It may have lost some of the magic in my book, but it’s still an incredible half hour of television. Students of film should watch this to appreciate the craftsmanship. Overall this is still a wonderful episode and I would consider this “required viewing” for anyone who wants to see just how much could be done with a limited budget. I sure hope he didn’t say they had flipturn faces… that was the one he used to describe me! I have no idea what a flipturn face is but wish I had thought to ask him to describe these creatures. When that same nephew was younger, he was describing our faces and had some very odd descriptors: upside down triangle, circle, and our personal favorite: the flipturn face. There were many faces and I could see the difference in each they just all had that odd configuration of left-upturned lip, droopy eyes and piglike nose. There are hints of some form of dictatorship when the doctor questions why everyone has to look alike, but they clearly didn’t. The tyrannical leader spouting words about conformity proves only that someone in the production crew thought everyone looked alike. The episode does go some way to creating a conformist regime, but it never builds enough on it. Oh, I admired my nephew more than ever and that was already a pretty high point, but this elevated my admiration to new heights. It’s a magnificent piece of visual trickery a testament to a bygone era that could do more with shadow than we can with CGI. The entire episode works hard to make sure we never notice the absence of faces and it does it well, despite my nephew’s observation. A cigarette pack becomes the focal point when moving between people. A nurse stands in front of the doctor who is facing the camera. It has a flow but it almost becomes a game of spot the camera trick. We are given a 10 minute story that is somehow extended to over 25 minutes and it still works. The use of shadow and camera angles is a triumph of form over substance. Now that doesn’t really stop this from being a great episode. When my nephew said what he said, it was like showing the magician’s trick for all its non-magical properties. Sure, I knew what was coming! I’d see the episode dozens of times, but it always had a magic to it. And then he said to me, “I bet she’s going to look normal and all the other people will look scary.” Some part of his young mind must have realized we had never seen the faces of those others around Ms. I was excited to see his reaction, but he was anxious, asking repeatedly what will she look like, what happened to her… all the things a 5 year old would ask. My nephew and I have always been close and, though he’s of a nervous disposition, he came in to watch it with me. Seeing this episode start, I sat to watch it. My nephew was about 5 when I was visiting my mom for one of the summer holidays that was airing a marathon of The Twilight Zone. The episode relies on the audience being so caught up in the plight of Janet Tyler that they miss an obvious fact. She feels like an outcast and her earliest memory was of someone screaming when they laid eyes on her. I didn’t have to like everything about her, but I did sympathize to some extent. Still, I did find her likable, despite this mostly because that has to be a tough experience. She doesn’t freak out and, did I mention, she’s 10? When Janet Tyler lost her cool, I remembered that she was an adult and had been to this medical facility 11 times!! This should have been old hat by now. It’s become just a part of her life and she does what she has to do, actually looking forward to it for a day off of school and a trip with her dad. She’s as brave as any intrepid hero on the Enterprise going without fear. My niece is 10 years old (at the time of writing). And for this, we turn to the real world for Exhibit One. Now maybe if I really want to rationalize it, I could say that she’s so desperate after 11 attempts that she loses her cool but I don’t feel it fully I’m offering her an excuse, but not one I fully buy into. But… this is her 11th time in the hospital. The first question I have to ask, however, is: is the protagonist really that likable? I feel for her, absolutely, because she’s wrapped in bandages and when she freaks out, beseeching the doctor to take them off, it’s a palpable moment. And it offers us a very important life lesson: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s also a nice departure for Serling this season, giving us a more likable protagonist. At the very least, it’s one of the top 5 episodes. It is perhaps the most well known episode of The Twilight Zone.
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