Mute

Description: Season 4, Episode 5

Air Date: January 31, 1963

Plot Summary: After her family dies in a fire, a mysterious girl is taken in by the town sheriff and his wife.

Review: This is a rather bizarre episode, but it's very original at the same time. The story played out like a full-fledged movie which is unusual even for TZ. The episode starts off with weird scientists proclaiming that humans were once telepathic. Right. I can buy a lot of bullshit, but that's a tough sell. Years later, the experiment is in full swing as the scientists have accessed their children's latent, telepathic powers. As fate would have it, one girl's parents are accidentally killed in a fire which leaves her alone in a world where she doesn't understand any form of communication but telepathy. This girl, Ilse, played quite well by Ann Jillian, is taken in by the local sheriff and his emotionally unstable wife. Well, she comes off unstable to me. Conveniently enough, this couple's daughter died recently and, of course, Ilse reminds them of said daughter.

You may think this is going to turn into some Carrie White plot line or that Ilse killed the parents, but, surprisingly, they transition the tale into a family drama; it definitely could have worked as straight horror though. The wife develops a love for the girl as she helps Ilse cope with her new surroundings. The sheriff is rightfully cautious since it's obvious the wife is desperate to fill the void of the dead daughter. Nevertheless, the couple grows fond of Ilse and tries to adopt her. Around this point, some bitchy teacher bullies Ilse into learning how to speak which conflicts with her telepathy. The episode almost loses itself here as it starts to go on a tangent about Ilse losing what makes her special, the teacher talking sheer nonsense about Ilse being a medium, and other scientists from the experiment deciding to let Ilse stay with the sheriff and his wife. Ehhh...if you watched enough dramas from the '50s and '60s this kind of plot convolution shouldn't be surprising, but it is still annoying. Ilse does learn to speak which makes her lose her telepathy, but, at the same time, they acknowledge that her parents never really loved her and only saw her as a test subject. Well, that's fucked up. Ilse is finally adopted by the couple and appears to live a happy and normal life with parents who genuinely love and care for her.

There are a lot of ideas bouncing around here that don't fully come together. I did like the uniqueness and movie-like presentation, but the story feels shallow nonetheless. It's hard to explain, but the devil is in the details; we needed explanations in a few more facets to truly grasp the plot. A mother-daughter tale was a welcome change of pace despite the unresolved aspect of the dead daughter. Overall, this is a mixed bag of interesting concepts that weren't explored properly despite the increased time allotted. I don't blame the writers though as they were just trying to keep TZ afloat with stories they could pad out for the extra 30 minutes. This doesn't mean that the episode is bad, since it was actually enjoyable, but it needed that extra oomph to make it memorable.