MovieChat Forums > The Twilight Zone (1959) Discussion > Showdown with Rance McGrew

Showdown with Rance McGrew

posted 7 years ago by wordsatplaytoday
10 replies | jump to latest

Two things about this one I don't get.

1) That Jesse James ended up in heaven.
I find this surprising.
I can see the Devil letting Jesse come back to give a hard time to someone on earth. Even threatening his life.
But would God, or whoever is in charge of Heaven, have let him do this?
Jesse should have said, "We don't like what we see when we look up from down there," instead of mentioning that he was looking down.

2) Jesse drives away at the end.
Since when did JJ ever learn to drive a car?

Humans are not the only species on earth.
We just act like it.

[–] puddleglum5999 7 years ago

Those are both two very valid plot holes in a subpar episode. If Jesse James really was in Heaven, why would he want to leave? Why would he care how he was being depicted on a TV show? Now, if he was in Hell, he would probably be looking any excuse he could find to get out of there.

[–] SidekickinWhiteFury 7 years ago

The good parts of this episode is the reflexive humor Rod is poking at the production of a television show.
And I like Larry Blyden's acting here more than in A Nice Place to Visit.
There are logic problems with Jesse James as mentioned, but it is a comedy episode.
Not in the top twenty, but not in the bottom twenty either.

[–] richspenc 7 years ago

I liked Showdown with Rance McGrew better than the season one wild west episode Mr Denton on doomsday. I don't know, hearing that sloppy drunk guy sing "How dry I am" made me cringe, and the town saloon bully who kept makin him sing it, him pushing him around, and then him challenging him to a duel, etc. I'd though that the TZ could do better than recopy that old cliché. With Rsnce McGrew, there was a real TZ element added to the episode with the protagonist mysteriously finding himself suddenly taken from the set and placed in a nearly identical real life version of the set and the saloon. So yes, I liked Rance McGrew more than Mr Denton.

[–] wordsatplaytoday 7 years ago

The good parts of this episode is the reflexive humor Rod is poking at the production of a television show.

Hmmmm...... Good point.

Westerns were real big at the same time TZ was on, right?
So maybe Rod is making fun of how dumb they are compared to his genius and creativity of TZ.

There are logic problems with Jesse James as mentioned, but it is a comedy episode.

And notice how much different both Jesses looked?
The one for Rance is dressed all in stereotypical bad guy black.
(I couldn't find a screen shot of him.)

Here is the TZ JJ:

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w1000/5RhnnDU3NmzPflsuSDyFK7YYo4B.jpg

The real Jesse James.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/10/d0/dc/10d0dc1fe43ad74b1d290bd8d7f2abb2.jpg

Looks nothing like the "real" one as portrayed in TZ.
Not as big or imposing and looks younger.

Humans are not the only species on earth.
We just act like it.

[–] SidekickinWhiteFury 7 years ago

Yes Westerns were huge at that time. Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Rawhide, and many others. So you have a good idea that Rod was poking fun at the genre.

[–] wordsatplaytoday 7 years ago

Not only were they big then but they are the trend these days, such as those you mentioned, on the retro channels and the cable movie channel Encore even has an all Western all the time sub channel.

I never really went for them myself though I do like Blazing Saddles.

Humans are not the only species on earth.
We just act like it.

[–] telegonus 7 years ago

I agree that the humor, basically the entire tone of Rance McGrew is reflexive, a comedic take on the unreality of the at the time ubiquitous western series on the tube back in the day, which probably makes it play rather oddly now for those who were born later. For those of us who weren't, it's nostalgic and still rather funny. I like Arch Johnson, but he strikes me as miscast as Jesse James in this one.

Larry Blyden was well cast in the lead, and he seemed more consistent (?) in his playing than in the earlier A Nice Place To Visit episode, which sort of required him to "act all over the place". His accent in that one is off putting, a standard issue take on a what a grownup Dead End Kid would talk like, but overall I find Blyden's playing in that one excellent.

[–] wordsatplaytoday 7 years ago

I like Arch Johnson, but he strikes me as miscast as Jesse James in this one.

I dunno if you looked at my earlier post where I mention this and point out how all three Jesse James are different.
The real one and the two in the TZ episode.

I think it's on purpose to miscast Arch as a way of further satirizing Westerns in this one.

[–] telegonus 7 years ago

True enough. Arch Johnson, a good actor, was one of those TV guys who appeared in a lot of westerns. He was a familiar face to TV viewers, yet he never became a true "name" player, so in a way it sort of was very good casting, especially given Johnson's ability to project amiability, and so it all fit nicely into the prime time network programming scheme of things of circa 1961.

[–] rhs6358 7 years ago

I don't know what intention Rod Serling or CBS had, but that episode always struck me as a potential pilot for a series. A western comedy, perhaps. I know that Larry Blyden was a big Broadway performer back then and was just starting to establish a television career, so they may have been thinking about using him in a series.

This may explain the quirky plotholes. Sitcoms can pretty much go anywhere they please with a story, it doesn't really have to make sense.