Ringside Report Reviews The Twilight Zone Episode “The Mind and the Matter”

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By William Kozy

Again, we find one of the “comedy” episodes near the bottom of the list of my survey asking website fans and writers, “What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?” Three episodes received no first place votes, and I wrote about those three over the past three weeks. Now, onto the four episodes that each received 1 vote. Tied for 150nd place in the overall list is “The Mind and The Matter”, starring Shelley Berman as the insufferably cranky Archibald Beechcroft, an office drone working at the Park Central Insurance Company.

We open in a crowded subway car, commuters packed in tight against each other, and the most obviously miserable one of them all is Mr. Beechcraft.

Opening monologue:

“A brief if frenetic introduction to Mr. Archibald Beechcroft, a child of the twentieth century, a product of the population explosion, and one of the inheritors of the legacy of progress. Mr. Beechcroft again. This time act two of his daily battle for survival. And in just a moment, our hero will begin his personal one-man rebellion against the mechanics of his age, and to do so he will enlist certain aids available only in the Twilight Zone.”

Beechcroft arrives at is office just in time for Henry, the meek, clumsy office clerk to bump into him and spill coffee on Beechcroft, who predictably reacts sharply and angrily toward the young man.

Archie pops some pills from his desk and seeks respite in the restroom. His boss, Mr. Rogers (definitely not of the friendly neighborhood type) enters the restroom and embarks on a long list of annoying chastisements and advice aimed at Beechcroft. Interestingly though, he’s not quite the bully that plagued James Daly in “A Stop at Willoughby” (“Push! Push! Push!). When Daly’s company man Gart Williams finally breaks and shouts, “Fat boy, why don’t you shut your mouth!” at his boss Mr. Misrell (Howard Smith), we sink down in our seats saying a quiet “Uh oh” to ourselves. But here in Beechcroft’s world the boss’s attacks aren’t quite so aggressive, they’re more of a passive-aggressive nature, the kind coming from a nebbish who has found himself in a position of power and can’t help but wield his suggestions with abandon. He tells Beechcroft that it’s his responsibility to keep himself in shape for the sake of the company, advising him to get some sleep, to pull himself together, even to eat greens! His probes ask if Beechcroft is drinking, and finally Berman launches into a tirade about what is ticking him off. But here, we feel nothing of the tension that we felt from the dressing down scene in “Willoughby.” Beechcroft snarls at Rogers that he’s frustrated over the commuting, the din in the office, the jostling, the pushing around. Admittedly, we can’t deny feeling the pleasure of any scene showing a working man berating the know-it-all bothersome boss.

At lunchtime in the cafeteria, Henry, the same office lackey that spilled coffee on Beechcroft, stands up and calls out to Archie, inviting him to his table. It’s hard to understand why he would go out of his way to invite a man who we assume is always so very unpleasant. Surely, Beechcroft is not the type of co-worker one would enthusiastically call over to the lunch table. But Henry (Jack Grinnage) seems for whatever reason to like Beechcroft and he presents the episode’s eponymous book to him: “The Mind and the Matter.” Henry describes the powers of the mind that the book delves into and before he leaves, he offers the book to Beechcroft, advising him to especially read chapter 3: “Intense Concentration”.

That night, over dinner alone in his apartment, Archie reads it and immediately is struck with the wisdom of the book. He decides to give its methods a shot. So, when the landlady comes a knockin’ for the rent, he wishes her to disappear. (To the cornfield? Is that where all people in the TZ disappear to? Someone should compile a list of all the episodes where people vanish from existence… “And When the Sky Was Opened”, “Little Girl Lost”, “The Arrival”…) Legal question: Making your landlady disappear through the powers of your concentrating mind…that’s murder, right? And why is he late with rent? He’s got a job in a big insurance company!

The next morning’s commute is a different story. Beechcroft wishes everyone gone. The completely empty subway car allows him to lie down on the bench. No need for a conductor apparently either. He simply commands the train to move on.

