Caesar and Me (w/ Mark Malek)
It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is Time Enough podcast. Welcome to time enough podcast. It's where we delve into all of the episodes of the twilight zone and beyond. This is Matt here as always, bopping back in the other chair.
Speaker 1:It's Mark. Hello?
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:Is this your bit? Yep. Threatening a bit. You're you're gonna be wooden? Is that what you're gonna be?
Speaker 2:Not for just talking. I was gonna do a bit for the prologue.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. You gave such a oh, okay. I thought you were maybe I was, like, trying to read if your hello was, like, leading me in it, I was supposed to, like,
Speaker 3:take the bait of
Speaker 1:some kind. I guess not. It's like, oh, well, Mark's rather wooden today, isn't he?
Speaker 2:Well, the best joke is the one that you trick someone into thinking that you're about to tell and then you never do.
Speaker 1:Right. Right. Right.
Speaker 2:It's like, you know, the threat of another September 11.
Speaker 1:Like a Stanley Kubrick movie.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:They're all jokes. He was a funny guy.
Speaker 2:Joke. Yeah. He was pretty funny.
Speaker 1:No. No. He was funny. I mean, you just have to
Speaker 2:That wasn't that wasn't being sarcastic.
Speaker 1:Nope. Nope. Nope. Today, it's Caesar and Me, the second of our dummy episodes, but they'd already used the name dummy. So they were they say it a lot in this, though.
Speaker 1:It's one of those things where if you keep saying it, starts to sound weird. You know? Dummy. Dummy. Dummy.
Speaker 2:Did you see how they use did you look up how they use the same dummy again?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I might have said that when I did the dummy itself, so I don't
Speaker 2:I didn't put in today's trivia,
Speaker 1:but the dummy will be back. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the dummy's back.
Speaker 1:And the dummy's back. So that makes I mean, two episodes, that makes a very iconic prop, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:I guess it doesn't look just like the guy this time, but yeah. Or or, like, not just well, you don't get the fun face swap. Right? So there is no money shot like that one.
Speaker 2:That's the big problem here is I was like, are they gonna do that again? Well, they can't because masks just happened. So they sorta already did that just two episode. I mean, it's not a face swap, but they did a weird face thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They did weird face stuff.
Speaker 2:So I put here in verbatim in my notes. Let me see. Damn it. I had it right here. What happened?
Speaker 1:He had it right there. What happened? What happened to my notes? Who knows what happened to your notes? I have my I'm looking at my trivia right now.
Speaker 1:It's right here.
Speaker 2:Okay. Actually, wow. What the hell? Search doesn't work in this? Woah.
Speaker 2:I'm so confused.
Speaker 1:You're so confused. You need a dummy. Whatever.
Speaker 2:I put in my notes at some point that I guess it disappeared. Oh, no. No. Here it is. Oh, it's gonna be like the dummy.
Speaker 2:Wait. That already sort of happened in masks. I'm gonna guess that almost nothing will happen at the end.
Speaker 1:So nothing happened at the end?
Speaker 2:I was right. Almost nothing happened.
Speaker 1:Napopo came. They took him away.
Speaker 2:Who
Speaker 1:cares? Well, he does. He's arrested now.
Speaker 2:I mean, he robbed he robbed two establishments. He went to jail for robbing two. Nothing happened except for, okay, at the end. Well, the dummy told him
Speaker 3:do it.
Speaker 2:Dummy was real. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Dummies are real.
Speaker 2:Something. That's
Speaker 1:something. They exist in the world. Yeah. I I'll go ahead and do this trivia, I suppose.
Speaker 2:Right. Do
Speaker 1:it. Original air date was 04/10/1964. Script is by Adele Strasfield. Maybe you don't know that name. Seems she wrote this.
Speaker 1:One episode of a piece of Gilligan's Island and something called insight, and that's it. She had, like, three credits. But this is the only twilight zone fully credited to a female writer. So
Speaker 2:What I read in the IMDb trivia was that she was the secretary of the guy who was, like, the showrunner for the second half of the season.
Speaker 1:The producer.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or the producer? Yeah. So she basically the the two of them basically hashed this out together, and she got the credit.
Speaker 1:So Okay. Well, good for her. Yep. Robert Butler directed. Obviously not the case here, but he was a TV pilot man for shows such as Star Trek, Hogan's Heroes, Batman, and Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting, Remington's Steel, Lois and Clark.
Speaker 1:It's a staggering amount of pilot credits. I guess that that's just being a steady hand sort of guy. This isn't a pilot. Could have been the pilot for for Caesar and me the show. Caesar has a new owner every week.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Why not? Actually, this is if if you take every episode of the twilight zone as a backdoor pilot, this isn't a bad one. No. It's not a better great episode.
Speaker 1:Certainly better than Cavender's coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, better than the dummy. Like, where do you go with that?
Speaker 1:Jackie Cooper was Jonathan West and the voice of Caesar. He started off as a feature mem featured member of our gang, played Perry White in the Reed Superman films, and did a whole bunch of TV in the middle. Here, Maine's the youngest nom for a best actor academy award for Skippy in 1931. Cooper was nine years old at the time.
