Thriller - "Pigeons From Hell"

Season 1, Episode 36

Original Airdate: June 6, 1961

Writer: John Kneubuhl (adaptation), Robert E. Howard (original story)

Director: John Newland

Producers: William Frye, Maxwell Shane

Cast: Brandon De Wilde, Crahan Denton, David Whorf, Boris Karloff

“Pigeons From Hell” is a masterpiece of slow-burn horror. At first glance, its creators seem content to embrace all the usual trappings that are trotted out to achieve cheap, impact-less scares. But instead of the cheap scares, we are instead treated to slow tension building over the course of the hour, deliberately paced to get under the viewer’s skin and linger there.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Two brothers (Brandon De Wilde and David Whorf) find their car broken down on an abandoned highway in the middle of nowhere. They come upon a nearby abandoned mansion… and then the horrors begin to happen. But instead of a bunch of scares straight out of the Universal B-horrors of the 1940s, writer John Kneubuhl and director John Newland aim to create the best movie Val Lewton never produced. It is an adaptation of a great short story by Robert E. Howard (a writer who inadvertently was the cause of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career by creating “Conan the Barbarian,” but don’t hold that against him), and in his adaptation Kneubuhl makes two distinct but very smart changes.

In the original story the young men are just friends, but here they are brothers. When Whorf’s character gets an ax to the skull, there is much more emotional resonance for both the audience and De Wilde’s Timothy. The original story worked fine without it, but here it gives the death extra significance, especially considering we only have five minutes with the characters before one is murdered.

Second, the short story takes place over the course of two or three days and nights, but Kneubuhl condenses the story to a single, endless night of horrors. That way the atmosphere is relentless – the characters cannot escape the dark and neither can we.

The most overt horror in the episode comes early: The aforementioned ax murder. While his brother sleeps, Whorf’s Johnny is drawn up the stairs of the deserted mansion by ghostly singing. When Timothy goes searching, he finds Johnny’s skull cracked in two. But that doesn’t make Johnny any less mobile – his brains still bleeding all over, Johnny chases Timothy out of the mansion, waving about the ax that was used to kill him. Despite the grisliness of what I have just described, the scene is played almost entirely by suggestion. While Johnny stalks Timothy in the hallway, we never actually see the split skull or the brains… all we see are drops of blood streaming down the front of his face. Everything else is hidden by the shadows.

Timothy manages to make it a few hundred yards away from the mansion before passing out. He is brought to the nearest Sheriff (Crahan Denton) by a town hick, and when the Sheriff decides to take the boy back to the mansion to investigate, we get the single inadvertently funny moment of the episode: The hick busts out of the house they are in and rushes off into the nearby woods like the Roadrunner escaping the Coyote. De Wilde, who many will remember for saying “Shane!” a thousand times in the film classic, also has the task of attempting to explain what happened to him in the mansion while being overcome with grief for his brother, and though his line readings might come off as hackneyed in another film, his innocent looks and inability to properly articulate himself actually works in favor of the character.

The Sheriff takes Timothy back to the mansion to investigate, and instead of a bunch of boo-scares and chains rattling, Newland provides viewers with a single, indelible image. Every time the duo enter the room where Johnny died, their kerosene lantern will not stay lit. The moment they exit the room, it comes back on. Any fan of a good horror movie knows the darkness is much scarier than seeing what is in the darkness, and that is never more obvious than here. Also, because there are no silly noises or faux-climaxes in the sequence, the viewer is consistently on the edge of his seat. There is no end to the tension until they leave the house – the threat of something bad happening ensuring the viewer cannot relax.

The atmosphere is only aided by the black-and-white cinematography, shot by Lionel Lindon (who also shot the incredible “The Manchurian Candidate” and the minor noir classics “Whirlpool” and “The Blue Dahlia”). I doubt there’s a shot in the film where everything in a given set is fully lit. Lindon uses the shadows to play with our expectations of terror, especially considering a character says early that the swampland is crawling with snakes. The lighting also makes some old-man makeup that would doubtless look hackneyed in color into something downright creepy.

Kneubuhl and Newland approach the episode’s climax with the same slow-burn mentality, refusing to ratchet up the pace for no good reason. As a result, Timothy’s slow, zombie-like walk up that decrepit staircase toward his destiny becomes excruciatingly suspenseful.

It's all about those eyebrows.