The office is devoid of everyone. What insurance work does he have to do though, if no one exists? While humming “Alone” from the 1935 film “A Night at the Opera” Beechcroft sits at his desk and rolls a paper into the typewriter. Why doesn’t he just say “type my words onto this paper” instead of going through the trouble of typing? Or why doesn’t he say, “Hey invent a laptop?”

He gets bored quickly. Much more quickly than Larry Blyden’s Rocky Valentine did in TZ’s “A Nice Place to Visit” in which his character was also able to wish for anything . Beechcroft talks to his alter-ego in several moments throughout the episode. Here in the office he talks to his reflection in a sales chart on the wall. His alter ego in the chart accuses him of being bored, but Beechcroft denies it. He declares that he’s content. He admits though that he’d like “some sort of diversion.” He suggests an earthquake and the room shakes and rattles causing Beechcroft to immediately yell, “No! Not that?” And I mean immediately he balks. Immediately! So I’m wondering, what did he expect would happen when he summoned forth an earthquake? And then he suggests an electrical storm, but just as quickly he rejects that too when is starts raging.

Deciding to go home, he gloomily rides the train again (couldn’t he wish himself home?). Here though was a nice touch: When he exits the subway car he looks at a poster on the platform wall. He takes out a pen and draws a mustache on a woman’s face on a perfume poster. I like the fact that he still looks around for people before and after committing the graffiti. Even though he should know that no one could possibly be around, he first looks around out of reflex to make sure the coast is clear; then after drawing it, he looks around again but this time to see if anyone is amused by it. Clearly he’s disappointed when there isn’t a soul. No one to offer the thrill of a feeling of getting away with something, and no one to offer the shared amusement of a prank.

If not much else, this episode does offer the whimsy, like so many other episodes, of taking a peek into the past, 70 years ago at the art direction and props in New York City or wherever else. The vending machines in the cafeteria, the subway posters, and the subway car itself. Hey, it’s the Lexington Avenue Express! My how it’s changed.

At home once again, Beechcroft argues with himself in a mirror. Suddenly though, he comes up with a solution: since he’s so annoyed with people, he will populate the world with people who he likes, people that are just like him!

And I suppose this raises the question in my mind about the unsteadiness of what this episode was supposed to be about. Serling talks about it being one man’s “rebellion against the mechanics of his age.” Is it really that? Because the narrative plays more like it’s about a man who despises humanity, not the age of technology.

Well, the next morning’s commute arrives and we’re curious to see how Beechcroft’s new plan will work out. As he grabs a newspaper without paying for it, this time the vendor scolds him. The vendor we see is also played by comedian Shelley Berman (who recorded the first comedy album to be awarded a gold record, and the first non-musical recording to win a Grammy Award.) Beechcroft gets on the crowded elevator and a woman, played again by Berman in drag, tells the “ugly man” to get off her foot. In this scene, there is a terrible technical misstep with the episode’s visual effects. They decided to have make-up legend William Tuttle create masks of Shelley Berman’s face for the other passengers on the elevator to wear. But the look is completely unconvincing. Even the episode’s director, Buzz Kulik said “The first batch he made didn’t seem to look like Shelley at all…and I’m not sure that they ever looked like Shelley.”

In the office a much simpler special effect is handled just fine as we pan across a row of Bermans, each at their desk grumbling about their lot in this life.

He realizes “A lot of me is as bad as a lot of them” and decides to put things back the way they were. Henry, spills coffee on Archie again, but this time Beechcroft is forgiving, even kind you might say. Henry asks if he read the book, and this Ebeneezer Scrooge character formula Beechcroft does kindly offer that the book was “interesting”… “but totally unbelievable.” So okay. It’ll take some time for him to do a full Scrooge turnaround.

Closing monologue:

“Mr. Archibald Beechcroft, a child of the twentieth century, who has found out through trial and error – and mostly error – that with all its faults, it may well be that this is the best of all possible worlds. People notwithstanding, it has much to offer. Tonight’s case in point – in the Twilight Zone.”

I rate this episode a 3 out of 10.

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