Speaker 2:What did he play the titular Skippy?
Speaker 1:I think Skippy might have been a dog. I assumed Skippy was a dog. I didn't look that deeply, but now now now I'm interested. Now I have to find out Skippy's a dog or not. I'll I'll I'll get I'll get back on the dog news, I guess.
Speaker 2:Does a dog is there an academy award for dogs?
Speaker 1:Skippy's the boy. He is Skippy. Oh, okay. He is Skippy. In the title.
Speaker 1:Why did I just assume he was a dog? I don't know. Because Skippy's not a good name for a person. Skippy's a name for a dog.
Speaker 2:You just wanted to diminish his achievements. Like, it wasn't.
Speaker 1:He wasn't. He couldn't be. He was he was servicing the dog. Wait. That doesn't sound right off.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So he got an Academy Award nomination for servicing a dog. The thirties are wild, man.
Speaker 1:Morgan Brittany credited here as Suzanne Coupito, her actual name, played Susan. As a child, she'd appeared in films such as Gypsy. Once in her twenties, she'd make a career playing Vivian Leigh in films like Day of the Locust, Gable and Lombard, and The Scarlet O'Hara War. In the eighties, she played Katherine Wentworth on Dallas. I didn't watch Dallas, though.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm the wrong vintage to watch Dallas.
Speaker 2:I still don't I I don't know. Am I ever gonna watch soap operas?
Speaker 1:Probably not at this point. You gotta watch your stories. If you're a little older, wanna watch your stories.
Speaker 2:I mean, I watched Oz. That was sort of soap opera like.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, the elements creep into other shows. But as far as I Yeah. Even Dallas is like, that's a primetime soap opera. Is that different than, like, a daytime soap opera? I mean, it is kind of.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:Probably. I I just feel like the main is is the main characteristic of soap operas that they have just a a thousands and thousands of episodes because that's basically the complete opposite of what I would ever want.
Speaker 1:Dallas only has I mean, it had, like, seven seasons, but it didn't have, like, an insane amount of episodes. Watched some of Nip Tuck with us back in the day. That's kind of a soap opera.
Speaker 2:Did not like Nip Tuck. I I can say it, and I can admit it now. I can eat it. One of you guys had me watch Nip Tuck. I did not like it.
Speaker 2:Okay. I can't tell
Speaker 1:it was just Go against.
Speaker 2:It wasn't like it was just the it felt like all the acting and the directing was terrible, and I don't know why.
Speaker 1:I have a feeling I wouldn't like it now. Like, I I know.
Speaker 2:I like dramas sometimes, but I I don't
Speaker 1:know. I don't know how that show would play now. I feel like it might not play be as captivating watching in 2025 for some reason, but I don't know why.
Speaker 2:Maybe. I I don't feel like people talk about it like they have fond memories of it. People talk about law like, Lost is derided kind of a lot, but people still, like, constantly talk about how much they love Lost and
Speaker 1:Well, that changed.
Speaker 2:Like
Speaker 1:That did quite a bit of a paradigm shifting for television, didn't it? But I think everyone felt betrayed by the ending, so everyone has, like, kind
Speaker 3:of some bad blood towards Lost.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, that that's some people
Speaker 2:just didn't like it, and and some people don't like it based on that apparently everyone was treated horribly working on it, which I definitely understand.
Speaker 1:I'll I'll just reiterate that I've had several rewatches of Battlestar Galactica, but not lost because they kinda aired slightly. They kinda started and ended about the same time, so I kind of, in my mind, stick them together.
Speaker 2:I've not rewatched anything except for The Next Generation.
Speaker 1:I got a few more actors here. Miss Caddali was played by Sarah Selby. She doubled down on the aunt thing playing aunt Gertrude on Disney's fifties Hardy Boys series. The pawnbroker was Stafford rep. We've already seen him here in Nick of Time and the Grave.
Speaker 1:A few years later, he was chief O'Hara on Batman. Yay. Everybody gets to be on Batman except for you and I. We are too
Speaker 3:we are
Speaker 1:too young to be on Batman.
Speaker 2:I I'm pretty sure some people weren't on Batman. Let's take York on Batman?
Speaker 1:I don't know. That's not while while you're doing the opening prologue, I'm gonna find out if Dick York was on Batman.
Speaker 2:You weren't gonna go into the name the guy whose last name is basically Bazinga?
Speaker 1:No. Because there was nothing interesting in his in his list in his career listing.
Speaker 2:Sorry. Don Gazzaniga was
Speaker 1:I did. I looked at
Speaker 2:his Cut that out.
Speaker 1:I looked at his Sorry.
Speaker 2:That's when I said it, I'm like, that's not no. That's bad. Cut that out.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah. Where was it? I looked at his page, but then I just didn't yeah. It wasn't interesting, so I moved on with my life.
Speaker 2:Yep. Well, that that happens. You know, Bazinga is pretty boring.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I'm gonna read this prologue while I drink this water. It will benefit no one listening to it and barely benefit anyone watching it.