I got the “Thriller” boxed set for Christmas this year and have been consistently surprised at the quality of the episodes. It’s the only hourlong anthology series I’ve seen thus far that makes good use of its entire running time (unfortunately, “The Outer Limits” often feels like a half-hour show stretched to its breaking point to fill its hour) on a regular basis. I’ve watched about half the series (the first season is 37 episodes, so it’s not like I’m being lazy) and find that even the lesser episodes are still of legitimate quality, and Jerry Goldsmith’s musical scores are feature-film worthy, even eclipsing Bernard Herrmann’s scores for “The Twilight Zone.” The show pays homage to the Universal classic horrors of the 30s, especially with its use of host Boris Karloff (whose eyebrows here are epic, matched only perhaps by Larry Hagman’s in the “Dallas” reboot), but takes most of its inspiration from Lewton’s horror films of the 40s. Still, every now and then you can see the viciousness of the 50s Hammer films sneaking in. Since I love all those eras of fright, I feel like a kid in a candy shop every time I insert a new disc. “Pigeons From Hell” is my favorite, but I could have easily chosen “The Grim Reaper,” “Parasite Mansion,” “Late Date” “The Hungry Glass” or “The Purple Room”…and that’s just from the first season. It’s such a shame this show doesn’t exist in the public consciousness in the same way “The Twilight Zone” or “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” does, because it certainly deserves to be.

“Pigeons From Hell” is available on DVD and YouTube.

Route 66 – “Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing”

Season 3, Episode 6

Original Airdate: October 26, 1962

Writer: Stirling Silliphant

Director: Robert Gist

Producer: Mort Abrahams, Leo Davis

Cast: Martin Milner, George Maharis, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney Jr.

“Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing” is a fantastic, wrapped present to fans of 1930s and 1940s horror classics. I hesitated for a while to write up an article about this episode because I don’t really think that it fits the definition of “great television” in the way the other shows I have written about here do. The writing here isn’t the best and it’s tonally different than the other “Route 66” installments I’ve seen. But that’s before you insert what I like to call the “awesomeness” factor at play here. I’m just a tad obsessed with those old classic horror movies I mentioned earlier, so to get to see Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney Jr. not only interact with one another, but don some of the most iconic film make-up of all time makes me happy in ways I can’t begin to articulate.

The episode opens with a young boy asleep in his bed when what appears to be a hunchback walks in. Turns out it’s just Lon Chaney Jr. (“The Wolf Man” himself, “The Son of Dracula”) wanting to tuck his grandson in, and he’s wearing his father’s get-up from the silent version of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” At this point I checked my DVR to make sure this was really “Route 66” and it told me it was. Then we cut to a three-way phone conversation between Chaney, Peter Lorre (perhaps history’s greatest character actor, but know for golden age of horror roles like “Mad Love”) and (cue the Angel chorus) Boris Karloff (“Frankenstein,” “Bride of Frankenstein,” “The Mummy,” “The Old Dark House,” “The Black Cat,” “Isle of the Dead” and so many others, but most horrifyingly the “Mr. Wong, Detective” series for Monogram). At this point I figured I must have accidentally DVR’ed the wrong show.  This must have been writer Stirling Silliphant’s idea for a tricky, surprising teaser, and fifty years later it still works like a charm. In fact, this type of fake-out teaser has been copied many times since in horror series – just think of the “Humbug” episode of “The X-Files.”

The plotlines for the episode are light as a feather and done with an ample amount of good dialogue. Tod (Martin Milner) and Buzz (George Maharis) get a gig at a fancy hotel outside Chicago. Karloff, Chaney and Lorre (playing themselves) have come to discuss a possible television series they would star in and argue about whether they should stick to the old ways (Universal horror) or go the new route (Hammer horror), and Tod must act as their liaison to the hotel…or something. Buzz is in charge of a women’s lib convention and immediately falls head over heels with one of the secretaries there, who is depressed after her boss left her for his fiancé. Seriously. Though the A and B stories couldn’t seem more dissimilar, Silliphant finds ingenious crossovers between them. To prove the old scares are still viable, Chaney dresses up in Wolf Man garb and causes every woman in sight to faint in horror, and Karloff has a surprisingly sweet scene with the depressed secretary where he gives her love advice.

The real attraction here is getting to see the three legends interact with one another, with “the normal people” and dress up as the old favorites. Also, a quick shout-out to Lorre’s suitcase, which is alligator skin, has an actual alligator head as its handle (I’m not kidding) and almost steals the show. It’s always a thrill to see Karloff play a nice guy since his image is so synonymous with grotesquery, and here, playing a version of himself, he has a surprising amount of comedic timing, landing every punchline thrown at him. Lorre had long perfected his depressed-annoyed persona and seems to be having a horrible (meaning wonderful) time onscreen. Chaney is rarely out of make-up here, but I’m sad to report that when he is, he looks absolutely miserable. He can barely land any line other than grunting and seems to have trouble doing, well, anything. I have no idea whether it was his rumored alcoholism or what, but someone definitely needed to give him a Red Bull or something.

