Joseph Mallozzi's Blog, page 47

June 22, 2024: Recent Yes/No’s – Best and Worst!

Bone Marrow Popcorn?

Chicken Nugget Onions Rings?

Spaghetti Corndog?

BEST: Drinkable soft serve

WORST: Cheez-It tostadas

And you?

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June 21, 2024: This and That!

Happening tomorrow, Saturday June 22nd at 2:00 p.m. ET for fans in Europe, Asia, Africa, Mars, and certain areas of Venus who were unable to attend the first one –

Akemi trying to remember the name of the dog she just met on her walk with Sharky: “Mophy? Malphy? Haffafear?”

Haffafear???

Guys, please –

Criticize away!

UK friends, beware!

Pretty much lines up with my preference.  You?

From my sister today….

I’m thinking of doing a podcast or recurring Spaces where I (and maybe a couple of co-panelists) will re-watch a universally panned movie and assess whether it really deserved all the hate.  What do you think?

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June 20, 2024: The classic Twilight Zone rewatch has begun! Episodes 5– 8!

Episode 5: “Walking Distance”

This episode first aired October 30, 1959.

Rod Serling was inspired to write this story after walking through an empty MGM lot and being struck by how much it reminded him of his hometown. In fact, there was a lot of Serling’s hometown of Binghamton, New York in this episode, including the merry-go-round at the heart of the park. In a subsequent interview about “Walking Distance”, Serling observed that people often reminisce about going back home, but it was always a home of the past that one could never really return to: ” …it struck me that all of us have a deep longing to go back – not to our home as it is today, but as we remember it.” Serling’s daughter called “Walking Distance” a very personal story for her father who would travel back to his hometown every summer. In referring to these return visits, Rod Serling once said: “I think there’s a little of this bitter-sweet nostalgia in all of us for a time well remembered.” And that’s reflected in the tone of this episode. “Walking Distance” is a regular on most Top 10 Twilight Zone episode lists while, Bernard Hermann’s score for the episode is considered one of the most memorable of the series. Serling often put a lot of himself in his stories and this episode perhaps more so than others as he was a man burdened by a hectic work schedule that ultimately affected his mental health.

“Walking Distance” was originally slated to be episode 6 of the series as episode 5 was intended be “And Here Be Tygers”, an adaptation of the Ray Bradbury short story that Bradbury himself was going to write. But when the deal fell through, “Walking Distance” was moved up in the schedule. Speaking of Bradbury who was a great influence in Serling’s writing, he gets a little nod in the scene in which Martin walks through Homewood and reminisces about the people he used to know including “Dr. Bradbury”. Also getting a shout-out is “Rooney”, aka Serling’s good friend Mickey Rooney.

Actor Gig Young gives a powerful, heartfelt performance as Martin Sloan. Nine years later, he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?”. His career stalled, however, and he met a tragic end in 1978, shooting his young wife three weeks after their wedding before turning the gun on himself.

Making a brief appearance as a 4-year-old marble enthusiast is a very Ron Howard who purportedly loved working on the show.

Apparently, an organ grinder and a monkey were also booked for this episode but never used. They would appear later that first season in Episode 33, “Mr. Bevis”.

The episode was mostly filmed on sets built for the 1959 movie Meet Me in St. Louis. The network censored two lines of dialogue: “…going back to the womb” and “Oh, my God!”.

As someone who’ll often dream of their hometown, not as it is but as it once was, and who grew up admiring the works of Ray Bradbury that share many of the same themes explored in this episode – nostalgia and the elusive, unobtainable past – this one resonated with me. Sure, there were a few odd moments, like the fact Martin casually abandons his car at the gas station or the scenes of a desperate grown man trying to chase down a terrified 11-year-old, but they certainly didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of “Walking Distance”. This one is my favorite to date.

Episode 6: “Escape Clause”

This episode first aired November 6, 1959.

It shares similarities with “Elixir Number Four”, a 1946 story from the Inner Sanctum Mystery radio thriller in which Richard Widmark plays a man who kills a chemist to secure his immortality potion – only to be sentenced to life in prison for murder.

Rod Serling’s original synopses for this episode was titled “The Condemned Man Who Ate a Million Breakfasts”.

Some interesting casting notes for this one…

David Wayne who plays our hypochondriac Walter Bedeker, played the part of the Devil in the Sunday Showcase adaptation of “The Devil and Daniel Webster” the following year. He would later re-team with Serling, guesting in the Night Gallery episode “The Diary”. A well-established star of stage and screen, Wayne also played the villainous Mad Hatter in the 1966 Batman series.

