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<\/a>By William Kozy<\/strong><\/p>\nAmong the 156 original \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d episodes, you can count on \u201cCavender is Coming\u201d being consistently mentioned as one of the least favorite. In my ongoing survey of writers and Twilight Zone Facebook fan members, \u201cCavender is Coming\u201d received only two votes from the 3,000+ respondents. Comedies were not \u201cTwilight Zone\u2019s\u201d forte; thankfully the producers only attempted roughly a dozen. It\u2019s no coincidence that of the bottom 7 episodes on my survey, 5 of them are comedies.<\/p>\n
\u201cCavender is Coming\u201d has a beloved comedic actress in the lead, but alas Carol Burnett hadn\u2019t yet mastered the subtlety of her skills, and pulls a lot of hammy faces. It will take several years before she becomes a comedic marvel as well as a fine dramatic actress. She has some wonderful moments, but they\u2019re spotty. She\u2019s particularly good in the climax when she tells her guardian angel that she\u2019s just not happy with the way his miracle-making turned out\u2014her huge pleading doe eyes are irresistible. So mostly, the blame on this episode falls squarely on the shoulders of the writing and directing. Too many damn things just don\u2019t make any damn sense.<\/p>\n
The opening scene features Ms. Burnett as Agnes Grebb, already proving her clumsiness at her job as an usherette at Plotzky\u2019s Bijou of Famous Hollywood Hits. Then we cut to a small group of angels up in the \u201cCelestial Division\u201d, led by Polk. He summons the angel Cavender (Jesse White who would achieve household name status as The Maytag repairman in countless commercials.) Cavender is the only apprentice angel who has not yet earned his wings. Sounds familiar? That\u2019s because not only did \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d feature it 16 years earlier, but another show also used it two years earlier\u2026oh what show was it\u2026um\u2026oh yeah, THE TWILIGHT ZONE! The episode was \u201cMr. Bevis\u201d and that one turned out so poorly that the producers made the obvious decision to try it again. Both these episodes were intended as TV pilots, and \u201cCavender\u201d even had a laugh track imposed on it to help ease folks into seeing its series potential, but that track has since been eliminated from syndicated airings of the episode, thank goodness.<\/p>\n
Polk explains to Harmon Cavender that his last chance to get his wings is to become Agnes Grebb\u2019s guardian angel and improving her lot in life by \u201csupplying her aid, assistance and advice\u201d for 24 hours. Odd that they would pick Agnes as needing help when all they\u2019ve observed so far is her falling down on the job. Isn\u2019t anyone else on Earth more in need of help? The 1962 flood victims in Hamburg, Germany? Or in France and Slovenia? Earthquake victims in 1962 Iran? 1962 tornado strikes in Florida? But no, this gainfully employed lady with lots of friends\u2014she\u2019s the one who gets a guardian angel.<\/p>\n
So back on Earth in the theatre lobby Agnes is trying to work out the idiosyncrasies of her job. The whole scene was borrowed from Carol Burnett\u2019s real life experience as an usherette in which her boss communicated with the staff via silent hand signals. Agnes is flummoxed by it all, while Mr. Stout calls out various women to take their positions: \u201cRapaport, Betton, Burnett\u2026\u201d How cute. He called out Burnett. Needless to say Agnes makes a mess of things in the most absurdly unbelievable way\u2014with a handful of ticket stubs she runs toward the boss\u2019s office and crashes headlong into a huge glass mirror. Not a window, which you can understand someone not seeing, but no\u2014a mirror. Is she a vampire casting no reflection, cuz this episode is sure sucking the life out of me.<\/p>\n
After work, Cavender materializes out of thin air in the bus seat right next to Agnes but she is strangely unalarmed. Cavender explains why he\u2019s there, but she patronizingly pats his cheek telling him \u201cdon\u2019t you worry about it, I daydream a lot also.\u201d To prove it, he turns the bus into a horse drawn carriage and then into a convertible limo. The driver notices this craziness, but Agnes takes it all in stride. Cavender turns it back into a bus, and the next comedic bit actually did make me laugh out loud. The driver stops the bus, calmly gets up out of his seat and addresses the passengers: \u201cWhen the supervisor comes to claim the bus, tell him I\u2019ve resigned.\u201d He takes off his hat and dives straight through the window. The absurdity of it got to me. That bit moves this episode up a rung from another TZ comedy about an Agnes: \u201cFrom Agnes-With Love\u201d which I wrote about last week. No laughs. Maybe the trick is not to write about characters named Agnes. As Agnes gets up to leave, Cavender writes \u201cGuardian Angel\u201d in midair, and at THIS, Agnes has saved her shocked expression. Not buses turning into carriages, but this.<\/p>\n
Arriving home, she encounters all sorts of loving neighbors as she heads up the stairs to her apartment: she has candy for the children, a potato pancake recipe tweak for one neighbor, a nice fella named Irv who asks how the job went and when she says she was fired, another woman consoles her. And when a boy cries about a \u201cbusted cookie\u201d Agnes has another one at the ready from her purse. She\u2019s like a guardian angel herself.<\/p>\n
Once inside her apartment, Cavender pops up on her couch, assessing her basic problem as this: Agnes can\u2019t hold down a job. So, he fixes it so that she\u2019s independently wealthy. He also arranges a new residence for her\u2014the Morgan Mansion on Sutton Place, \u201cthe last one of its kind in New York City.\u201d He has even upped her bank account to $23,367.19, which would be about $200,373.09 today.<\/p>\n
Cavender scoffs at Agnes\u2019s Tuesday night bowling ritual. She\u2019s \u201creal society\u201d now after all. So he does his version of Samantha Stevens\u2019 nose twitch or Jeannie\u2019s arms folded head nod, and he transports the two of them to the mansion, dressed in posh clothes where Agness is host of a party attended by upper crust posers. His gesture by the way is to hold out his palm while closing his eyes and licking the thumb of his other hand and then pressing that thumb down hard on the open palm and then making a fist and slamming it down on the palm. It\u2019s like they were straining too hard to find some sort of uniquely funny magical gesture for him to make, only they forgot to make it funny.<\/p>\n
Hey here\u2019s a fun thing to do: can you spot \u201cThe Beverly Hillbillies\u201d blonde beauty Donna Douglas in her second TZ appearance at this party? (The first of course was \u201cEye of the Beholder\u201d). It\u2019s easy, and actually she has more lines in this then she did in \u201cBeholder\u201d!