Speaker 1:Some people hate this sort of thing on podcast mics.
Speaker 2:Jonathan West, ventriloquist, a master of voice manipulation, a man late of Ireland with a talent for putting people's putting words into other people's mouths. In this case, the other person is a dummy, aptly named Caesar, a small splinter with large ideas, a wooden tyrant with a mind and voice of his own who is about to talk Jonathan West into the twilight zone.
Speaker 1:Alright. Ironically, I wasn't watching you either because I was trying to find out if Dick York had been on Batman, which it seems he had not. However, he was on Insight, the show that today's writer also wrote for.
Speaker 2:I I I couldn't commit to any part of that endeavor except for, like, there was water sort of.
Speaker 1:Dick York only has Dick York only has 59 total credits. That's kinda wild.
Speaker 2:Weird. He's like the Kai Wynn of television.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And other than Bewitch, the only one he did a bunch of episodes for was something called Going My Way, which was 30 episodes. So interesting. Did
Speaker 2:did Dick Sargent replace Dick York, or did Dick York replace Dick Sargent?
Speaker 1:I I forget which way they dick around.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, all we know we definitely know that Dick Army commanded them both.
Speaker 1:Right. Yes. Okay. Where were we?
Speaker 2:He was the first one.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:The surgeon was the second one.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Because Dick York had, like, in his, you know, major, like, back problems or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which I guess maybe is why he only has 59 credits total.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Too bad that penny wasn't real or something.
Speaker 1:Right. You you could afford medical treatment with that penny.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, this wasn't a great episode. I did to to to his credit, I did think that the dummy was voiced by Mel Blanc, but it was voiced by the guy, the star of the episode.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:So to his credit, he did a great dummy voice.
Speaker 1:Let me hear your dummy voice.
Speaker 2:Hey. Hey, buddy. Why don't you beat someone to death outside? Why don't you beat them to death? Look at look at that guy.
Speaker 2:Look at how he's walking down the street. Do you want this guy walking down the street? Why don't you beat him to death?
Speaker 1:Well, you're no Mel Blanc. I'll give you that.
Speaker 2:Hey. Put WD 40 in my elbows. Do it.
Speaker 1:Do it. Do it. Do mean You have to love the
Speaker 3:conceit of your of the dummy that tells the guy to go commit crimes, though. That's that's that's
Speaker 2:It's not.
Speaker 3:That's baseline funny. You know?
Speaker 2:It's it's it's like I wasn't I wasn't, like, actively angry watching it, but I sort of knew it wasn't gonna amount to that much. The the kid was good.
Speaker 1:Desmond, I'll say the kid's great because she's just so horrible the entire time at the end of the episode. She's going to continue being horrible.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's like well, it was like, I I kept feeling, well, this kid's horrible and evil. But I'm like, well, he is actually robbing things. So, technically, her not trusting him and turning him in is kind of the I mean, I don't know, the right thing to do, I guess. It's
Speaker 1:Yeah. But she's a snitch. She's a rat.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, it's like, yeah. I I don't know. I don't know, like, how evil the establishments that he robbed were. I guess it's maybe that has has to factor into it.
Speaker 2:But, like, then she's it also didn't really feel like it quite added up at the end where she's like, to herd the dummy and turned him in based on that, but then also was gonna go and do crimes with the dummy. And I guess kill her aunt with poison darts.
Speaker 1:Yeah. She's gonna kill her aunt with poison darts, which I didn't know.
Speaker 2:So it's like a turret
Speaker 1:At least you're gonna notice that
Speaker 2:for no real a heel turn based on that I thought the dummy was real, and it is. I don't know. It does it's not it feels maybe maybe half baked is the is the
Speaker 1:A week later, she's poisoned if a week later, she's poisoned darted her aunt and and you're the cop called to the scene again, do you arrest the dummy as well at that point?
Speaker 2:Yeah. You just keep resting the dummy. Yeah. No. It's only the dummy.
Speaker 2:The actually, like
Speaker 1:Leave the kid. Get the was framed. Right. Yeah. I guess that's, like I mean
Speaker 2:That's not true. He did he did all
Speaker 1:these things. He did those crimes, but he someone told him to do it, so you can feel okay for him.
Speaker 2:He was a accomplice. But, yeah, that, what is it? What do you call that? Conspiracy? To conspiracy to commit burglary?
Speaker 1:Yeah. When I first
Speaker 2:watched disagree.
Speaker 1:When I first watched the movie Little Caesar, I was kind of expecting a dummy, partly because of the title of this episode and also because Edward g Robinson kinda looks like a dummy.
Speaker 2:I was expecting this to be related to Julius Caesar, but I guess it's Sid Caesar.
Speaker 1:Oh oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Because he's a comedian. You know, that didn't even occur to me. Just like the puppets called the excuse me.
Speaker 1:The dummy is called Caesar.
Speaker 2:It's the second really big shoe reference than a toilet's an episode that we've talked about.
Speaker 1:Hey. Hey. Shoes are an important part of the zone. How are you gonna get around without shoes?
