Long Distance Call

Description: Season 2, Episode 22

Air Date: March 31, 1961

Plot Summary: A boy continues to talk to his deceased grandma through a toy telephone.

Review: This is another average episode for me. It has a creepy concept, but it doesn't play it up to be as scary as it could have been. Imagine if the parents talked to the ghost and it sounded disturbing or it wasn't really the ghost of the grandma at all. I know TZ rarely wanted to freak out the audience, but I hate to see an idea like this softened for the kiddies.

The plot is that it's Billy-boy's birthday and his sick grandma has given him a toy phone. They establish that the grandma has a close relationship with Billy, and they make a point of showing the jealousy of Billy's mom. Not sugarcoating the situation, the grandma tells Billy-boy this will be her last birthday with Billy as she is dying, but Billy can always talk to her through the phone. Well, that's not a weird thing to say to a kid at all! Sure enough, grandma goes bye bye but not before speaking nonsense. Grandma says that her son, Billy's dad, was taken from her by the wife/mom and that she thinks of Billy as her son now. What is with wives and mothers in law? Silly women. "She's trying to destroy me!"

Anyway, Billy's behavior begins to change, and he puts himself in dangerous situations at the behest of grandma's ghost whom he talks to incessantly on the phone. It would seem grandma wants Billy-boy to join her in the afterlife. When that bitchy mom takes away the phone Billy decides to drown himself. Paramedics manage to save the kid, but he's comatose or something due to this. The dad, believing that things are real, speaks with the grandma on the toy phone and begs for her to leave Billy-boy alone--that Billy isn't her son. Grandma appears to listen and Billy makes a miraculous recovery. Overall, it's a good episode, but the potential to make things genuinely frightening were squandered. If they had fully utilized the setup, this could have easily been one of the best episodes without question.