile. However, “Long Distance Call” is decent enough. It’s hampered by the videotape it was shot on (this is the final of season two’s six episodes that were shot on tape to save money), but the script and the performances are of sufficient quality to overcome the technical end of things. It’s not a favorite of mine, but I don’t mind recommending it.

Next week: A desperate man in 1880 walks over a sandy hill and finds himself in 1961. It’s the first of a Twilight Zone time travel double-whammy, and it’s a good one. Do tune in.

TZ Promo: “Twenty Two” (2/10/1961)

“Twenty Two”
Season Two, Episode 17 (#53 overall)
Cayuga Production # 173-3664

A Twilight Zone episode is usually easy to spot, even if you miss the opening titles. Richard Matheson said it best: “The ideal Twilight Zone started with a really smashing idea that hit you right in the first few seconds, then you played that out, and you had a little flip at the end; that was the structure.” * 50 years ago tonight, an episode premiered which followed this deceptively simple blueprint, but didn’t feel like a Twilight Zone at all.

“Twenty Two” (sans hyphen), written by Rod Serling and directed by Jack Smight, feels like CBS ran an episode of ABC’s One Step Beyond in some bizarre programming glitch. All the hallmarks are there: spooky music, premonitions of disaster (which of course come true), and a hook that isn’t so much supernatural as psycho-spiritual. Having said that, I don’t dislike the episode at all. It’s creepy, damn it. Who hasn’t had a nightmare in which they were invited to their own demise?


“Twenty Two” is one of six season two episodes that were videotaped instead of filmed, and the different (that’s being charitable) look contributes to the non-TZ vibe. It somehow works here, though…. The faux morgue set is impressive on video, but on film it might’ve looked fake. The same can be said of the exploding airplane in the finale.



This week’s damsel-in-psychological-distress is played by Barbara Nichols, who certainly has the, um, assets to play “the best little stripper-dancer that ever came down the pike” (as her agent describes her). In addition to screaming like a banshee and knocking over glasses of water on The Twilight Zone, she also appeared in 1957’s Sweet Smell of Success, a Burt Lancaster-Tony Curtis film noir that just came out on blu-ray from the Criterion Collection. No, I didn’t get paid for that plug (but I’d be happy to accept a free copy, if Criterion feels like sending me one!).



Forbidden Planet alert! Okay, this one is a bit of a stretch. The creepy doctor is played by Jonathan Harris, who we all know from TV’s Lost In Space!, the cast of which included the B-9 Robot, which was designed by Robert Kinoshita, who also designed Robby the Robot (the two 'bots certainly look related). Call it Two Degrees of Forbidden Planet.

Harris with Robby the Robot's cousin, the B-9. Oh, and there's Billy Mumy (a three-episode TZ veteran)!

The “spooky music” referenced above is made up predominantly of reused cues from Van Cleave’s “Elegy” score from season one. It works better here.

Room for one more, honey!

The freaky nurse is played by Arlene Martel (aka Arlene Sax), who is probably best known for her role as T’Pring, Spock's arranged wife-in-waiting, in Star Trek’s “Amok Time.” I know her best from my other favorite TV series of all time, The Outer Limits, where she played opposite Robert Culp in the wonderful “Demon with a Glass Hand." And speaking of The Outer Limits… well, stay tuned.

Two weeks from tonight: The Twilight Zone joins the mile-high club, in a manner of speaking. You won’t see any gremlins on the wing, but you might just see a brontosaurus if you get a window seat. Check in early.

* Matheson quote shamelessly cribbed from Marc Scott Zicree's The Twilight Zone Companion.