7/27/2023 0 Comments Twilight zone the hitchhiker![]() ![]() (“Going my way?”) While it’s a great episode, it’s the tension that makes it great, not the story. But even that interaction is an interaction and I was annoyed because she never once says to the woman, “what do you mean? I am her daughter!” She merely accepts that the strange man who quotes Frank Sinatra is death and she finally decides to go with him. Only when she calls her mom and gets a woman she doesn’t know does the truth dawn on her and only because the woman says Nan died 6 days ago. He didn’t drive the car from the passenger seat! Each of these people have very distinct interactions with Nan. (Comically, she sees the sign for food and gas but runs in the opposite direction!) Then she meets with Popeye the Shoeless Wonder who actually gets in a car with her and drives across the state. (Dude, back up!) She then goes to the Gas-Eats garage, run by Crotchety McDouchebag, who actually advises this helpless, lovely lady to only come back if she gets mugged. ![]() (Her monologue is both poetic and creepy.) She then goes to a diner where the Waiter of Close Talking leans in and gives her theories on why hitchhiking on the turnpike is a bad idea. Interestingly this is where she first sees the specter of death, that vague scarecrow man who stalks her for the rest of her journey. Thus, he knows she’s alive by the mere fact of acknowledging the alternative. Nan opens the episode interacting with a mechanic who says she should be calling for a hearse, not a mechanic. It’s an amazing visual treat that warrants a second viewing, but once it’s known, it can’t be forgotten and it changes the way you view the movie for every subsequent viewing. Oh, you don’t realize it until the end but every interaction is cleverly disguised to be a non-interaction. Bruce Willis’ Malcolm Crowe interacts with precisely no one (barring Haley Joel Osment’s Cole Sear). ![]() The issue is that the movie does an amazing job creating a world for a dead guy to inhabit. Maybe the problem is that I’ve seen The Sixth Sense, but when I’d first seen this… and, in fact, probably up until the tenth time I’d seen this episode… I hadn’t seen that movie. This is where we join Nan, and believe me, this is a prime example of how a favorite episode may not be a best episode. Inger Stevens plays Nan Adams, a young woman driving cross country when somewhere in Pennsylvania, her tire has a blow-out resulting in her needing a mechanic. It’s eerie and yet relatable and has a whopper of a punchline. The Hitchhiker: it’s a staple of The Twilight Zone, a quintessential episode shown during every marathon. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |