Episode Review: The Twilight Zone - One For The Angels

In this classic Twilight Zone episode written by series creator Rod Serling, Ed Wynn plays Lou Bookman, a street-corner salesman who is beloved by the neighborhood children. After a day spent in the summer heat on a street corner trying to make some sales, he heads home, stopping on the doorstep to hand out some toys to a few of the neighborhood kids. Upon entering his apartment, he finds someone waiting for him: a well-dressed man who just so happens to be Death himself. Death tells Lou that his time has come, but Lou bargains with Death for a little more time -- time to make a great sales pitch, or, as he calls it, "One for the angels". No sooner does Death show Lou some mercy then Lou welches on the deal. But Death tells Lou that if he won't come with him, someone else will have to. And it just so happens that someone else is one of the neighborhood kids.

But Lou has a conscience -- he's a good soul -- and he doesn't want this to happen. So he puts on that sales pitch that he mentioned: to Death himself. He knows that if he can make this sales pitch, the one that he bargained for to save his life, Death will take him instead of the little girl he plans to take in Lou's place.

This was a great episode. The pacing during the conversation/bargaining between Lou and Death near the beginning of the episode was a little slow and I felt maybe went on a little longer than it should have, but the story -- and the character of Lou -- has a lot of heart. A great episode.

Cheers Revisited

My son and I are currently watching Cheers on Netflix. The whole thing started when he caught a few minutes of a Frasier episode one night -- he liked it, and ended up watching the whole series from start to finish (also courtesy of Netflix). At some point during all this, I mentioned Cheers to him and we watched a few episodes from the Kirstie Alley era. Eventually, we decided to sit through the whole series, which we're in the process of doing now.

This was another show I started watching in syndication. I haven't watched every episode, so a lot of the ones we've seen lately are new to me. I used to catch the show during weekdays in the evening, when one of our local stations would show it along with Night Court and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

There's something very "comfortable" about the show. Maybe it's the laid-back bar setting; maybe it's the fact that it's recorded in front of a live audience, and you can detect a slight echo from the soundstage; or maybe it's just the archetypal barfly characters that inhabit the stage. Regardless, this is a fun show to kick back and enjoy without having to put too much thought into it. Sometimes it's fun to watch a show that makes some sort of point, and sometimes it's fun to watch a show whose only point is finding a way to make you laugh.

I was surprised when we started going through these episodes that the older ones really didn't make me laugh as much as the later ones. Also, I was surprised by Sam's occasional mentions of the physical harm he wants to do to Diane when she makes him angry (he mentions wanting to smack her and bounce her off walls -- yikes!).

At certain points in the early seasons, the show almost becomes a soap opera, fixating too much (IMHO) on Sam and Diane's relationship. But when it's going down different paths it tends to be funnier (again, IMHO).

As for that place "where everybody knows your name", I was never much of a drinker and didn't tend to hang around bars, but I did have that sort of "everybody knows your name" hangout when I was in my late teens and early twenties: it was a pool hall. I started hanging out there after a friend of mine took me there one night, and I ended up meeting a lot of good friends there. On any given night, you were almost certain to find someone you knew there. We'd hang out, talk, play hackey-sack in the parking lot, loiter, play some games in the arcade, and just generally have a good time. We'd also occasionally shoot pool.

Anyway, Cheers makes my list (and I'm sure many other people's lists) of classic TV shows.