The Twilight Zone Review: The Encounter

By William Kozy

What a strange, unwieldy episode “The Encounter” is. It’s a big disappointment as many fans have attested to, but it does have some assets. For one thing I’m pleased over how the two actors, who have not been recognized as…shall we say, master thespians in the annals of television history, actually come off surprisingly well. Kudos to director Robert Butler (who also helped Jackie Cooper give a fine performance in the episode “Caesar and Me”), and kudos to the two leads in one of the few episodes with a total cast of two or fewer performers. Neville Brand, in reality one of the most highly decorated combat soldiers of World War II, has a strong tank of a face and plays his part of a tough ex-Fight Nav, with equal parts bluster and wounded psyche. And George Takei, famous for playing the Starship Enterprise’s navigator, had become something of a pop culture joke in recent years, but here in this episode we are reminded that he actually had some chops.

He’s able to pull off some casual conversation with aplomb but also is able to go for broke and deliver the goods on some very high intensity emotional monologues. So what went wrong? I’d have to put the blame on the script that pushes and pulls these two men in wildly opposite directions from moment to moment while not helping the actors out at all by supplying a provocation. Perhaps that’s why the episode received only 6 votes in my survey of fans and writers asking, ‘What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?’ tying it with 11 other episodes for 106th thru 116th place of the 156 episodes.”

Mr. Fenton is seen going through some “junk” in his attic when his attention is suddenly caught by an old Japanese samurai sword. He unsheathes it, looks at it with something between awe and shame and throws it across the room. Just then we hear Arthur Takamuri calling from the bottom of the steps. Arthur came into the house looking for Fenton because he was told Fenton was looking for someone to care for his lawn. The two men strike a deal and Fenton invites Arthur to come up and have a beer.

Immediately the offenses come out as Fenton calls Arthur “boy” and scoffs that Arthur calls himself that anglicized name. Arthur admits his born name is Taro, and will later demonstrate that he’s no chump as he calls Fenton on his gaffs, telling him, “While we’re at it, Mr. Fenton, I get bugged by ‘Boy’. Europeans are always calling the natives ‘boy’ and going by the white man’s burden. Well, the facts are I’m a full grown man. I work for a living and I answer to Arthur Takamuri, and believe it or not, sometimes to Mr. Takamuri.” Fenton again scoffs, not respecting Arthur’s point of view. The episode repeats this pattern ad nauseum: Fenton says something offensive, to which Arthur takes offense, to which Fenton blows him off by telling him he’s “wound up” or not to take things so seriously.

The episode proposes to be a microcosm of a battle, like some sort of classic one-act play that we’re supposed to view with nodding recognition of its clever symbolism. But instead, conflicts are crammed in so tightly one on top of the other, and then resolved with immediacy in order to be able to heap on the next social/political jab. And to bounce these two around even more unpredictably there are the many ambassadorial attempts at an accord, i.e, Fenton describing the respect they had for the Japanese for being such ferocious tigers in battle. The two combatants toast with their beer cans.

Then there’s the issue with the sword, which raises the question of how or which of the details in this episode are supernatural if any. Like when the door leading out of the attic gets so stuck that neither man can open it, forcing them to resume their conflicts. Or here when Fenton tries to find the sword again—he had shown it to Arthur earlier and then left to get the beers. Arthur hid it behind some junk after bizarrely muttering “I’m going to kill him.” (Huh?!) Where that came from I have no idea, even after seeing the story through to its end. But as Fenton lurks about, looking for the sword he relates that he’s tried to get rid of it many times: “I’ve tried to give it away, sell it, hawk it, throw it out with the garbage…but it always comes back.” The writing goes out of its way however to disavow a supernatural link a la “Living Doll” by having Fenton continue: “Oh nothing supernatural. I don’t believe in that jazz, but when people refuse it, even wrapped as a gift, when the men on the garbage truck bring it in, well, you give up after a while.”

And then Fenton offers it to Arthur, inexplicably adding that Arthur can give it back to him, “point first!” These crazy directions the dialogue heads off into don’t make things easy for the actors but the two men do their best. Fenton admits that he knows what was engraved on the blade after lying to Arthur earlier, saying he didn’t know. It says, “The sword will avenge me.” Arthur has also lied though when he said earlier that he didn’t speak Japanese, but we then confesses that he does, and so must also know what the sword said. But, what was the point of either lie? For Arthur, perhaps to lessen the distance of his foreignness to Fenton? It’s not clear.

