Description: Season 2, Episode 25
Air Date: April 28, 1961
Plot Summary: A loudmouth is challenged to not speak for a full year in exchange for $500,000.
Review: Does this episode count as a classic? I see it aired quite a bit so I'm assuming it's at least mid-level classic. Regardless, it's another so-so episode for me. What are we at--like 5 in a row now? You're killing me here, season 2! There are a few amusing aspects to the story but not a lot happens, and it's not really a relevant tale or timeless. We simply get a loudmouth yuppie-type who is hanging out at a boy's club in the '60s. I don't know if people are even familiar with these kinds of settings anymore, but I know they still partially exist today. Anyway, this loudmouth is having financial trouble due to his squandered inheritance and gold digger wife. Another old chap at this club has grown wary of the loudmouth and bets him $500k that he won't be able to go a whole year without talking. Needing that money, and with his reputation on the line, the loudmouth accepts the challenge.
They decide to keep the loudmouth in the club's basement and monitor his every move. Every move?! Needless to say, the loudmouth is going months and months without talking and the old chap is getting worried. To try and force the loudmouth to snap, the old chap tries to talk shit about the loudmouth's wife cheating on him--which she probably was. Yeah, I'll be gone for a year, honey, love you, miss you, bye! As the final minutes of victory tick down, the loudmouth emerges to collect his money only for the old chap to reveal he is broke and planned to resign from the club. Still not speaking, the loudmouth next reveals he knew he couldn't win conventionally so he severed his vocal cords. Dun dun DUN! And that's pretty much all there is to the episode. The final twist isn't even that shocking with all things considered. Eh, I can see why others may find an appeal to this episode, but I felt it was predictable and lackluster.
The main character Tennesson was sort of an annoying yapper the first scene of this episode, but he wasn't as annoying as McNulty in "a kind of stopwatch", they should've used him here. Still, that senior member of the prestigious club was a prick in spite of how annoying Tennesson was. Again, I would sympathize even more with him saying "I dislike you intensely" if it was McNulty. Of course he accepts the bet to stay silent in a room for a year or else there'd be no plot.
ReplyDeleteOne would often wonder how anyone could just automatically drop their wife, job, and their whole life for something like this, but it's the Twilight zone so I'll go with that. Also, it appeared that he didn't have a job at the time since he was always trying to borrow money, his wife wasn't the type that would miss him terribly, especially since she's a gold-digger and she apparently became known about $500,000 being at the end of that year. Alot of wives may be ok about their hubbys dissapearing for a year if that kind of money came at the end of it. But alot of wives may also be highly suspicious of such a situation. Either way though, his wife was a talked about but unseen character in this episode.
The old man, besides his crazy bet and his insults, telling Tennesson that he refuses to give him a predated check and that he would just have to take his word for it was the first sign that this guy was a lowdown scum. Something about him kind of reminded me of the Duke brothers from "Trading places", along with them also being senior members of a prestigious club initiating an unsavory wager (and Coleman muttering "scumbags" after being told about the Dukes' bet in that film).
The club in this episode I guess was also similar to the high society club in TZ episode "Back there".
The old man, besides the bet and his insults, then felt the need to be making remarks to Tennesson on his wife. And his lowest move, him not having the 500G, which I already highly suspected all along, came there sure enough. I was waiting and hoping for Tennesson to knock out that no good son of a bitch when telling him that he didn't have the money after everything.
One other question, if he did have the 500G, would Tennesson then no longer be qualified for receiving it after revealing that he severed his vocal cords? Because that was technically cheating, wasn't it?