Speaker 2:Well, a really big shoe would fit an entire dummy in it. I don't know.
Speaker 1:No. I I was a little bit I don't know if annoyed is the word, but just Jackie Cooper kind of, like, sometimes slightly doing an Irish accent and then kind of forgetting about it other times. That that that was mildly annoying. I guess it was annoying because I used the word twice.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He was a real Cameron Diaz gangs of New York about it.
Speaker 1:But it yeah. It's like, just don't do it. It was he doing it so the dummy voice would be more different, I guess?
Speaker 2:I think he's just lazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not not an accent, man. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I I have, like, five notes. Like, his act his half accent is kind of of pissing me off, blah blah blah. So
Speaker 2:It felt like it kicked in more after the narration that said he was Irish.
Speaker 1:He's Irish. Oh, I am? Okay. I better start talking that way more.
Speaker 2:Oh, the narrator said I have to be Irish then.
Speaker 1:I think before that, it was just like you couldn't tell because he wasn't doing it very strong, which and maybe it's good he wasn't doing it too strong or it'd be completely ridiculous if he
Speaker 2:was talking like a leprechaun. You know? I mean, maybe this episode would have been better if if Caesar had been a leprechaun, and he'd been an extremely Irish dummy that was telling him it maybe that's a problem. Right? I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's like I I guess Irish prejudice was still alive and well in, like, the sixties.
Speaker 1:Hey. But would this episode be better if Jackie Cooper just kinda talking, you know, like, New York talk and the dummy got a insane leprechaun voice? That that might yeah. Go go
Speaker 3:to rob the bank.
Speaker 1:Go and get the money for yourself.
Speaker 3:I think that would have actually been kind of fun.
Speaker 2:Go get me some gold. Yeah. I I can't even come close to doing one. But, yeah, that that yeah. That would have been more fun.
Speaker 1:Although, you know, it's with some regular cohost Andrew. You know, we did Psycho Vixens where where our friend mutual friend Devin does an Irish accent just because he told a joke to Andrew using that accent once. So he was like, do it
Speaker 3:in the movie, which was probably not a great idea, but whatever.
Speaker 2:As I recall, he did pretty good. Yeah. Usually, I don't I don't feel like it's usually a good idea to do an accent in a movie unless you no. It's just not. Like, I don't know because because, you know, we have our other film podcast where I keep noticing when people are not American.
Speaker 2:They're doing American accents, and then sometimes I even could tell how bad somebody's British accent, fake British accent is.
Speaker 1:Best accent choice was Nicolas Cage and Peggy Sue got married.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That one was just like a weird Redneck thing. Right?
Speaker 3:It wasn't a redneck thing.
Speaker 1:The explanation Nicholas Cage gave in some interview is like, well, Peggy Sue goes back in time. So this guy that was supposed to be cool, you know, is like a complete myth. So he just just giving a derpy voice of the 30 Peggy Sue would just be, oh my god. I like this guy.
Speaker 2:I think I I I think he was the main reason I watched it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Especially in the in modern times, that's the main reason I think you gotta watch that movie. You watch insane cage stuff. What's the vampire movie again? That that's a big hit.
Speaker 2:Ear dark?
Speaker 1:No. No. No. The one when the
Speaker 2:kid No. He was in a what? Once bitten. Was that
Speaker 1:it? That's it. That's it. The one where he's just wild yeah. That where he's that's one for early completely nuts cage movies.
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 2:Was Jim Carrey also in the hat? He was in maybe he was in Peggy Sue. I don't know. I don't know. Now we're just now we're just talking about Dick York like individuals and what movies they were in.
Speaker 1:Is Jackie Cooper a Dick York type individual? He's a little older.
Speaker 2:Not really.
Speaker 1:He's not he's and he doesn't have boyish handsome features.
Speaker 2:I mean, I I definitely feel called out about not having a good job, but I I definitely have done better than this guy. But but also, feel like the guy the employee employment agency has to he has to be able to do better than, like, what? You've never had a regular job. I can't help you go to hell.
Speaker 1:I know. You can wash dishes, data entry. You know? There's there you can give people jobs that don't have a ton of experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Dig graves. Dig graves is a dummy. Right. Rob a bank.
Speaker 1:Don't take your dummy to job interviews, though. That that's not a good call.
Speaker 3:Unless you're
Speaker 1:planning to answer questions with the dummy for the job interview, then you should bring the dummy.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that there's something where you could bring a dummy and get it like an incredible opportunity because people are just like, wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 3:But Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Not this time. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I mean, I guess it's clear in my room what's gonna tell you to commit crimes.
Speaker 2:I think what you need to do is take the dummy to the job interview and then do good cop, bad cop where the dummy is the bad cop. Be like, hey, mister. I'm a real hard worker. I need a job, and the dummy's just like, I'll kill you. I'll kill you and kill your family.
Speaker 3:And then you will take his cookie. You will take the cookie, and you will eat all the cookies.