Fenton then launches into a tirade about working and how he operated a Cat, a heavy duty machine that moved the earth, not “manicured” it like Arthur does. And then he accusatorially describes to Arthur the intensity of actual combat. So deep into his own tortured psyche goes Fenton that he/we begin to here machine gun fire, sounds of the jungle at night, and a taunting enemy. At that point Arthur bends down to where he hid the sword and pulls it out, fearing that Fenton has gone full lunatic. Fenton counters with a knife. The two stalk each other, and it’s just too much to have asked this episode to depict. Writer Martin M. Goldsmith actually writes them hunting each other in an attic. The choreography here suffers also as Fenton makes a sudden move and clumsily falls to the ground. I couldn’t even tell you exactly what he did—trip on what? It’s an odd-looking physical moment, but Arthur has the drop on him, and stands over him with the sword. “Wait a minute” says Fenton, “I was only telling you how it was.” Well, he dropped that weird reverie pretty fast. Arthur snaps out of it also, pondering how he didn’t know what got into him. So again, there’s a hint of something otherworldly manipulating these two men, but it’s just so tenuous.

Fenton snaps at him, “You used that sword like you were mowing a lawn.” I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean. During the scene, Arthur actually looked extremely adept at handling the sword. Arthur then accuses Fenton of shooting a surrendering officer and then taking the sword from him. Where he gets this idea from is anybody’s guess. His imagination working overtime now, Arthur describes his father’s wartime heroism at Pearl Harbor “watching men of his own race destroy what he’d built with his own hands.” He describes watching his father trying to warn the sailors about the incoming bombers. Takei falls into his own reverie this time, wildly describing each “BOOM” and imitating the attacking planes before collapsing exhausted onto the floor as Fenton watches him with complete disinterest. But then Arthur does an about face and admits what really happened in a monologue in which Arthur cries in shame over his father’s traitorous acts: signaling the planes and showing them where to drop the bombs. And it is this historically inaccurate misstep that apparently got this episode taken out of syndication. There was, as we now know, not one single instance of Japanese-American betrayals at Pearl Harbor, nor anywhere else. Goldsmith’s monologue posed the danger of planting the idea in viewers’ minds that there were actual acts of traitorous sabotage, and Arthur describes just one. It’s a fairly irresponsible writing mistake.

The next awkward chapter in this encounter is how Fenton one-ups Arthur and abruptly details his unfortunate home life as Arthur cries at the window, trying the latch to find an exit. Fenton describes feeling lonesome, that his “old lady got teed off last night” over his drinking and left. Right on the heels of revealing he was also fired due to his drinking, Fenton angrily blurts that it wasn’t the booze, it was all the “cheap labor” being brought in, and he lists all the minorities. There’s some sloppiness in the dialogue throughout, with regard to repetitiveness, and this monologue is a good example of that, repeating that his wife left last night to go sleep at her sister’s, etc. Fenton turns to Arthur and tells him not to take things so hard, but he does it in a way that feels more intended to verbally beat up Arthur: “Just because your old man was a sneaky little double-dealing traitor, that doesn’t mean you are.” Which gives Arthur cause to revisit the accusation that Fenton murdered the soldier he took the sword from. Round and round we go.

Fenton starts breaking down, asking Arthur why all these bad things are happening to him. “I’m not such a bad guy! Why? Why?!” But in reply, Arthur holds up the samurai sword grimly, eyeing Fenton pitilessly. Fenton tells him to go ahead and kill him, “Go on, I dare you!” He continues blathering about his circumstances and the unfairness of the world, sweating and blubbering. After a pause, once again, they start circling each other threateningly yet again. Fenton lunges for the sword wrestling it away from Arthur. It drops to the floor and Fenton hits Arthur on the back. Fenton lunges for the sword, and in yet another indiscernible bit of choreography, somehow Fenton gets impaled on the sword as Arthur pulls at his leg. Fenton has a last gasp and then falls back, dead. Indeed the sword has avenged its owner.

Then, perhaps out of guilt over his father’s treason, Arthur yells out “Bonsai!” and leaps at the window, crashing through to his death below.

I counter “The Encounter’s” foolishness with a rating of 3.3.

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