Description: Season 5, Episode 5
Air Date: October 25, 1963
Plot Summary: A disgraced Jockey is granted the thing he wants most in the world.
Review: I think we definitely have another contender for the worst episode list. It's a shame too, because I can appreciate the one-man show concept being unique to this episode. All we get is a jockey named Grady, played by Mickey Rooney, who has been fired after his most recent scandal. I gotta say, how the hell is horse racing a sport though? The horses do all the damn work! Anyway, Grady is a whiny little bitch with an inferiority complex. Magically, an alter-ego version of Grady materializes to taunt the guy. Strangely enough, the alter-ego claims it will grant Grady any one wish as well. So this is a genie story now? Grady idiotically wishes to be big, in the vaguest of terms, and is turned into a giant man. The alter ego then explains how stupid the wish was and offers up better ideas that would have helped Grady in the long run. In the lamest of twists, Grady is offered his job back, but now he's too big of a man to be a jockey. Oh no!
The reason this episode fails so hard is due to the nonsensical nature of the plot. What exactly is this alter-ego? The episode explains it as a kind of force of the universe or something. Hell if I know. They clearly wanted this to be another genie episode but couldn't structure the plot around it--leaving us with this. While I applaud Mr. Rooney for carrying the episode by himself and talking to himself, that's the only saving grace. This is just a bizarre story in general.
No comments:
Post a Comment