The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 2 Episode 9 (The Trouble with Templeton)

One of the common themes with The Twilight Zone is going back to relive past glories.  Youth seemed great when compared to adulthood.  In the case of Booth Templeton, he longs for his first wife, Laura, who was taken from him after too short a marriage.  Sure, he has a great career.  He even has a second wife, who is younger and more beautiful than he deserves.  It’s not the same, though.

True to Twilight Zone fashion, Booth gets the opportunity to step back to 1927 and have a second chance with Laura.  It dawns on him that maybe his first marriage wasn’t exactly the way he remembered it.  He’s taken back to 1960 to continue with his life in his present.

One of the problems in reviewing episodes of The Twilight Zone is that they’re often basic.  There’s not much to them.  This is the case here.  (It’s what Rod Serling might call a detour into The Twilight Zone.)  It’s just enough time for the main character to get the message.

It is an understandable message.  At some point, you realize that most of your life is behind you.  You would be forgiven for thinking like Booth does.  It would be nice to go back and relive the fun parts.  Unfortunately, it’s not always that fun.

I think this is what made the show so accessible.  It didn’t try for anything fancy.  It told its story plainly and was never insulting or condescending about it.  This may be a byproduct of the half-hour format, but it works.  Don’t live in the past; live in the present.

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The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 2 Episode 1 (King Nine Will Not Return)

Isolation was a theme that came up often in The Twilight Zone.  It was used in the very first episode, in fact.  When the second season started, Rod Serling apparently decided to return to a solitary person trapped in an otherwise vacant area.

Capt. James Embry finds himself next to the wreckage of his plane.  He knows that it’s his plane and that his crew should be nearby.  However, Embry also finds himself alone with no help and no way of communicating with anyone else.  He spends the next half hour wandering about, wondering why he’s there and what he can do about it.

As with many Twilight Zone episodes, one character carries the bulk of the episode.  Many of the better episodes had just enough of the supernatural that you could almost buy it.  There’s also that twist ending that makes us wonder how much of it was real.  Here, not so much.  I mean, we know that it has to be a delusion or a dream.  Right?  People don’t just magically find themselves in the middle of the desert.  And there is a plausible, realistic explanation for it all, except that one hint that maybe it isn’t.

It occurred to me that having the series be an anthology might have been a blessing.  For starters, a viewer could easily pick up in the middle of a season.  Marathons could be aired out of order with little consequence.  Also, could you imagine one character having to go through all of these problems?  This would have to be the unluckiest person in the world.  Then again, there’s no real hook.  We never find out what becomes of Capt. Embry.  I suppose whatever issues he had would be worked out eventually.  He’d get over whatever put him in the Twilight Zone and move on.

It’s a good episode, even if it is similar to the first one.  There is a certain amount of predictability, but the series is still bale to pull it off.

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