Chaney does do a decent job seeming very tortured while dressed up as the aforementioned Hunchback, the Mummy (though Karloff originated the role, Chaney played it in one of the sequels) and, of course, the Wolf Man. I got goosebumps when I saw Karloff in full-on make-up as Frankenstein’s monster, and how can you not? Since “Mad Love” was an MGM vehicle, Lorre must do his best with an evening jacket and evil glare. What makes it even more exciting is that it is the classic Jack Pierce make-up and not some second-rate knockoff.

It’s odd that I’ve come this far in the article with barely a mention of the two main characters, but they are ancillary to the episode at best. Maharis does a good job at being handsome (harder than it seems, I’m told) and has a neat little bit of physical comedy involving a pool. Milner interacts with the horror stars the most, but does the smartest thing possible here: He gets out of their way. The dialogue between the guys is smooth and well-written, and though they both are excellent actors who showcase their talents in other episodes, this isn’t one of them.

Silliphant was a co-creator of “Route 66” and also a show called “Naked City,” which I’m looking forward to sampling soon. Looking at his IMDB page, the diversity of his work and his output is almost staggering. This man wrote for “The Mickey Mouse Club,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and also penned the features “Village of the Damned” and “The Towering Inferno.” In what universe are those works related? Oh, and he was BFF’s with Bruce Lee! This is a writer I need to know more about, and pronto.

I love road trips. When I moved out to Los Angeles to attend the AFI Conservatory, I decided to try and travel down Route 66. I quickly found out that most of the highway is either very out of shape or just gone now, abandoned or paved over by the freeway. It’s a sad state of affairs when gas station attendants don’t actually know that their station is located on Route 66. And yet that time traveling out west remains one I will always remember fondly. I’ll always wonder what that highway, what that world, was like in its heyday, and feel lucky to get a little picture of what it might have been through this series.

“Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing” is available on DVD and YouTube.

The Outer Limits - "Demon With a Glass Hand"

Season 2, Episode 5

Original Airdate: October 17, 1964

Writer: Harlan Ellison

Director: Byron Haskin

Producer: Ben Brady, Leslie Stevens

Cast: Robert Culp, Arline Martel

“Demon With a Glass Hand” is a wonderful, complex science fiction story hidden underneath a beautifully shot film noir. It was “Blade Runner” long before that huge Geisha appeared on the skyscraper…and has better voice-over to boot. Writer Harlan Ellison sued the studio behind “TheTerminator” for plagiarizing his other (lesser) “Outer Limits” episode “Soldier” in a move that, to this writer, seems like quite a stretch. But though the mythology here is much different than “Blade Runner,” it’s impossible to not see all the inspirations, from the emotionless hero to the final twist.

Despite my obsession with all things “Twilight Zone” and love for anthology series in general, I’ve never before watched “The Outer Limits,” despite having the original series on DVD for a few years now. After finally digging in and watching several of the most popular episodes (“The Zanti Misfits,” “The Chameleon” and “Soldier,” among others), I was very much let down. Despite gorgeous cinematography and some good acting, the one-hour format stretched most of these science-fiction stories to their breaking point, despite very good ideas at their core. When half of your episodes feel like filler, you have a problem – the same one that “The Twilight Zone” dealt with when it expanded to an hour in its fourth season.

That’s one of the reasons why “Demon With a Glass Hand” (whose name doesn’t really make sense in retrospect) feels like such a breath of fresh air. Instead of filler scenes placed upon other filler scenes, writer Ellison provides us with an ever-changing Rubik’s cube of mythology, often so dense that the viewer is playing catch-up. It begins with a man named Trent (Robert Culp, purposely wooden) lost in modern times with a partially-constructed glass hand and several alien killers on his tail who are recognizable because they wear panty hose (not kidding) on their faces. Trent has no idea who he is, only that he supposed to be humanity’s savior, and he must retrieve the three missing fingers for the glass hand to understand entirely what has happened to him and what he must do to save the humanity of the future. And trust me, I’m just scratching the surface here. There’s more, lots more.

The first ten minutes of the episode feel like an exposition bomb has gone off. First Trent gets a boatload of information from the mysterious panty hose aliens, then more exposition from his hand, then he meets up with a woman and explains even more to her. It’s difficult to keep everything straight and would usually signal very clunky writing, but because Trent is almost as confused as we are, the exposition dump actually works to the episode’s advantage. We go along for the ride, waiting for pay-offs to mysteries we only half understood to begin with, and when those pay-offs come they are both surprising and fascinating.