Thomas Gomez, who is wonderful here as an atypical Devil, returns to play an equally devilish role in season 2’s “Dust”. A heavy-set man at approximately 290 lbs, he eventually lost a significant amount of weight. He weighed approximately 150 lbs when he was killed in an automobile accident at age 50 – making him one of the few cast members of the 1956 film The Conqueror (shot near an active nuclear site in Utah) that did not die of cancer.

Virginia Christine, who plays his somewhat clumsily-doomed wife Ethel, would later gain fame as Mrs. Olsen in the “Mountain Grown” Folgers Coffee commercials.

Similarly, actor Dick Wilson who plays the role of Jack, would become better known for his role as Mr. Whipple in the (don’t squeeze the) Charmin bathroom tissue commercials.

Raymond Bailey, who plays the no-nonsense doctor in the opening scene, would go on to play the role of banker Milburn Drysdale in 248 episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Finally, comic actor Joe Flynn who plays Steve in this episode would land a part on the Joey Bishop Show two years later, only to be fired after the first season for stealing too many scenes. But this turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it allowed him to land the role he would be known for, playing the part of Captain Wallace ‘Leadbottom’ Binghamton on McHale’s Navy. He died in 1974 after suffering a heart attack, his body weighed down to the bottom of his Beverly Hills swimming pool by the cast on his broken leg.

CBS standards and practices requested the removal of the words “idiot” and “crazy”, but Serling kept them in anyway.

The most darkly humorous episode to date, it’s one that really requires you to switch off the logic-center of your brain in order to really appreciate it. Why Walter is so obsessed with testing the limits of his newfound immortality is questionable when he could just be enjoying his risk-free life. The contract he signed never specified he wouldn’t feel any pain, so he could well have suffered a protracted and painful existence after the subway incident – but, for some reason, he seemed confident that would not be the case. Why? The glibness of the tone made it difficult to establish any real dramatic stakes, or concern for our protagonist, especially after his off-hand dismissal of his wife’s death. It’s played for laughs but not particularly funny. Just…weird. Finally, compare the perfect score of the previous episode to this episode’s stock, over-the-top music cues. They’re painfully silly in spots and really stand out as production elements of their time. Overall, a fine episode, but one I’d rate lower than “The Six Millimeter Shrine” that, while spotty, still managed to deliver a strong ending. Here the twist, while conceptually interesting, doesn’t land as strongly as it should.

Episode 7: “The Lonely”

This episode was first broadcast November 13, 1959.

“The Lonely” was shot at Desolation Canyon in Death Valley National Park where the ground temperatures reached 130 degrees. According to Rod Serling: “We lost seven people off of the crew including the cameraman, the sound man, and the script girl by six o’clock the first night from heat prostration.” Director Jack Smight: “The temperature was around 130 degrees.  One day the caterer very foolishly served a very heavy meal for lunch, and about eight crew members just dropped in the afternoon.” And, in the case of Director of Photography George T. Clemons, that drop was quite literal as he purportedly fell from a camera crane onto the sand.

In 1961’s “More Stories from The Twilight Zone” collection, Serling’s adaptation of his script shed some light on the crime our protagonist, James, had committed, a crime that, in the episode, is hinted at but never revealed.  In the short story, we learn that he witnessed his wife struck down by a speeding driver and ended up pulling the driver out of the car and choking him to death.

Jack Warden, who plays James A. Corry in this episode, was a boxer, bouncer, Merchant Marine, and a paratrooper with the 101st airborne who embarked on an acting career after WW II, often collaborating with Warren Beatty.

Jean Marsh, who plays Alicia the robot, was 21 when she left England due to an inability to land any roles because, apparently, she didn’t look English enough. She would later return and find success, first on Dr. Who, and later with Upstairs Downstairs, a show she co-created and starred in. When discussing residuals for the show, she offered the following memorable response: “I get a residual for the idea as much as I get a residual for the acting. It’s a very low fee. I think I got something like $100 an episode initially for the idea, and my royalty is based on that rate. I’ve got a saying: “If it had been made in America I’d be Mary Tyler Moore. As it is, I’m Mary Tyler Less.”