Speaker 1:For the listener, I do have a cookie monster puppet in my room. He's now telling Mark to kill
Speaker 3:a man for cookies.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, you know
Speaker 1:Hey. He's a monster. It's in the name.
Speaker 2:See, that's how you would do it. You you apologize for Cookie Monster, and you come off looking really good. So I'm like, yes, Matt. I will hire you to dig dig dig graves in my graveyard.
Speaker 1:I'm a brand new gravedigger.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. You start at $5 per grave.
Speaker 1:Guess what, Bob? I'm a gravedigger now. It's I I wonder if anyone's ever been excited about getting
Speaker 3:a gravedigger drop.
Speaker 2:If any if any of the corpses pop out of the graves, then I'll dock your pay, unfortunately. So make sure
Speaker 1:that the people I wanna be a gravedigger.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's not I'm sure some people
Speaker 1:This girl, Susan, little Susan in this episode, maybe that's her aspiration. She's a bit twisted. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, amazing finding a child actor that's actually good.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She was I mean, let's be real.
Speaker 3:She was doing a better job than Jackie Cooper this episode. Who
Speaker 1:Yeah. Wasn't horrible, but the the the, the accent was kinda kneecapping his performance a bit, I think.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's it's it's uncommon to see when they have that scene together where he catches her in his room. He's like, what are you doing? Like, she's clearly much better actor than he is, which is really weird.
Speaker 1:Well, I But Although, it is weird that she ended up playing, like, Vivian Lay and, like because, you know, you hear about guys that play Lincoln all the time or or Hitler, but not so many Vivian Lays out there. You know?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, she could probably play Lady Hitler if she wanted to.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Sure. Why not? Right. That sounds like a seventy day exploitation film.
Speaker 1:Lady Hitler. Oh, that's good. I'm thinking of Ilse of the SS, aren't I?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, she could she could've done
Speaker 1:played also. Yeah. Maybe.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know what? She's in Buck Rogers in the twenty fifth century, maybe.
Speaker 1:Oh, we might catch up with her one day in in our wild podcast streams. Let's see what else have we got.
Speaker 2:Oh, she's in three episodes of the Twilight. Did you say that?
Speaker 1:I did not. I said that that other dude was.
Speaker 2:Oh, she was in nightmare as a child and valley of the shadow both times as little girl.
Speaker 1:Right. That make well, at least she gets a name this time.
Speaker 2:So she's like basically a veteran of the twilight zone at this point.
Speaker 1:Sometimes they get blinded by the other credits when they give me a whole bunch of other credits in front of that, which is what happened.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yep. No. I mean, there's plenty of stuff I've skipped that were everybody knows I've skipped a bunch of stuff. Trying to figure out what nightmare as a child even was because I forgot what this I forget this entirely.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Teacher keeps seeing a strange little girl in her apartment building. Why do I forget this?
Speaker 1:Because it was season one, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But it's like, I completely forget this.
Speaker 1:I somewhat remember it. Little girl. Yeah.
Speaker 2:She's important in this episode.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Yeah. She got a name in this episode. She didn't get a name in that episode.
Speaker 2:But, I mean, she was well, okay. She's probably in this one more than that one, but she's, like, sort of the main catalyst there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I don't
Speaker 2:remember this at all.
Speaker 1:Nobody actually gets murdered in this, though. They just there's just the intimation of murder. Right? Like, they don't murder the night watch watch when they could have done that. They just suggest little Susan's about to to go do some murder, but nobody dies.
Speaker 1:At the end of the episode, Caesar's still clean. He didn't steal anything.
Speaker 2:The thing is I'm not really convinced that Susan's gonna do anything. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:She might be lazy.
Speaker 2:Well, it's like a little girl is gonna she's not actually thinking I'm actually going to kill I'm not actually gonna do murder and run away. Like, that's not I don't think that's how little children's brains work.
Speaker 1:They're like Yeah. But once once Caesar's talking to you, maybe you've had a psychotic break of some kind.
Speaker 2:That's possible. That's that's something, like, maybe maybe we could have done with a little more of that and a little less of of Jonathan. I don't know. Maybe that maybe it should have been cut in two.
Speaker 1:He's got a few sidelines, so room for one. Me and my friend that is. That's a creepy
Speaker 3:thing to say.
Speaker 2:Do
Speaker 1:you have any other big observations you wanna throw out on this one?
Speaker 2:I didn't think this was great, but, yeah, it was fun. So I can't hate it, hate it.
Speaker 1:And I think this is how twilight zone does comedy best where it's not quite comedy. It's just so goofy and weird that it's funny. Because when they try to just be funny, it usually goes off the rails. You know?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's just that comedy is built on surprise, and I didn't feel like anything was crazy.
Speaker 1:This doesn't have that, which is very nice that we don't have the the that that helps. See, I would hate this episode if it had that soundtrack. So
Speaker 2:I was expecting that. Actually, what I the first the very first thing I wrote in my notes is, I wonder if this will be like the bard, but with Julius Caesar following the guy around. No. No. Julius Caesar, teach him how to do all your politics.