Everything speeds up once Trent gets to an office building where the aliens are headquartered. Though director Byron Haskin and his fantastic cinematographer Kenneth Peach employed the shadows of noir from the first frame of the episode, the noir look goes into overdrive in this beautifully rendered building, filled with fantastic architecture and maze-like hallways. It reminds me a lot of the office in Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity,” and I wasn’t surprised to read that Ridley Scott used the sameplace to film the third act of “Blade Runner” (there’s that movie again).

Trent runs into a woman named Consuelo (Arline Martel) who was working late and turns her into his companion, not by choice, but because the aliens have put an invisible barrier around the building. Together they move up the several floors of the building, ultimately to the roof, before Trent descends back into the danger below as Dante did into the inferno.

"Cowabunga, dude!"

Many of the more sci-fi elements of the episode are almost laughable, and this is true of the show in general. The killer ants in “Zanti Misfits” had cute teddy bear faces and were obviously horrible models swung on strings during the final siege. The aquatic monster in “Tourist Attraction” would have fit better as one of Ariel’s pets in “The Little Mermaid” than on “The Outer Limits.” Here Trent’s glass hand isn’t the most impressive prop (and, for a long period of time, is stuck in a “Cowabunga, dude!” position). The aliens all wear a big necklace that, when torn off of them kills them and sends their bodies back to the future – and yet none of them think they might be safer if they just tuck it into their shirt. And I did mention the panty-hose faces, right?

I’m willing to forgive many of these in part because of the show’s budget, time period and that, yes, “The Twilight Zone” had many shoddy effects too. But what really saves the more eye-rolling parts of the production are the film noir elements. Even the most laughable costumes look awesome when shot in shadow, and the kookiest villains look menacing when you can barely get a good look at them. It’s inspired that Trent and the aliens use guns, actual guns, to do their battle. Ellison apparently was horribly unhappy with that decision, but seriously, what adaptation of his work has he not all-but-disowned after the fact, and here the guns bring a unique level of urgency to the storytelling missing from other science fiction (the guns used here are infinitely scarier than, say, the ray gun from Ellison’s other episode “Soldier”).

The twist at the end of the episode is a genuinely surprising one that hits the viewer on both an emotional and intellectual level, and fits perfectly in the world of noir. It is also darker and self-defeating than one would expect from an anthology, a trait that seems to be repeated throughout almost every “The Outer Limits” episode I’ve seen. Humanity always sucks, things never get better, and our heroes must consistently suffer for little reward. It’s a very dire notion for stories whose imagination is supposed to reach from the inner mind to the outer limits, and perhaps that’s another reason why I haven’t become fully invested in the series. The ending worked beautifully here, that’s for sure, but in the other episodes I’ve seen it just felt tacked-on, as if it was trying to prove a point. Ah well, the show still has many great qualities and I’m looking forward to diving into the remainder of the episodes. I will say one thing about it: the opening credits are much cooler than any of those in “The Twilight Zone’s” history. So that’s, uh, something.

“Demon With a Glass Hand” is available on DVD, AmazonInstant Video, Hulu, iTunes and YouTube.

'Way Out - "Death Wish"

Season 1, Episode 9

Original Airdate: June 9, 1961

Writer: Irving Gaynor Neiman

Director: Boris Sagal

Producer: Jacqueline Babbin, Roald Dahl

Cast: Don Keefer, Charlotte Rae, Heywood Hale Broun

Okay, let’s get to the elephant in the room. I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend why there is an apostrophe before the word “Way” in “’Way Out.” Though when I first heard the title I assumed it was an anthology focused on folk trying to find a “way out” of their problems, horrifying situations or lives, I discovered that the real meaning is that the stories themselves are “way out.” As in, “that’s way out, dude!” Were the creators and producers trying to be hip? The psychedelic intro where host Roald Dahl (yes, THAT Roald Dahl) has three heads seems to underline this theory. But still, what the hell is up with that floating apostrophe? Ah well, like the last third of “Mulholland Drive” and where Jimmy Hoffa is hidden, there are some things we are never meant to know.

“’Way Out” is a little seen, barely-available anthology series that was paired with “The Twilight Zone” for half a season before being cancelled. I had never heard of it until recently and sought it out because I simply had to see what the author of “The Witches” and “Matilda” (two books that really screwed me up when I was younger) did as a “presenter,” writer and producer on a television series. And I’m so happy I did. I’ve genuinely seen anything quite like this before – its tone is utterly different than “Twilight Zone,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” or any other anthology I’ve ever seen. The storytelling is like a Rubik’s Cube, transitioning tonally from dark comedy to horror to mystery, all the while keeping its viewers on their toes because we genuinely don’t understand where its authors are taking us. I was never bored, always entertained and, by the end, picking my jaw up off the floor.