Speaking of Mary Tyler Moore, Ted Knight is uncredited as crewman Adams in this episode. The “Polish Prince of Comedy” would eventually find fame as WJM anchorman Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

His fellow crew member, Captain Allenby, was played by John Dehner who, prior to establishing a career as a radio actor and onscreen villain, worked as an artist in the Disney art department.

This was The Twilight Zone’s first foray into science fiction and, while certainly memorable, I felt that it didn’t really fulfill its potential. The concept is great, but the execution falls short. Alicia isn’t introduced until fully halfway through the episode, time that could have been spent building James’s relationship with her, establishing stronger emotional roots that would have made the ending much more impactful. In a similar vein, I also found that having Captain Allenby decide Alicia’s fate robbed the episode of the more personal and much more poignant decision James would have had to make, forcing him to choose between his freedom and Alicia. It felt to me like a bit of a cheat. In the end, however, I do love the sci-fi setting and story, so I would rank “The Lonely” firmly in the middle of the seven episodes I’ve watched to date.

Episode 8: “Time Enough at Last”

This episode first aired November 20, 1959.

“Time Enough at Last” is an adaptation of a short story of the same name, written by Lynn Venable.

Largely considered one of the show’s best episodes (In fact, it secured the #25 spot in TVGuide’s 2007 ranking of the “100 Most Memorable Moments in Television”), Rod Serling named this one his favorites of the 92 episodes he wrote for the show, along with season 2’s “The Invaders” starring Agnes Moorehead.

Surprisingly, this was the only Twilight Zone episode to receive a Directors Guild of America nomination. The episode’s director, John Brahm, ended up losing out to Phil Karlson for The Untouchables.

Serling pitched a similar post-apocalyptic-themed story titled “The Bomb Fell on Thursday”, about a group of survivors who attempt to put together the pieces of their lives following a nuclear attack. In the end, despondent and alone, they almost give up hope and contemplate suicide – until the discovery of a baby gives them hope. The story never made it past the pitch stage.

This was the first of four episodes starring Burgess Meredith whose career would hit a temporary snag after he was named an unfriendly witness by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950’s. But he bounced back in a big way, gaining popularity for his portrayal of The Penguin on the 1966 Batman series. His villainous turn was so popular, in fact, that the show’s producers purportedly always had a Penguin script ready in case Meredith wanted to appear as a guest star. Meredith was also a familiar face in the Rocky franchise and was the voice of narrator in Twilight Zone: The Movie. At a tribute to Rod Serling in 1984, Meredith said “I am very grateful to Rod Serling.  He provided me with several of the best scripts I ever had the luck to perform.  In one case, the role of Mr. Bemis.  There isn’t a fortnight goes by I don’t hear a compliment about it.  Year after year, Rod used to have a part for me every seasons and every one of them [was] extraordinary.” Meredith had a Twilight Zone experience of his own when, while staying at a friend’s house on the beach, he was awakened by a dolphin’s cry for help. He ran outside in the middle of the night and discovered a dolphin caught in a net. He freed it, saving its life, and thereafter, Meredith firmly believed that the creature had reached out to him, telepathically, that evening. The incident awakened in Meredith a fascination with non-human intelligence, particularly dolphins.

I loved the straight-forward simplicity of this episode, the palpable build in frustration as Henry is thwarted again and against until, finally, he achieves his dream – only to have it snuffed out in an instant. As an avid reader (and once a kid who fantasized about living in a zombie-free post-apocalyptic environment), I truly empathized with Henry Bemis. A big part of that, of course, was Burgess Meredith’s absolutely brilliant performance as Henry Bemis, from his exasperating servility in the face of the authority figures in his life to the childlike wonder with which he enthusiastically discusses his books, the exuberant joy he displays at the prospect of endless reading and, finally, the subtle, soul-crushing response to his glasses breaking. In my mind, I was kind of imagining that he would eventually be able to locate an optometrist and cobble together some sort of reading monocle. “Time Enough at Last” is my favorite of the episodes I’ve seen for this rewatch and feel it’ll be a hard one to beat – but it’s honestly been so long since I’ve seen this show and I’m quite sure I never saw all the episodes, so I’m prepared to be genuinely surprised.

So, what did you all think?

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June 19, 2024: Amazing Covers!

A few that caught my eye this week…

Doctor Strange #15 – cover art by Alex Ross

Green Lantern: War Journal #10 – cover art by Dan Panosian

Wonder Woman #10 – cover art by Julian Totino Tedesco

Dandelion – cover art by Tula Lotay

Space Ghost #2 – cover art by Francesco Mattina

Gun Honey: Collision Course #2 – cover art by Kendrick Lim

The Crying Boy #3 – cover art by Hernan Gonzalez

2000  AD Prog Pack (January 2024) – cover art by Nick Percival

So, which were YOUR favorites?

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June 18, 2024: Coming Soon!

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June 17, 2024: The Return of the Crime Binge!

True Detective (2014 – ) Season 4

Anthology series in which police investigations unearth the personal and professional secrets of those involved, both within and outside the law.

My thoughts: A middling mystery steeped in nonsensical mysticism.

3/5

The Gentlemen (2024) Season 1

When aristocratic Eddie inherits the family estate, he discovers that it’s home to a huge weed empire, and its proprietors aren’t going anywhere.

My thoughts: A little too overly-stylized, too self-consciously hip.  Unlike past Guy Ritchie productions, there is no dovetail ending of varied storylines.  Instead, it all concludes in clumsy fashion.

3/5

The Sopranos (1999 – 2007) Season 3

New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano deals with personal and professional issues in his home and business life that affect his mental state, leading him to seek professional psychiatric counseling.

My thoughts: My favorite season of my favorite crime show.  Enter Ralphie, Christopher gets made, Jackie Jr. miscalculates, and one of the greatest episode of television The Pine Barrens.

Astrid & Raphaelle (2019 – ) Season 1

Autistic archivist Astrid Nielsen and impulsive inspector Raphaëlle Coste work together to solve crimes in and around Paris.

My thoughts: The autistic lead will inevitably draw comparisons to Broen’s Saga, and come up short.  The mysteries are clunky and, at times, implausible.

3/5

Fargo (2014 – 2024) Season 5

Various chronicles of deception, intrigue, and murder in and around frozen Minnesota. All of these tales mysteriously lead back one way or another to Fargo, North Dakota.

My thoughts: An improvement over a subpar fourth season, but not as strong as previous installments.  Still, a solid show.

4/5

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June 16, 2024: Sharky Sunday!

He looks six months younger!

Sharky zoomies…

BIG FISH!

Out and About with Sharky…

Sharky wants to make it a family hug…

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June 15, 2024: Akemi in the kitchen!

Akemi is back to baking bread – this time using the 100 year old starter sourced by Robert Cooper (off Etsy), a starter his daughter named Breadley Cooper.

After all the feeding, kneading, stretching and folding, she was finally able to bake!

And voila!  Our oven does a better job of cooking from the bottom than from the top so Akemi was disappointed her bread wasn’t crustier, but I thought it turned out great.  I mean, listen to the sound of that dull bread knife cutting through the crust…

We enjoyed it with some farmer’s market butter, varied olive oils, sea salt, and a 15 year old balsamic.

Rob gave us enough starter to share with our neighbor Ivon – who passed in favor of a subscription to the Bread of the Month club.  And so, the following week, Akemi was at it again…

Success!

Then, she turned her focus to dumplings…

Equally delicious.

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June 14, 2024: The classic Twilight Zone rewatch has begun! Episodes 1 – 4!

Episode 1: “Where is Everybody?”

 

This episode first aired on October 2, 1959. While generally well reviewed, it was the least-watched show on the night. Thankfully, things picked up for the series, and for Rod Serling who was not the first choice for the voice of the narrator…

 

Announcer Westbrook Van Voorhis recorded the narration for the pilot but wound up backing out of a series commitment. As a result, the production reached out to Orson Welles – who proved too expensive. And so, the honor went to show creator Rod Serling, despite the misgivings of certain executives.

Speaking of too expensive, the role of Mike Ferris, this episode’s frustrated protagonist, was originally offered to Tony Curtis – who also priced himself out of contention.

Actor Earl Hollman, who eventually landed the role, delivers a terrific performance, all the more impressive given reports that had a fever of over 100°F during filming. Compounding the misery was a little “hiccup” on their first day of filming. According to Hollman: “The first day was long, and at the end of it, I heard the camera guy say, ‘Uh, oh,’ which is not what you want to hear. Well, they checked the camera and there was some small problem and we didn’t get a single shot. So we all went home with our heads between our legs.”

“Where is Everybody?” was actually not the pilot Serling had originally planned for The Twilight Zone. He had written a different script titled “The Happy Place” about a community where people were executed when they turned 60, but the network thought it too depressing. So they went with this far more upbeat story about loneliness and isolation.

According to Serling, the idea for the episode came to him while he was walking through an empty studio lot and noted how eerily quit and empty it felt. He was also inspired by a Time magazine article on the training experiments astronauts underwent as preparation for long, lonely space missions.

Life also imitated art in the sequence where Mike is momentarily trapped in a phone booth. The exact same thing happened to Serling at an airport when, in a panicked instant, he forgot the door pulled inwards rather than pushed outwards. The sequence reminded me of an equally great 1972 Spanish horror-comedy short titled La Cabina. Track it down if you get the chance. In the drugstore scene, one of the books featured in a magazine rack is “The Last Man on Earth” (aka “I Am Legend”), a book that shares similar themes. Its author, Richard Matheson, ended up writing 16 episodes of The Twilight Zone. Serling was, ultimately, unsatisfied with “Where is Everybody?” because he felt it missed the trademark Twilight Zone final twist that would typify later episodes. When it came time to put together a prose anthology based on the episodes, “Stories from the Twilight Zone”, he added a twist to “Where is Everybody” that had Ferris discover a movie ticket after leaving the isolation room, thus casting doubt on whether what he experienced was, in fact, “All in his head”.

Although certain elements of the production do feel like a product of its time (the dialogue feels a little stagey at times while the pacing is significantly more measured than what modern audiences have come to expect), it’s still a very compelling, occasionally creepy, half hour of television that sets the table for a truly unique and groundbreaking television series.

Episode 2: “One for the Angels”

This episode first aired on October 9, 1959 and outperformed the pilot by winning its time slot, beating out the likes of ABC’s The Detectives and NBC Fights.

It’s actually a reworking of a similarly named script Serling had written for the mystery series Danger in which a pitchman tries to protect his brother from mobsters by delivering a pitch so engaging that a crowd formed to watch never leaves, thereby never allowing the mobsters the opportunity to strike. But, in the end, past mistakes do have a way of catching up with people… In television anyway.

“One for the Angels” is reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, a film about a knight returning from the crusades who must beat Death in a game of chess in order to live long enough to be reunited with his wife. There are several parallels to this movie, like Bookman’s wish to deliver that one final pitch for the ages echoing Block, the knight, and his desire to perform one meaningful deed.

Ed Wynn, who plays the part of the seemingly doomed Lou Bookman, is reunited here with Rod Serling after they worked together on Serling’s 1956 “Requiem for a Heavyweight”. Serling reportedly requested Wynn for the role. For his appearance, Wynn was paid the grand sum of $5000 which, at the time, was a nearly unheard of amount.

According to child actress Dana Dillaway who played the young Maggie Polanski, Wynn was a sweetheart. “He gave me a box of European chocolates after the filming was finished. I remember saying his character’s name, ‘Lou’, about a million times during rehearsals.” Due to his advanced age (Wynn was pushing 75 at the time), he was unable to work long hours so the night scenes were actually shot during the day under tarps on MGM’s Lot 2.

Overall, little things kept taking me out of the story, like the fact that Lou immediately assumes a stranger who has mysteriously found his way into his apartment has let himself in to buy something. The moment Lou lifts the injured child’s head in order to tuck his jacket beneath it as an impromptu pillow, I was thinking: “I don’t know if you should be moving that kid’s neck after the car accident!”. Then later, instead of being at the hospital, the kid is seen recovering at home in bed (!). It’s apparently touch and go but eventually the visiting doc gives the okay and advises her mother to give the kid a sedative every three hours. Quite the turnaround. I also bumped on Lou’s decision to wait outside on the front steps to confront Death when the Grim Reaper had already displayed an ability to magically appear wherever he wanted.

Ultimately, these were all tiny quibbles though. My biggest issue with the episode was that it all came down to Lou delivering this pitch of a lifetime, a pitch so engaging, so convincing, that Death itself is unable to resist. And yet, when it came right down to it, the pitch was a letdown. We conveniently cut out and back so we’re not privy to the whole thing but we do hear falls short.

Still, there is a lot to like about the episode as well. I already mentioned Wynn’s performance. I also enjoyed Murray Hamilton’s performance as the somewhat glib and annoying officious Mr. Death. And I thought the final scene of Lou accepting his fate and walking off with Death surprisingly effective. Touching yet hopeful.

Episode 3: “Mr. Denton on Doomsday”

This episode first aired October 16, 1959.

