With my "The Twilight Zone" posts, I have so far, never done a post on the original series. I've mostly dipped into the 2003 series, the 1980's series, one look a the 2019 series, but the original hasn't been touched upon. This is really a shame on my part, so I think I should rectify this situation. There will be spoliers, but I'll point it out .
We are looking at Season 2 , Episode20 : Static, that first aired on March 10, 1961.
It starts with boarding house members watching television and doing some other things as well. The TV has some weird western going on, then a commercial about green cigarettes (those aren't cigarettes) there's some racing, singing, and other stuff on television to make a point. A man named Ed Lindsay doesn't like this mindless television so, he goes downstairs, to listen to an old radio from 1935. Ed looking fondly on this radio is like someone in 2020 looking back on this phone from 26 years before:
It helps even having a kid , who wasn't around 26 years before, be confounded by such a division. The music playing is modern music, that Ed doesn't like either (same ,Ed) and he finds a station playing a song he does like. (Tommy Dorsey) He also starts hearing old radio shows after banging the radio (I miss being able to bang things to get things to work again.) Ed is kind of grumpy. The other boarders don't understand how he was able to hear old time radio. ( because reruns don't exist or something. )
Yeah yeah radio... Copyright CBS
He wants to show them with a portable radio, but that doesn't work. The boarders don't care because "Gunfire"is coming on.( I wonder what that is) Also pay attention the station name, WPDA, that's important for later. There's also a woman named , Vinnie Broun, who was intending to marry Ed many years before but things happened, so they aren't; more on her later too.
He tries to show Vinnie and another boarder, Professor Ackerman, the station on his big radio, but it's not coming in. They try to phone the station but WPDA hasn't existed in some time. (Dun dun dun) Ed wonders what did he hear then. (poor guy) When they leave he hears the radio announcer say that President F.D.R was speaking, and F.D.R speaks. ( Taped F.DR. the real F.D.R was unavailable for the taping of this episode)
F.D.R , you aren't J.F.K/ Copyright CBS
He tries to call the professor to hear it , but again no F.D.R. Vinnie wants to talk to Ed, and he mentions he thinks everyone thinks he's lost it. Vinnie calls him cranky and other works, she mentions how they've been living together for 20 years in the same boarding house, but never got married. They met in 1940 and later he proposed. Things happened like his mother got ill and he wanted to wait, She tells him that they had their chance and missed it. He admits he loved her.
She tells him that this time of year was the anniversary of when they met. The song he keeps hearing is the song they listened to, and the shows too. Ed gets angry and kicks her out of the room because he thinks that she thinks he's lost it. Ed starts to get obsessed with his radio. (The episode gets weird sitcom music) he comes home and wonders what happened to his radio. Vinnie had it taken away.
This is spoiler territory, so you can skip a head to end (after the last red word at the end of this block)
Ed finds out that she had hsi radio hauled away by the junk man, he goes to find it, and buys it back for $10. It still works! He goes back to his Tommy Dorsey song, the one he and Vinnie shared a long time ago. (I'm getting sentimental over you, is the song) It ends up back in 1940 and it seems that he got his second chance.
Spoiler over
The radio symbolizing Ed's wanting to relive the past is a pretty interesting way of doing it, and having the conflict be that he and Vinnie missed on something big in the past, correlation to the programming on the radio is master class. It's a great way of showing how we connect to the past through old media. A modern example, could be TV shows, and still music. A thing in the past to connect us back to maybe a happier time in life.
The deeper part of the episode is the conflict of Ed and Vinnie where regret from the past comes into the present. The memories connected to the regret eat at both of them. The ending (that I won't give way in this section (if you were the spoiler skipper) is a nice one, not something I was expecting how it was going to end. I think it's nice.
That's it for now, we are going to listen to this radio that's playing stuff from 1975,and see what happens next!
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