“Death Wish” opens with an introduction by Dahl, who rambles on for minutes in a rant that both fascinates the viewer and serves as a pretty damn good pitch for “Six Feet Under.”

“I’ve often wondered, haven’t you, what sort of man an undertaker really is. Is he a gentle, sensitive, generous person who undercharges madly because he cannot bear to profit from misfortune? Or is he a more sinister individual, who reads the obituary columns in bed at night and broods all day about the price of caskets? One doesn’t know. And none of us are in any hurry to find out either, because we all figure, quite rightly, that we are all bound to meet up with him in the end, just once.”

The episode opens in a funeral home, with George (Don Keefer) and his wife Hazel (Charlotte Rae) attending calling hours for someone or other. Hazel is blunt, brutal and addicted to the television, but not in an adorable way like I am. She seems genuinely unable to comprehend a life outside of sitting in front of the box, memorizing actors and storylines and considering the stories proof that Native Americans got what was coming to them, among other things. This woman is so dense that she can’t even fully comprehend a commercial. And so, of course, George decides to murder her.

Up until this point, “Death Wish” could fit into any anthology series easily, but that is when the really interesting stuff happens. An unseen narrator tells us that George is deciding what way to murder Hazel, but then stops at the problem of how to dispose of the body. At that moment, a wonderful twist of fate, he is passing the funeral home he was at earlier, and the Mortician (Heywood Hale Broun) is putting out a sign that reads: “Let Us Dispose of the Body.”

George can’t help himself. He goes inside to see the Mortician has a special sale on pine boxes and a “Do-It-Yourself Burial Kit.” It’s here that the audience is thrown for a loop. How serious exactly are we supposed to be taking the situation? Is this just a really dark comedy with no connection to logic? Or is writer Irving Gaynor Neiman just teasing us to throw us off balance?

The rest of the episode continues to toe that line beautifully, with the viewer unable to take any of it very seriously, but still remaining oddly invested in the goings on. The final twist is a doozy: George finally signs some forms to allow the Mortician and his assistant to “take care” of his wife, only to discover that he was literally signing his life away. His wife came in earlier and ordered the same package for him.

The dialogue has such ingenuity it almost feels like the characters are dancing around one another more than communicating. And the actors (none of which I’m familiar with) are well cast and fill their characters beautifully without turning into caricature (with the exception of Rae, who is purposely over-the-top). This is what makes the episode work, because it certainly isn’t anything else.

To call the sets cardboard would be an insult to cardboard. As far as I can see, the funeral home doesn’t even have walls. There are some creepy horror series candelabras in the funeral home that were obviously borrowed from the next set over, and the science lab is laughable. This entire production probably cost $50 in total. The camerawork makes soap operas seem creative in their storytelling.

But because the story is there, “Death Wish” works beautifully. There are only four episodes available on YouTube for view, and I can’t wait to try the others. I can fully understand why the series was cancelled after so few episodes – the humor is too adult for kids but the series was too much of a farce for adults. I’m pretty shocked that it has not gained the same cult reputation that shows like “Thriller” have managed to, because if this episode is any indication of the writing quality, it deserves to be.

The “Death Wish” episode of “’Way Out” is only available on YouTube.

The Lucy Show – “Lucy and Viv Put in a Shower”

Season 1, Episode 18

Original Airdate: January 28, 1963

Writers: Bob Carroll Jr., Madelyn Martin, Bob Weiskoph, Bob Schiller

Director: Jack Donohue

Producer: Elliot Lewis

Cast: Lucille Ball, Vivian Vance, Jimmy Garrett, Ralph Hart

“The Lucy Show” had the unfortunate job of being Lucille Ball’s follow-up to her wildly popular, groundbreaking, classic, best-sitcom-of-all-time “I Love Lucy.” Although the show was usually good, sometimes very good, it never reached the creative heights of its predecessor, and as a result its writers and producers retooled the show numerous times over the course of its run, to the point where I’d wager that the final season is almost unrecognizable when compared to the first.

Though Lucy (Lucille Ball) and Viv (Vivian Vance) were ostensibly different characters than “Lucy” and “Ethel,” their relationship was unchanged, as was how they interacted with one another. Lucy is widowed and Viv is divorced, and the show’s writing team (including several from “I Love Lucy”) decided to give the friends constant money troubles as they try to care for their children. The inherent problem with this is that audiences have expectations of Lucy causing expensive mayhem and anarchy (buying a thousand ranch dressing bottles, destroying a Laundromat, getting three hundred eggs crushed while doing the tango), and because of the character’s limited budget things could never get really out of control. During the first season in particular, you could tell the writers were grasping to be different from “I Love Lucy” before finally just giving in and giving audiences the set-pieces they wanted, household budgets be damned. Many of these were directly pulled from “I Love Lucy,” with the bulk of “Lucy and Viv are Volunteer Firemen” taken from “Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” with the women practicing getting ready for a fire alarm and then totally panicking when an actual alarm comes. The first season finale, “Lucy Buys a Boat,” payed homage to (ripped off) Ball’s salad dance in “The Long Long Trailer” by having a boat cut loose in the middle of a storm.