The original version of this episode was titled “Death, Destry, and Mr. Dingle” and was much more comedic in nature, the story of a meek schoolteacher who gains fame as a skilled gunslinger – only to have his reputation invite some unwelcome attention.

According to Rod Serling, the idea for this episode came to him after he watched a collection of westerns over the course of a couple of weeks. He described it as “almost a spoof of the classic high-noon, walk-down-the-middle-of-the-street gun battle.”

When pitching the show to CBS executives, he omitted any reference to the character of Henry J. Fate as the execs had an aversion to fantasy elements which, they feared, would be met with viewer disapproval. Instead, Serling pitched the episode as a straight western.

Dan Duryea, who was accustomed to playing onscreen villains, here delivers a touching portrayal of a man losing a long hard-fought battle with his demons while a young Doug McLure, who would later gain fame in The Virginian, plays an upstart gunslinger. And, of course, there’s also a youthful Martin Landau guesting as the handsome bully Dan Hotaling who clearly relishes his bad guy role.

Landau, commenting on the table read: “We read and we stopped and we discussed, and [Rod Serling would] rewrite and we’d reread and refine it.  Of course, for Rod to sit down for any length of time was hard – he was so wired.  For a writer to be present on the set of a television show, and the cast to all be there, reading their roles in sequence, was so unusual.  It gave us a feeling that he cared.  It gave us a sense of camaraderie.  And it made for a show of real quality.”

A pretty solid episode all around with some really top-notch performances and great atmosphere (a Twilight Zone trademark). I found the ending a little to convenient, a little too pat, but it didn’t really color my overall enjoyment of the episode. Having given the first three episodes further consideration, I find myself admiring “One for the Angels” more and more and would slide it into the top spot so far, followed closely by “Where is Everybody?” and “Mr. Denton on Doomsday”. I have yet to be disappointed with this show.

Episode 4: “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine”  This episode first aired October 23, 1959. The episode shares some obvious similarities with Billy Wilder’s 1950 film Sunset Boulevard about an aging former starlet who refuses to accept that fact her best days are behind her. The film’s composer, Franz Waxman, also composed the score for this episode. Ida Lupino, who plays the role of Barbara Jean Trenton, was an accomplished actor and one of the most prominent female directors of the 50’s. The first woman to direct a film noir (The Hitch-Hiker), she produced her own independent features and directed over 100 hours of television including an episode of The Twilight Zone (season 5’s “The Masks”), making her the first and only woman to do so. She was successful in her field and purportedly a class act on set – prompt, professional, and pleasant to work with.  For his part, Rod Serling was unhappy with the “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine’s” rough cut and never warmed to the finished episode. Years later, when an interviewer asked him what inspired the story, Serling replied: “I don’t know where the hell I got this idea, but I wish I’d never gotten it.” Though, arguably, less successful than its predecessors, this episode has a lot to recommend it: standout performances by Ida Lupino and Martin Balsam, and a pretty solid, ultimately touching story by Serling. And yet, it is considered one of the lesser episodes by Twilight Zone fans, and I think the reason for this (and one of my sore points with the episode) is that Barbara is so damn unlikable. She is presented as someone you really should sympathize with – and do to a certain degree – but her haughty, offhand dismissal of the studio executive after he offers her a comeback role makes her seem arrogant and incredibly petulant. Later, when meeting her former leading man, she is a downright bitch to him for the simple reason that he got old (!). Still, as unlikable as she is, I did feel sorry for her and did enjoy the happy ending that sees her wish fulfilled as she rejoins her onscreen friends for that final fade out. Also, one minor element I found kind of funny was the set design for the studio executive’s office that made it look like he was working out of his apartment. Finally, I love Serling’s spellbinding intros and outros, but part of his introduction to his episode made me chuckle: “Barbara Jean Trenton, struck down by hit-and-run years and lying on the unhappy pavement, trying desperately to get the license number of fleeting fame.” So, if you’re rewatching, what did you all think?  What is your ranking of the first our episodes?

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June 13, 2024: Recent Yes/No’s, Best and Worst!

Chochin?  Yes/No

https://www.optionstheedge.com/topic/food/food-review-yakitori-expert-toritama-dishes-tasty-skewers-including-prized-chochin

Black Sesame Ice Cream…

Fried Caramelized Rice…

Japanese Pancakes…

Tomato Soup in a Grilled Cheese…

BEST: Banana Brûlée Frappuccino

WORST: Lychee Milkshake

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