This is another morality story from the original "Twilight Zone" series coming in during the final/ 5th season of the series. (Season 5 , Episode 14) It's written by Earl Hamner Jr. but does take place more in the contemporary urban/suburban world.
The main character is a man named Oliver Pope who is introduced as a man who is part of the modern world absorbed by it and the fallings of it. He's a man who works at an office job and wants to get ahead and not focused on anything else, this will be his undoing. It's a setup that also fits with many parts of the series as a whole, the idea that the present's problems are that it's moving too fast, that people get wrapped up in things that might otherwise not really be worth it, and that the too present mindedness makes us forget the impact of our actions.
I like how the episode begins with Oliver driving his car in the rain and he hits a paper boy on a bike, gets out of the car to look around, and decides to just get in his car and run. [Also this is like one of those things where you go people looked older in the past, even the kids.] They are getting this out of the way first, we are getting no background of his day or anything he's just a man decided to just leave a kid he hit because he didn't have time to deal with this. A woman shows up and is like hey stop but she doesn't see him and he's gone.
Hmm, I hate the newspaper anyway/ Copyright CBS
Oliver comes home and his primary concern is... a co-worker might be gunning for his job. He also gets mad at his wife because I think running over someone would probably sour my mood too. The wife isn't one of the Twilight Zone mean wives so that's good, because I don't think we are supposed to feel for Ollie. His wife notices that someone has fooled in garage and he sees that the car's headlights are going on and off by themselves. And the way the music goes off when he touches inside the car, makes me think the car was on like Spooky Music Radio.
I'm going to eat you, yeah I eat/ Copyright CBS
Mrs. Pope notices the paper is late. (It's going to be late, it's currently black and white and red all over) Oliver has some guilt as he calls to find out how the boy is doing in the hospital. Apparently, you could just call the hospital and get info like that. It's good that Oliver feels some guilt. The car honks in the garage at night, by itself. (I wonder)
The next day, the wife says that the boy is near death and that she hopes they catch the man. (I hope they do too) Oliver has decided to not go to work. I do think it's interesting that they made the episode have the wife hear the car too, I kind of think the "Tell- Tale Heart" idea here would have been somewhat more interesting if it was just him hearing the honks. Mrs. Pope decides to drive the car and when it gets to the spot where he hit the boy, it just kind of stops. I'm not sure why the car is mad at the wife, though. But it's at the shop now.
I'm not moving... you can't make me/ Copyright CBS
The honking shows up again and the car is in the garage. Nobody knows how the car got back there. Pete, the man he thinks is trying to take his job, shows up at the house. Oliver tells him straight the man should back off trying to take his job. He's also here where Oliver finds out the news that boy is dead now. That's right Oliver committed manslaughter. A woman sees a car whom she thinks is driving by the hit and run guy.
Oliver finds out that the man is Pete. Oliver's partial relief at letting a man take the fall for him is being disturbed by the car making noise in the garage, and apparently deciding to break itself. Later at night, the car starts playing the radio. Oliver goes to stop the car and news comes to make sure he hears it. (The news just tells people the address of the suspect and quick funeral too hmmm) The car has the power to rewind the radio too, it seems. Oliver decides to start smashing the car's radio and lights. (He's going to have a hard time explaining that one) Then he tries to break the horn too.
This is how I fix my car/ Copyright CBS
He decides to go to work by bus since he's not trusting the car. The car is like "no you ain't" , opens the garage, backs out, freaks the wife out, and drives better than people. The car decides to chase Oliver which makes a different meaning to car chase. Earlier the wife said it's going to rain, he said no it's not and well the weather decided it didn't like him either. The car had a chance to run him over but tells him to get in loser, instead.
Hop in , loser/ Copyright CBS
The car drove him to the police station and he walks in to face his justice.
Oliver is not a character they want us to root for or feel for at all, he starts with a callous disregard for the boy and it never stopped. His guilt is mostly the worry that he'll be caught and how things get worse when the boy dies because he knows it will be worse for him. The storyline with him thinking about getting ahead in work, thinking that Pete is trying to steal his job is interesting as it places the idea of modern times getting in the way and that he wasn't thinking about what was important or owning up to his own mistakes.
I like how the episode looks, the shots being really done outside give it realistic feel and a movie like tone. The shots are perfection. Oliver's actor, who returns from a previous episode, Edward Andrews plays a man who isn't even in malice he's just so self-absorbed and worried about his stuff that nothing else matters to him. The moment it starts and he sees that he hit a boy, he has no emotion but not robotic, he treats hitting a boy on a bike like someone would treat tripping over a bit. His reactions aren't over the top. I love how the car operating by itself was done where you can't see a driver. There's sense of thriller and suspense to this episode, yet we're kind of not rooting for the the guy.
Oliver being mostly a normal guy plays well , because it shows that it could really be anyone. He's not villain in the sense of ruthless and evil, but that he decided to make a terrible decision that he could have avoided. He was so raptured into what his own advancement was that he made things tragic for a lot of people.
I do think it would have been more interesting in a few spots. I think having the car only be heard by Ollie and only doing weird stuff around him, without the wife noticing, would have made this slightly better as it would be a good way to show that the conscience in him was trying to get him to confess. Same with the ending where he just walks up in the police station seems kind of weak, when it should have been more somehow forcing him or that his guilt was triggered better, or the car did something to have him end up being spotting by the police. That's minor though.
This episode is fun, I liked it. It's not the top tier but still good. Interesting concept and pretty fun.
That's it for now, tune in next time, when a car gives you a ride. Don't ask where you're going.