And yet.

“Lucy and Viv Put In a Shower” still stands as a wonderful half-hour of television. Shockingly, the storyline centers on Lucy and Viv deciding to…wait for it…install a shower. While they first try to rope in their gentlemen-in-waiting, Lucy soon tries to finish the job herself, and somehow gets stuck in the flooding shower with Viv, to the point where the water is seven feet deep.

This set-piece is equal to anything Ball did in her career, from “Vitametavegamin” to the grape stomping to setting her nose on fire. Hell, it’s probably equal to any major set-piece from any comedy series. It’s the perfect example of sustaining tension and laughter consistently over the course of ten minutes of screen time. The women are always trapped, and the water is always rising.

But I get ahead of myself. So the girls decide to have a shower installed in their boys’ closet so that they can get some time in the bathroom, and from there the writers slowly-but-surely begin to lay groundwork for the set-piece. The door to the standing shower was installed backwards, so it would hold the water in instead of opening under pressure. Lucy had to be the one to install the faucets, and of course has no idea what a washer is. The plug in the bottom of the shower has yet to be removed. Viv breaks off the water main so the water won’t stop coming. Yes, it seems as if the writers are bending over backward to make the implausible seem plausible, but in this case it works because the payoff is so perfect.

So Lucy (wearing a shirt with a huge “LC” sewed onto it, something that had to inspire Laverne’s wardrobe years later) and Viv begin to get literally waterlogged. Another amazing thing about this sequence is that it, by its very nature, cannot be as perfectly rehearsed as the candy factory or the fashion show. That water is going to spray where it wants and you can’t help but have a few mishaps when trying to swim in what is essentially a very small seven-foot-deep pool of water. Rumors persist that Ball almost drowned during the filming and it made it on screen, but we only see Ball go under once where she didn’t mean to. She immediately resurfaces and says, “I didn’t know it was that deep,” and that’s that. It’s amazing to see Vivian Vance, not Viv, react to water spraying in her face and up her nose by screaming, “Oh, wait a minute!”

It’s also interesting to note that the writers, oddly, give Viv the best jokes and gags (pun intended) here instead of Lucy, instead deciding to let Ball just go for it with the physicality. First we get this one:

Viv: Lucy, did you pay this month’s water bill?Lucy: Sure, I did.Viv: That was a dumb thing to do!

Later, when Lucy tells Viv to try to kick through the glass so they can escape, Viv refused, stating:

“It’s not that I’m afraid of cutting myself, but the blood might draw sharks.”

The rest of the episode is cute fluff, with the girls’ interactions with their suitors before the mess sweet if forgettable. And the idea of teenage girls spending far too much time in the bathroom is something that has been recycled thousands of times since, which makes the gags at the beginning lose their power. But that scene in the shower…wow. The biggest compliment I can give it is that it felt like the very best deleted scene from “I Love Lucy” ever. It’s not that “The Lucy Show” was ever bad; it’s simply that it seemed more like a watered-down (pun intended) imitation of “I Love Lucy” than its own entity.

“Lucy and Viv Put In a Shower” is available on the first season DVD of “The Lucy Show” and on YouTube.

The Dick Van Dyke Show - "The Curious Thing About Women"

Season 1, Episode 16

Original Airdate: January 10, 1962

Writer: David Adler

Director: John Rich

Executive Producers: Ronald Jacobs, Sheldon Leonard, Carl Reiner, Danny Thomas

Cast: Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam

The wonderful thing about “The Dick Van Dyke” show is that it never seems to push its audience. Almost every other sitcom seems to shove into its punchlines and gags, but this show operates at an even pace. The characters say funny things to one another, but there never seems to be an exclamation point at the end of their sentences to lead into audience laughter. The characters have big personalities but never go over the top like every other sitcom from that era, from “I Love Lucy” to “Leave it to Beaver.” It all feels…well…real. Like we are actually watching an American family going through their trials and tribulations, which makes the climax to “The Curious Thing About Women” one of the definitive moments in all of television comedy.