Speaker 1:Featured music by Richard Shores. It's a little hard to tell from Wiki if that means he, like, composed for this episode because it's kinda rare at this point that we get a straight up new soundtrack. But
Speaker 2:I didn't really notice, but I didn't didn't notice I did not liking it.
Speaker 1:It it it's just there. It it my main point is it didn't, like, ruin the episode like it did with the bard. I mean, the bard might have already been not a great episode, but, yeah, the music was the one that just drove the nail through its through its forehead.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The bard was like I I didn't I didn't hate the bard, but it was a mess.
Speaker 1:I think I hated the bard.
Speaker 2:It's not it's not good. It's not like I'm gonna I'm not gonna rewatch.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's that bit of Burt Reynolds, which is fun. Right? I could see, like, watching the Burt Reynolds part again. But yeah. I don't know if that's that's kind of
Speaker 2:a bummer. There aren't really many episodes of the twilight zone that are, like, comedy episodes. I'd be like, if I did a selective rewatch that I would. And and it's I don't know if it's ironic, but it's like severance, which is one of the best shows it's on now, which is heavily influenced by the twilight zone to the point they had an episode called the after hours a week ago. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Is done by a comedy guy, and there are funny things in it. And and there are definitely parts of it that are outright comedic, but it's, like, also just overall devastating.
Speaker 1:Well, the most modern zone is Jordan Peele. Right? You you know, kind of comedy comedy. So
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, it's like they say that comedy and horror are close cousins, and I guess it's that whole surprise thing. Like, you have to have surprise for comedy. You have to have surprise for horror, but there just isn't any surprise here unless you're really surprised by the dummy being real, which to me was not not particularly surprising. You know?
Speaker 2:It's like, I think, honestly, masks was funnier than this. So yeah. And and and masks no. Mask did have deliberate humor in it, but, I think it was also funnier and better than this. So it's like I I also I mean,
Speaker 1:I up the weird. That one also just has such a weird factor, which this one loses a lot of any weird factor it might have just because we've already done the dummy thing. You know? Yeah. Living Daw.
Speaker 1:I mean, we've had that too, which was in a dummy, of course. But I I feel like that goes
Speaker 2:That was also funny.
Speaker 1:That goes in the ballpark.
Speaker 3:It's a yeah. And you know what?
Speaker 1:Living Daw for me was think you'd either think it's one of the funniest episodes that are twilight zone or you don't like that episode. You know? Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I could definitely see not liking it, especially if you had, like, a stepdad like that.
Speaker 1:Because that and what's in the box had, like, kind of, you know, horrible domestic abuse in both episodes. Right? But what's in the box just, like, kinda felt nasty about it where Living Doll felt a little more Looney Tunes about it.
Speaker 2:Once in the Bucks was basically only funny because of the poor execution. But, you know, it it is interesting that if you look at the season as a whole, there are kind of more horror elements. It does feel
Speaker 1:like they're all horror stories. Isn't that
Speaker 2:what they wanted for
Speaker 1:another season of twilight zone? They're like, go do more supernatural and horror and stuff.
Speaker 2:It's what ABC wanted
Speaker 1:to take it over there. Is gonna change networks. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if it's something like they looked at this season where, like, well, the horror ones are good, so maybe do more of those. And clearly, Serling eventually was like, yep. Let's do a bunch of horror stuff. You know, a a couple years later. I don't know.
Speaker 2:How many years is Night Gallery in the future?
Speaker 1:Eight, I think. So maybe four years in the future. Yeah. There's like a western in there or something that he worked on in between.
Speaker 2:Neat. Let's do that. Mhmm. Let's do that.
Speaker 1:Let's do everything. Yeehaw. Try everything like Shakira and Zootopia.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Try everything like Shakira and Zootopia.
Speaker 1:Let's do questions. Who in this episode goes in or through the twilight zone? I mean, the prologue says Jonathan West. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But also, Jonathan West seems completely unsurprised that the the dummy is telling him what to do. So, Susan?
Speaker 1:Yeah. See, I'm sitting here looking at closing narration. A little girl in a in a wooden doll, a lethal dummy in the shape of a man, but everybody knows dummies can't talk unless, of course, they learn their vocabulary in the twilight zone. So the closing narration is not putting Susan into the twilight zone. We we can.
Speaker 1:That's fine. I'm just noting that the narration does not.
Speaker 2:I I feel like she's the only one that was remotely surprised, including the detective. Like, this guy got caught, like, immediately. Nothing really like, it was we didn't even talk that. First. Sure.
Speaker 2:But I don't know. They'll probably make her give the money back.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. She met yeah. She didn't get a rent in the end, does she?
Speaker 2:Because the the private dick or the the local dick house dick. That's the word.
Speaker 1:House dick.
Speaker 2:Caught him. Anyway, yeah, that was it was a series of poorly thought out and simple dull crimes that were obvious, and he got caught immediately. So, yeah, I was gonna say Susan because she was the only one that had any, like, that had her perspective changed at all. And, if she continues on along that path, then she's just sort of she's just, like, getting on the on ramp to the twilight zone.