\nThis party scene becomes a m\u00e9lange of montages showing how out of place Agnes feels. When a Frenchman comes up to her and greets her laying kisses all the way up her arm a la Pepe Le Pew, Agnes screams a bourgeois, \u201cUnravel the flesh will ya!\u201d<\/p>\n
Close-ups of Agnes superimposed over images of chattering guests and handing picking hors d\u2019oeuvres follows, but the most telling scene is when a movie star is lounging on a couch surrounded by male admirers. Agnes gushes that she\u2019s a big fan and has seen all of her \u201cmovies at least 60 or 70 times\u2014I think you\u2019re wonderful.\u201d But in return the bored actress ignores Agnes and turns to one of the men. That snub hits the point home hard. Guests become increasingly more drunk. \u201cRavishing party darling, ravishing\u201d, are the last words we hear before dissolving to the next morning. Cavender rises sleepily and gets concerned when he doesn\u2019t see Agnes. He transports to her former apartment building.<\/p>\n
He meets her coming down the stairs, and Agnes laments that no one recognized her. Cavender tells her that, \u201cThe whole philosophy of living is a kind of a give and take thing. And after all, when, well, what did you expect?\u201d<\/p>\n
And her answer comes. She\u2019s looking down at first, perhaps ashamed at the normality of what she will tell him, but then with simple honesty she looks up and tells him. \u201cFriends maybe.\u201d And this gets to Cavender, who has no response. He offers his hand as they leave the apartment she is no longer a part of.<\/p>\n
Very gently, Agnes refuses the limo ride back to the mansion, but he balks \u201cTwenty four hours of miracles and I leave you the way I found you? Come on! I\u2019d never get my wings.\u201d And then it\u2019s his turn for the emotional close-up: \u201cMiss Grep, didn\u2019t we have a wonderful time? Don\u2019t you have everything you always wanted now?\u201d Cavender doesn\u2019t even address the point she made about her friends, so she tells him he doesn\u2019t understand her, that she WAS happy and that she \u201cwants it the way it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another odd thing I noticed throughout this episode is the very disjointed editing between when it cuts from a close-up to a wider shot and then back in close again. Now, of course it\u2019s never perfect in any show, because it\u2019s hard to replicate one\u2019s actions and position and gestures exactly the same way for each take. But between film savvy actors who can closely repeat the physical action, and the choice of angles that a director and camera operator choose, you can achieve a more seamless feel when cutting from shot to shot. But this episode loses its grip in that department.<\/p>\n
After Cavender grants Agnes her wish, she bounds happily up the steps greeting all the kids and neighbors. Cavender admits that Agnes is \u201cthe richest woman\u201d he knows. \u201cYou have an abundance of wealth. And it seems that I\u2019ve had to travel a very long distance to find out that cash and contentment aren\u2019t necessarily synonymous.\u201d<\/p>\n
A thunder clap indicates Cavender has been summoned back to see the chief, who then proceeds to read off a litany of Cavender\u2019s transgressions. But then something catches the chief\u2019s eye as he glances down upon Earth, noticing that \u201cshe\u2019s happy\u201d! This whole scene is so darned awkward because it\u2019s being played out by the two actors looking downward at Earth, but we never cut away to see Agnes. The stilted dialogue tries to make up for what we can\u2019t see.<\/p>\n
The chief decides that there are many other deserving subjects down there on Earth who could use a guardian angel, so off Cavender goes, out the door, ready to take on his assignments for the TV series that never came to be. Except perhaps\u2026.in the Twilight Zone?<\/p>\n
I rate this episode a 1.8<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n [si-contact-form form=’2′]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [AdSense-A] By William Kozy Among the 156 original \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d episodes, you can count on \u201cCavender is Coming\u201d being consistently mentioned as one of the least favorite. In my ongoing survey of writers and Twilight Zone Facebook fan members, \u201cCavender is Coming\u201d received only two votes from the 3,000+ respondents. Comedies were not \u201cTwilight Zone\u2019s\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23763],"class_list":["post-94400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing-news","tag-the-twilight-zone-review-cavender-is-coming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94400"}],"version-history":[{"count":-2,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}