 The episode concerns a quick marital spat between Rob (Dick Van Dyke) and his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) after she keeps opening his mail without his permission. Rob turns the spat into a sketch for “The Alan Brady Show” where a caricature of Laura (who shares her name) receives a box addressed to her husband and can’t stop herself from opening it…only to discover there is an inflatable raft inside. Laura is teased by all her friends about the sketch and yells at Rob, only to discover a suspicious box in the mail the next day addressed to him.

It’s interesting to note that most sitcoms follow the classic two-act structure. Lucy wants to be on television (1) and then she gets drunk while practicing the commercial she has been cast in (2). Mary admonishes people for laughing about Chuckles’ death (1) and then laughs at his funeral (2). Michael is encouraged to set up a “diversity day” at the office (1) and ends up being extremely racist (2). But “The Dick Van Dyke” show is different. In almost every episode, it follows a three-act structure instead. Here, you have Rob writing the sketch as Act One, Laura melting down as Act Two and the mysterious package as Act Three. This structure allows the show to have a faster pace than most sitcoms and, as a result, throw in some twists and turns on the way to the climax…

…which, of course, is Laura verses the box. The episode’s writer, David Adler, is brilliant in the way he sets this moment up because we have already heard a variation on this routine twice. Incredibly, the moment is much funnier because of its long set-up, not watered-down because of its repetition. When we first heard Rob pitching out the story he talks about how the box is almost magnetic to the wife -- a bit we see come to life with Laura when she exits the living room and then we see the swinging door swing fully just once before Laura reenters to stare at the box again. When Laura is actually watching the skit with her neighbors, they mention that the female is using her teeth to desperately pull open the box, and later that’s exactly what Laura does. The familiarity of the details make it so much more funny, especially considering the high horse Laura put herself on only moments before.

Also of note is the fact that Adler has made us wait almost twenty minutes for this moment, circling back to it and, in some ways, pounding us over the head that it’s coming, but only to underline how much we’ll enjoy it when it actually gets here. A lesser writer (and most modern sitcoms) would try to put some kind of twist on Mary opening the box, but Adler was smart to just give us the payoff we were expecting in the way we were expecting it. It makes the laughter more genuine because it doesn’t feel like a cheat.

Aside from the three-act structure, “The Dick Van Dyke Show” was quick and eager to embrace (at the time) daring storytelling techniques. It was quick to use frame stories, or create stories within stories if it served the characters and humor well. This was a much more adult show than most other comedies on television and the writers trusted that the viewers would be able to follow along when they tried something a little different or took the story in a surprising direction. It was also very successful at being both a work sitcom and a family sitcom. Other shows, most notably “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” tried the same juggling act before finally giving in and becoming one or the other. “The Dick Van Dyke” show, on the other hand, always kept the balance and, as a result, some of its best comedy came when the two world collided in twisted, uncomfortable ways. Look at this episode or when Laura accidentally lets it slip that Rob’s boss is actually bald.

Anchoring everything is Van Dyke and Moore, who share an easy, charming chemistry with one another that is never more evident than when they are arguing. Their speaking patterns and delivery allows them to deliver long mouthfuls of sentences from the script, and the fact that they are both tall and lanky results in some create physical comedy throughout the episode, first with Rob pretending to be Laura and later when Laura is fighting with the box. More than that, they never seem like anything less than smart, intelligent people, a trap so many great sitcoms fall into regularly by dumbing down their characters.

Though I only laughed once during “The Curious Thing About Women,” it was a long and fulfilling belly laugh that had been building the entire episode. And the rest of the time I was smiling widely. “The Dick Van Dyke Show” isn’t classic television because of its punchlines, but because it’s smart enough to know that punchlines are only part of what makes a great comedy.

“The Curious Thing About Women” is available on the first season DVD of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” on iTunes, Hulu and Amazon Prime.

Star Trek – “The City on the Edge of Forever”

Season 1, Episode 28

Original Airdate: April 6, 1967

Writer: Harlan Ellison

Director: Joseph Pevney

Producer: Gene L. Coon, Gene Roddenberry

Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley

Odd that the best episode of “Star Trek” also seems to argue against everything that the series holds dear. While the show always presents war as something the Federation and Enterprise will do anything to avert, here it appears to tell us it is necessary, and while the crew and Captain always seem to find a way to save lives no matter what the risk, here they seek to allow an innocent woman to die.

Of course upon further examination there’s so much more to it than that, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The episode begins with Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) accidentally overdosing on a drug that gives him manic paranoia. He escapes the Enterprise before he can be secured and manages to slip into the time stream thanks to a talking rock, and soon changes the course of history to the point where the Enterprise and Federation no longer exist. Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) follow him to 1930 San Francisco to stop him from doing whatever it was that created this mess, and in the process Kirk falls for dreamy soup-kitchen owner Edith Keeler (Joan Collins). Soon Kirk and Spock realize that Edith is meant to die and McCoy saves her, which accidentally allows Hitler to win World War II and change everything. Phew.

