Melinda
Dillon
Greg Mullavey
Virginia Keehne
Brittany Wilson
Joshua Harris
Judith Barsi
Claire Nono
Elma Veronda Jackson
Pamela Gordon
Laura Waterbury
Todd Allen
Isabelle Walker
Story:
Wouldn’t it be nice if once in a while everyone would just shut up and
stop pestering you? Wouldn’t it
be great to have the time to finish a thought or spin a daydream. To think
out loud without being required to explain exactly what you meant. If
you had the power, would you dare to use it, even knowing that silence
may have voices of it’s own . . . to
the Twilight Zone?
A
very harried housewife, saddled with 4 or 5 kids (it's difficult to make
out how many she actually does have, they jump around so much) and a very
hapless husband, gets absolutely no rest during her busy day. With watching
the kids, going to the store, cleaning, picking up after her husband,
etc., is seems like she's on the verge of a nervous breakdown. One morning, in a scene that could only happen in a TV show or movie,
she's cooking bacon for breakfast, and one of the kids puts a dead garter
snake on the hot grill. When mom sees the snake, she screams in terror,
and the kids all laugh.
While gardening, she comes across an amulet buried in her garden. After thinking it pretty, she puts it around her neck. Later on, while doing something in the house,
she tells the kids to stop it when they begin making too much noise, and
she is surprised to find that they actually freeze.
She finally figures out that the amulet has magic powers and begins
to use it to give herself some peace and quiet.
She stops the action at the grocery store, and takes a contested
item out of a rivals' grocery basket, right under her nose, and walks
away with it. After filling up her cart, she stuffs some
money in the store manager's pocket on her way out. When her doorbell rings, she freezes the nuclear
protestors on her doorstep, moves them around and arranges them in a pattern
on her front lawn.
As she's taking a bath one night, her husband
begins yelling. She goes out to
find the early warning alert on the TV, and learns that nuclear missiles
have been launched all over the place. She stops time, to protect her family, but
when she walks outside and sees the missiles hanging suspended over her
city, she realizes that she can never start time again, or everything
will be destroyed.
This
story was written by James Crocker, and I'm assuming he adapted the teleplay,
too, since I can't find any other information on that point.
It’s an intriguing premise handled in an extemely silly manner.
I recently met James Crocker, and he's a very nice person who thoughtfully
autographed my laserdisc of this episode, rather than telling me to take
a hike for being so nasty about his story. I had to apologize for this
review, and he does know that I'm one of the few who doesn't like the
episode. The vast majority of people love it, so it's my problem, not
the episode's.
My main problem with the episode is I can't figure out why this mother wants to save such a noxious bunch of kids, even if they were hers. The real question in this episode is why this woman stays around for the kind of abuse her husband and kids heap on her. Is she half-witted? If the family had been a little more ordinary and sympathetic, the show might have had a power that would grab me. As it is this entire family, as well as the town they live in, deserves to be nuked. The only thing about the show that really stays in my memory is that last shot of the missiles hanging suspended over the town. To me, it could have been great if someone had either tweaked the script, or directed it in a more muted manner.
Last
revised:
Saturday, January 8, 2005
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the Website Owner: Marta Dawes