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Neither "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" nor "Living Doll" stick the landing

posted 7 years ago by AngularTurnip (3333)
8 replies | jump to latest

They both should have left it up to the audience to decide whether a supernatural element was involved or not. Showing a damaged wing at the end of "Nightmare" is fine. Having Shatner's character look into the camera and tell the audience he'll be proven right before too long and then to have Serling confirm this in his outro is not. But the ending of "Living Doll" is even worse. How cool would it have been if the possibility was preserved that Erich did just imagine the doll? Not only do we find out this wasn't the case though we find out because the doll threatens the wife, which makes no sense since the wife did nothing. By threatening the wife the episode is robbed of any deeper meaning; it just becomes an evil doll story a la "Child's Play (though Serling's outro, which hints at the doll being a possible protector for the girl, seems to suggest more is going on than appears, though, why would the little girl's protector threaten the mom?).

[–] telegonus (727) 7 years ago

Both episodes suffer for their endings, AT. I agree. Nightmare is good but not a favorite. A lot of the love for it seems to be Shatner related. Like he's a guy in an airship going crazy: Capt. Kirk goes bananas. Still, Shat's good, though the ending would have been better if left "open". I don't know why Serling felt the need for this kind of "closure". It's not like his viewers were idiots or needed pictures to be drawn for them. Even the kids were smart.

Talking Tina never worked for me, period. It was one of those episodes you knew the ending of early on, or roughly speaklng anyway. It's got the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

[–] AngularTurnip (3333) 7 years ago

That's why I prefer episodes like "The Dummy" over these two. To what extent Willie is only in Jerry's mind we're never told. Instead, Rod leaves it up to us to decide the realness of Willie. He doesn't employ the "subtlety of a sledgehammer" approach used most egregiously in "Doll." Then again, by Season Five, most episodes were given the "sledgehammer" treatment as Rod was no longer as hands-on anymore, and thus his passion, which was the guiding force in the earlier, superior seasons, was gone, resulting in a pretty mediocre batch of final episodes.

[–] db20db (16147) 7 years ago

But that extent is definitely emphasized by his manager in the dressing room when he issues an ultimatum.

And where in the ending is there an allusion that the switch between the two is merely in his mind ?

[–] AngularTurnip (3333) 7 years ago

Like "The Howling Man" this episode uses Dutch angles to give us a sense of what it might be like inside a troubled person's mind. That and the fact that no one but Jerry sees Willie do anything leads me to conclude that the last scene isn't reality but a visualization of what it looks like inside Jerry's shattered mind. There's also the symbolic shot just after Jerry throws the mirror at Willie where we see Willie reflected in said mirror -- only there's a crack down the center of the mirror, splitting Willie in two. Willie represents half of a personality, Jerry occupies the other. Their sides are switched, in the end, to Jerry's disadvantage. Finally, one of the hosts at The Fifth Dimension podcast, pointed out that the scene where Jerry thinks he's destroyed Willie but it turns out to be in fact Goofy Googles isn't played like Jerry can't physically destroy Willie; instead, his brain betrays him when he tries.

But you can see Willie as totally real as well. That's the beauty of the episode.

[–] telegonus (727) 7 years ago

Speaking of The Howling Man it struck me when watching the thunder and lightening opening showing what appeared to be a castle identical to that of The Lateness Of The Hour, which opens show showing wind, rain and some lightning but no sound effects, or not at the Howling Man level. I wonder if anyone's picked up on this...

[–] AngularTurnip (3333) 7 years ago

I noticed that too. Both "Lateness" and "Howling" have a gothic feel to them. It's a shame "Lateness"' atmosphere is hamstrung by the dire video format; a great deal of "Howling"'s appeal has to do with the spell it casts visually, a spell "Lateness" could have also cast, subsequently elevating the episode's rep, if not for the cost-cutting measures that sealed its fate.

[–] Strannger (2007) 7 years ago

I wish the living doll had played out like that. At the end it was in his head or the little girl did it.

[–] AngularTurnip (3333) 7 years ago

Some kind of psychic link between the doll and the little girl could exist: Tina and Christie share the same full name for one (which couldn't have been a coincidence). For another, as Serling mentions in his outro: "But to a child caught in the middle of turmoil and conflict, a doll can become many things: friend, defender, guardian." I love that Tina is made out to be an anti-hero of sorts. But I'm still not entirely clear why Christie, working through the doll, would threaten her mom, who has shown her nothing but love and support. Then again, maybe Christie is at this point drunk on her own power and putting even her innocent loved ones on notice. Or, maybe she doesn't trust her mom completely. After all, the mom hooked up with a man like Streator, meaning her judgment is pretty suspect.