In case you couldn’t tell from the above paragraph, the storytelling here is very complex, but never to the point where you lose yourself in the intricacies.  Often, the first “Star Trek” series doesn’t get enough credit for its story structure and great complex storylines, but rewatch an episode like this or “The Trouble WithTribbles” and you’ll be surprised by how many balls the writers juggle with ease. While the plot here has many facets, it never feels forced or rushed. It was written by Harlan Ellison, then famously revised and rewritten by several producers and ghost-writers, and instead of feeling watered-down or convoluted because of the multiple voices, it soars on both a mechanical and emotional level. It would have been so much easier to write the episode about Kirk and Spock preventing McCoy from killing someone in his madness, but this is much more intriguing.

Joan Collins - Soft focus, angel lighting

There’s even time to create a sweet love story between Kirk and Edith. If we didn’t feel a connection between these characters then the episode would only feel like an exercise instead of a tragedy, which it really is. Director Joseph Pevney did his part by shooting Collins in close-up early and often – and almost always in soft focus and lit with the “halo” effect over her head to make her seem angelic. Honestly, it gets to be a bit much by the end of the episode, but thankfully the writing rises to the occasion. Though Edith gives Kirk and Spock kindness early, Ellison paints her as a character with many opinions and inner strength. She also owns a soup kitchen, which would normally be taking it a step too far into sainthood, but this actually serves a logical function within the episode. Of course Kirk and Spock would end up there, and of course the insane McCoy would be brought there as well. She’s a genuinely fascinating character in her own right, and Collins wisely underplays it (surprising considering her most memorable onscreen persona is just the opposite), and we can see why her beauty and personality attracts Kirk. I also have to applaud Shatner’s performance in the episode. He is known for hamming it up in this series and others, but here he beautifully carries the emotional weight of a man who has a date with destiny he doesn’t want to keep. Look at the pain on his face when he admits to Spock (and himself) that he’s in love with Edith, and watch the amazing moment when he hears Edith die and cradles his head into McCoy’s shoulder, unable to deal with what he did.

I said earlier that the episode seems to be pro-war, but upon further examination I don’t think so. McCoy breaks the Prime Directive by going back in time and changing history, and the episode is about setting that right, not insisting that lobbying for peace is silly and delaying the inevitable. Spock blatantly states: “She was right, but at the wrong time.” History happened the way it happened, and that is that. Any change, for the better or worse, is unfair to all it would effect in the future. Ellison was anti-war but other producers were against peace demonstrations and said the episode obviously lobbied for that, but I don’t think so. As a writer, I hate to admit it, but perhaps having multiple voices giving input into the story resulted in a far more complex question that the viewer continues to think about long after the episode ends.

I’m painting the episode as fully dark and depressing, but it really isn’t. In fact, there’s plenty of levity here. Kirk’s brief romance with Edith is charming, and there is a lot of early fun centered on Spock’s Vulcan ears and how Depression-era Earthlings react to it (“They were caught in an electric rice picker” is how Kirk explains it). By allowing us to laugh, it makes the emotion of the finale all the more impactful.

Time travel stories have always had a very special place in the “Star Trek” canon. Three of the best features (“Star Trek IV: The VoyageHome,” “Star Trek: First Contact” and the reboot/sequel “Star Trek”) deal heavily with time travel, and whenever it’s used in the many spin-offs (the two-part “Time’s Arrow” in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Trials and Tribble-ations” in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” are notable examples) the shows fire on all cylinders. And here there’s something so…fun…about seeing our characters wandering through the streets of a backlot trying to make sense of being out of time.

The original “Star Trek” series shot for the stars (pardon the horrible pun) and really tried to be about “something” instead of just presenting phaser battles and weird-looking aliens like the “Flash Gordon” serials and sci-fi monster movies of decades before. Like “The Twilight Zone,” its fantasies shrouded stories of real meaning in a digestible form. You never felt like you were being preached to, but you understood that the stories were on a different level. And the reason the franchise has lasted so long and through so many incarnations is that it tried to remember that. Sometimes the show failed, and sometimes it did get preachy, but sometimes, particularly episodes like “The City on the Edge of Forever,” it found that perfect balance.

Also, who would have ever thought that an episode about a talking, light up rock would be a masterpiece?

Addendum: I haven’t seen the episode since Paramount inserted new special effects into the series, but the results seem pretty damn flawless. I’m curious to see what the rest of the series looks like revamped.

“The City on the Edge of Forever” is available on the first season DVD of “Star Trek: The Original Series,” on iTunes, on AmazonInstant Video and on startrek.com