{"id":3507,"date":"2024-07-09T16:28:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T20:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jappersandjanglers\/?p=3507"},"modified":"2024-07-09T16:28:00","modified_gmt":"2024-07-09T20:28:00","slug":"rockin-with-rod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jappersandjanglers\/2024\/07\/rockin-with-rod\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockin’ with Rod"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/a>

Mr. Serling, WWII and spinner of yarns
Source: Flickr user meltwater<\/a>
License<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

I saw another list. The internet is a tyranny of lists. At first, I enjoyed participating, ranking my own taste against that of, well, everybody else. But now, now I\u2019ve seen too many lists, had my heart broken one too many times. This list was about TV shows. Nearly every winner premiered in the last 25 years, with a hefty weighting toward the more contemporary. Where\u2019s the fun in that? Has nobody ever heard of Ernie Kovacs? I\u2019m only 30, for God\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

Faced with another defeat, I had to see if anything I liked was actually any good. Where better to start than the original Twilight Zone<\/em> (1959-1964). I grew up with the News Years\u2019 and July 4th<\/sup> marathons. Sure, it\u2019s a hodgepodge of morality tales, sometimes so thick with allegory Rod Serling felt the need to offer an interpretation in the closing narration. You know, for good measure. Sure, it\u2019s in black and white and wasn\u2019t made by HBO. But was it so paltry it couldn\u2019t make a top 50 list? \u201cThe Dummy\u201d seeped into my developing brain so thoroughly that images of Willy\u2019s face haunted me for years. Occasionally, my brain, no apparent reason to be seen, screeches \u201cit\u2019s a cookbook!\u201d How bad can a show that induces such childhood trauma be?<\/p>\n

Looking for a place to begin my quest, an episode I\u2019d never seen caught my eye, \u201cNight Call\u201d from season five. Directed by Jacques Tourneur of Cat People <\/em>(1942) and Out of the Past <\/em>(1947) fame, \u201cNight Call\u201d is replete with tension from beginning to end. Elva Keene (Gladys Cooper) is an elderly, disabled woman who lives alone in a cabin in the country. More than this, she is lonely, only ever seeing her daytime aide. Elva waits and waits by her phone; it\u2019s her only connection to the world.<\/p>\n

That is, until one night during a storm when her phone rings\u2014no voice on the other side. The calls become more and more frequent even as the caller becomes bolder and bolder. \u201cHellllooo,\u201d it rasps over and over. \u201cWho are you?\u201d Elva screams. The disembodied caller sounds like a zombie creaking out its first words after decades of dusty sleep. Eventually it even seems to know her name, who she is.<\/p>\n

Her little cottage seems to grow dimmer and dimmer, more masked by shadow; Elva succumbs to hysteria.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s just the thing: she\u2019s not hysterical, not really. She reacts exactly how many elderly people would. I\u2019ve seen it with, I regret to say, my own eyes: a growing loneliness. As her aide keeps jabbing, she needn\u2019t pick up the phone. But what else is there to do? Who would harass someone otherwise so alone? Why? And why give up the one connection she has to the outside world? Elva must know; the voice must account for itself. Elva begins calling the phone company like she\u2019s praying the Liturgy of the Hours. They must know.<\/p>\n

The original short story by Richard Matheson (who also co-wrote the teleplay with Serling) ends differently, but that\u2019s no matter. \u201cNight Call\u201d is The Twilight Zone <\/em>at its best; it distills this creepy feeling down to its bare essence. It offers just enough realism to feel plausible, for me to imagine just such an old woman having just such an experience. But the terror feels preternatural, something unknowable pervasive. Plus, the moral ain\u2019t half bad.<\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019ll make a series of this\u2014who\u2019s to say? Me, I guess. There\u2019s much Twilight Zone <\/em>to be watched, and I need to see why my taste, it seems, is so bad.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw another list. The internet is a tyranny of lists. At first, I enjoyed participating, ranking my own taste against that of, well, everybody else. But now, now I\u2019ve seen too many lists, had my heart broken one too many times. This list was about TV shows. Nearly every winner premiered in the last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2640,"featured_media":3510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1731],"tags":[4524,4518,4521,4527,3663,542],"class_list":["post-3507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-gladys-cooper","tag-jacques-tourneur","tag-night-calls","tag-richard-matheson","tag-rod-serling","tag-the-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\nRockin' with Rod<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Faced with another defeat, I had to see if anything I liked was actually any good.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jappersandjanglers\/2024\/07\/rockin-with-rod\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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