Speaker 1:Or or the the on ramp to the the thug zone. In juvenile hall. Teenage thug. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:She'll be, yeah, she'll be in juvenile detention, like,
Speaker 1:her dummy, with with Caesar. There's a show, Oz, but one with Caesar. Caesar's a character on Oz.
Speaker 2:Alright. I think Caesar it's the the show is that Caesar just shows up and people say he's like a cursed object. People find Caesar, and he talks them into doing stuff. But it's like, how many how many people can he possibly convincingly get to, like, listen to a dummy?
Speaker 1:Six seasons down the line, you'll find out. How about how about their deservingness of being in the twilight zone? We we gotta say Jonathan West. He is in the prologue. So does he deserve
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I imagine he was surprised at some point. We just didn't get that moment because it predated the show. Right? He his surprise moment was, like, a a week, a month, a year ago, because he's very used to to Caesar now.
Speaker 2:If you know that Caesar's talking, then you should know not to listen to him when he tells you to rob a bank. You know? I rob
Speaker 1:a We can build you up slightly, doesn't he? First, like, oh, it's a nice tie you've got today. Well, thank you, Caesar. Hey. You know, you could get some new ties, but you don't have money.
Speaker 1:How do you get new ties?
Speaker 2:I yeah. It just
Speaker 1:How are you gonna get a new tie, Mark? What are you gonna do?
Speaker 2:Not. Maybe I'm not enough of a sucker. So, like, listen to this. I've never had anybody talk me into doing something.
Speaker 1:Sure. You have. Okay. Not like that.
Speaker 2:I remember when you talked me into buying all those Beach Boys reissues.
Speaker 1:That was
Speaker 2:good. Like, I like those.
Speaker 1:Well, they are good.
Speaker 2:I enjoyed them. They're good. But it was also you talking me into them without me, like, necessarily knowing what I was doing.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. Well, you learn later. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I
Speaker 1:I I never good example. Buying Beach Boys reissues. Now if I'd gotten you to buy, like, the catalog of the Bay City rollers, that that might be a little snarkier.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure I like Bay City rollers. Maybe I do.
Speaker 1:Well, that's I'm trying to choose a band that's, like, more, like, you know, blah. I mean, they're not the Beach Boys, are they?
Speaker 2:Back in the day, you liked fish, and I didn't. So if you talked me into buying a bunch of fish CDs, that would have been
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Caesar talking to the skyrocket and robbing him
Speaker 1:slightly bad about that now. Yes.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, that did that thing did happen where I had that that girlfriend who liked fish, and I was like, oh, yes. I have seen the CDs of fish on my friend Matt's shelf. And she got me a fish CD for my birthday, and I, like, really hated it and hid hid it from view until like I didn't think I would ever see her again and then I drove far outside the city to sell it to used CD store. So no Because that was the
Speaker 1:only used CD store left?
Speaker 2:No. Because no one I didn't want anyone seeing me with it. I really didn't like it.
Speaker 1:I I don't know. Yeah. But there's no way she's listening to this,
Speaker 2:so I don't there's no way she's listening to this, so I don't care. But if she did listen to this, it I'd hope it would be funny and not.
Speaker 1:If you're selling your music, that suggests you don't like the music. So
Speaker 2:Yeah. But I don't I didn't wanna be seen with ever having it.
Speaker 1:Maybe someone gave it to you as a present. You didn't like it. Now you're selling it.
Speaker 2:I didn't even wanna I didn't want anybody to know that I'd been given this a present.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, we've had your anti fish rhetoric on today's podcast. That's fine. Susan, does she deserve any what does she deserve? I guess she hasn't done anything yet, so it's hard to talk about if she deserves anything.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you snitch that hard on some dude who's just staying at your mom's house or your mom's whatever halfway house.
Speaker 3:She is a total brat, which
Speaker 1:is just again, that's the the actor is is fantastic making her a brat. You know?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, I'd say that she's more, lawful evil than, you know what I mean? Then, Jonathan is like, whatever chaotic evil, stupid evil.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I was gonna say stupid evil.
Speaker 2:Stupid evil. Now I think that that I feel like she probably would get something bad happened to her eventually anyway if she continues on this path of just being kind of a evil child. So yeah. Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 2:She deserves it. No. Actually, well, then again, can you assign can you assign desserts to a child? I kinda know.
Speaker 1:So let's let's look at
Speaker 2:change my answer to no.
Speaker 1:Let's look at Jackie Cooper as a child. His father forbids Skippy to play in the pauperized shantytown because of its filth and criminal surroundings. Regardless, Skippy and his friend visit Shantytown where Skippy meets a new boy named Suki. He saved Suki from the bully Harley Nubbins, and Skippy and Suki become these names are fantastic. I have to go through the entire list of the names of Skippy.
Speaker 1:Skippy Skinner, Sookie Wayne, Eloise. That's not interesting. That's like giving the the woman the name Helen. Right? Sydney has not now okay.
Speaker 1:Harley Nubbins. Okay. I I actually already got into all the the good names. Oh, here we go. In the scene where the dog dies, director Norman Tarag needed
Speaker 3:to get his nephew, Jackie Cooper, to cry. So he told young Jackie he was going to kill his own dog by dragging the dog off set and then having a security guard shoot the dog. Cooper did the scene, but despite finding the dog was not harmed, he was still hysterical for hours afterward to the point of needing a sedative. Yeah. Thirties child acting.
Speaker 3:There we go. That's horrible.
Speaker 2:I should know.
Speaker 1:Jackie Cooper doesn't deserve anything. Even his character doesn't deserve anything after that.
Speaker 2:I can't believe that you, like, brought up a dog earlier, and then this is the dog reveal. They're like, I'm gonna kill this
Speaker 1:dog and Scooby. Okay. That that that was
Speaker 3:more of a twist ending than two fifty had.
Speaker 2:If they'd have put that in the episode, like, Susan has a dog and Caesar's like, I'm gonna take your dog out to the woods and shoot her if you don't kill your head.
Speaker 3:The night watchers should shoot your dog.
Speaker 1:Well, the thirties are horrible. Well, guess they
Speaker 2:did offer They really were.
Speaker 1:They did nominate best actor for it, though. And, we'll see. It's triplometer zero to five. Where do you wanna place this one?
Speaker 2:I'm giving it a 1.5 because I have to give it a 1.5 because it's a dummy that's real. That's it, really.
Speaker 1:Okay. I'm having a mirror image. I was like, I don't think the episode's that trippy, but just the dummy talking to you and telling you to commit crimes is it's it's it's inherently trippy, which made me wanna say 3.5. So it's kinda like I'm coming to that with similar logic, which I guess makes sense, which I guess really means maybe it's kinda down the middle, which is
Speaker 2:Do you remember what you gave the dummy of this a trippometer? Because it's like I feel like that almost should directly influence this. Like, it's on a curve. Like, there's no way that this could be rated higher.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Maybe I should have been keeping track of my trippometers or something, but I never did that. And it's season five now, and it's not gonna happen.
Speaker 2:I I listened to your masks episode, but I don't remember what you guys gave that.
Speaker 1:It was pretty high. I remember that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because that's that's trippy. I if I gave the masks not higher than this, that was a mistake. I'm pretty sure I
Speaker 3:get it higher
Speaker 2:than Yeah. There's no way. There's no way. But it's like that that it feels like the direct descendant of the dummy because it's a weird
Speaker 1:But, yes, folks. The one I did to the episode I recorded two or three weeks ago, I do not remember what I gave it on the trip o meter.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm not gonna remember what I gave this in trip o meter tomorrow. I'll probably like, oh, I don't
Speaker 1:know why I gave it a seven. I don't know. Different day. Might give it something different. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You don't know.
Speaker 2:It's pass I I don't think I would give it higher than a 1.5 to be honest.
Speaker 1:That's fine. Yeah. It's a, you know, differing opinions are more interesting, aren't they?
Speaker 2:That's true. I'm just saying I think I think that's probably my maximum out of charity because I I do like you know, there there are there are issues here, and the issues are mostly about the episode not being all that not reaching hard enough. If you'd been like, okay. Even just you're gonna rob a bank and it's gonna be you're gonna rob a train. You're gonna rob another guy with another ventriloquist.
Speaker 2:You're gonna you know, are you gonna, like, put me through the bank slot and they're gonna put the money down my throat?
Speaker 1:Caesar Caesar talked them into making this episode. Go ahead. Put me in front of the camera. I don't know why I'm giving Caesar the accent now. The real Caesar has the accent.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The real Caesar has the accent. It's just when he's acting, he sounds like Mel Blanc.
Speaker 1:Put me in front of the camera. That's right. Clack. Clack me draw around a bit.
Speaker 2:It's like Nicole Kidman, how she never is has an Australian accent when she's acting.
Speaker 1:Okay. I guess we will wind this one down for today unless she had something else you wanted to shout about this episode.
Speaker 2:I think the dummy should have been named Lamont.
Speaker 1:Okay. Sure. That would
Speaker 2:mean, like, you big dummy. Okay. That's
Speaker 1:it. That's it.
Speaker 2:That's the joke.
Speaker 1:That's the joke. Okay. That's not
Speaker 2:any worse than Caesar's jokes, dammit.
Speaker 1:We do all of our joking at time enough podcast. Leave us a joking review or rating, a positive one. Be positively funny if you want to. We do lots of podcasting and occasionally tell jokes at PodcastioPodcastius.org. Films and filth, we talk about highly rated and lowly rated movies by IMDB users.
Speaker 1:Podcast nineteen ninety nine, we're talking about Planet of the Apes, the TV show at the moment, and there's video game stuff like Luke Globes, Pokemon, game game show, and monster mash. Okay. I'm finished doing that.
Speaker 2:Alright. Well, stay
Speaker 1:Get off the mic. Don't Go ahead. Get off the
Speaker 2:mic. Snitching.
Speaker 1:Go go go steal something. You want a cookie. Right?
Speaker 2:I do want a cookie.