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<\/a>By William Kozy<\/strong><\/p>\nWith only two votes \u201cNinety Years Without Slumbering\u201d remained asleep near the bottom of the list that asked writers and Facebook fan page Twilight Zone members for their favorite episodes. It is tied with 11 other episodes for essentially 149th place out of 156 episodes.<\/p>\n
We open on Sam Forstmann, played by Ed Wynn (also seen fighting off harbingers of Death in the Season 1 episode \u201cOne For the Angels\u201d) winding a grandfather clock while singing the song “My Grandfather’s Clock” written in by Henry Clay Work in 1876. Downstairs, his granddaughter Marnie is troubled. She knows he has to have a talk with him, and tells her husband Doug as much. His support amounts to this: \u201cHoney, I know how much you love him. And I love you. But we\u2019re going to have to face facts.\u201d And for that grand pep talk, she tells him, \u201cYou\u2019re good for me.\u201d It gets worse. He then says, \u201cWell, someone\u2019s got to take care of the homely women of the world\u201d and he swats her playfully on her back side with his newspaper. <\/p>\n
Marnie enters Sam\u2019s room, and sets his milk and snack down before approaching him. We learn that he used to be a clockmaker, and Marnie asks him if he\u2019s all right, because he didn\u2019t come downstairs for dinner. He hasn\u2019t been out of his room all day because he\u2019s been having trouble regulating his clock. (Hey, he should count his blessings that\u2019s the only irregularity plaguing him at his age). He\u2019s got the clock running now, though he informs her that with clocks this old \u201cyou\u2019re bound to run into problems\u201d and he pauses as he comes to grip with what is on the back of his mind, \u201cjust like old people.\u201d Marnie is pregnant, and Sam tells her not to worry about him\u2014she and the baby are more important. He promises her that he\u2019ll eat, and she leaves. As he lies in bed that night, he frets and discovers that he hasn\u2019t wound the clock properly. He gets up and promises the clock he\u2019ll never forget to wind it again.<\/p>\n
At breakfast the next morning Marnie and Doug discuss, with some tension, the plight of her grandfather whom her husband refers to as \u201cnot a well man.\u201d His foundation for that assessment is Sam\u2019s constant tinkering with the clock\u2014\u201cTil 4 am last night.\u201d Doug wants Sam to meet with Mel Avery, a psychiatrist friend of theirs, just to make sure nothing\u2019s very wrong with Sam. Sam enters the room having heard the suggestion to and he balks at the idea, asking them why. Marnie tells him it\u2019s because of his preoccupation with the clock. Giving in, he agrees though to see the psychiatrist, confident though, that the doctor will find nothing wrong with him.<\/p>\n
At Avery\u2019s office, we open with Sam telling him the background story of the clock, how it was presented to Sam on the day of his birth. The conversation continues and it\u2019s a rather unproductive scene with circuitous debating and dialogue less clever than the show imagines. Before leaving, Sam pauses by the door with the doctor and delivers this line with seriousness: \u201cOh there is one thing doctor\u2026when me clock stops ticking, I\u2019ll die.\u201d It makes little sense to me that Sam would tell something like that to the doctor, knowing full well that it would only lead to doubts about Sam\u2019s mental state. The next few lines construct a nonsensical contrivance whose sole purpose is to outline the narrative\u2019s conflict: that either Sam must go or the clock goes. Trying to figure out how the doctor arrives at that deduction is a head-scratcher.<\/p>\n
Back home, two handymen are hauling the clock down the stairs and Sam has them place it against the wall at the bottom of the steps. And then he faints dead away. We don\u2019t know why. It\u2019s just basically a cheap fake out on the audience. But he wakes up when the show is back from commercial, and he muses wistfully, \u201cNot yet I guess, not yet.\u201d When Marnie and Doug arrive home, she interprets this new place for the clock as Sam\u2019s trying to compromise. Doug is displeased, telling Sam the clock sticks out like a sore thumb\u2014Sam did after all place it in front of a painting hanging on the wall. I\u2019m not even sure by what logic Sam thought bringing the clock out of his bedroom where it was out of sight, and then moving it to a MORE visible location would solve things. Marnie and Doug apparently have been told by Avery that the clock should go because Sam is obsessed with it. Sam yells at them that he\u2019s not senile and he\u2019s not going to a loony bin, which Marnie says was never their intention. Sam resolves to sell the clock! And he stomps up to his room. Huh? This man who insists on keeping a watchful eye on the clock to keep it from stopping which would kill him, decides that selling the clock where it will be out of his care is the answer to the situation? I don\u2019t get that.<\/p>\n
Their neighbor Carol has come for a visit and she, Marnie and Sam have tea together. The subject of the clock comes up and Sam asks if she knows anyone who would be interested in buying it. Turns out she is, being the aficionado of antiques as she is. Well, that was easy. I do like the hint of irresponsibility though when Carol asks the rude and indelicate question, \u201cMr. Forstmann, where will you be living after the baby comes?\u201d Marnie tells Carol, that he\u2019s staying right there with them. But we do wonder, \u201cGee is the clock going to be okay under her supervision?\u201d But they strike a deal in which Sam can go over to their house every other day to maintain the clock\u2019s condition.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, a snag ensues. Two weeks later Carol and her husband are away on vacation, thwarting Sam\u2019s ability to pay his visit. Restless in bed that night, he gets up and makes his way in the middle of the night to Carol\u2019s house. Peering through the window he can see the pendulum slowing. In a panic he breaks the window, but a police car comes right at that moment. Yeah, there are a lot of timing coincidences in this episode. The officer escorts Sam back to his house.<\/p>\n
Lying in bed, Marnie tends to Sam who appears run down. \u201cIts better this way\u201d he says and she kisses him goodnight. He lies in bed muttering about \u201cit has to come sometime.\u201d<\/p>\n
He falls asleep and the clock pendulum shows the passage of time until it comes to a halt.<\/p>\n
In a wide shot, we see Sam in bed and then his transparent spirit rises up out of bed and stands at the foot of the bed, addressing Sam. The corporeal Sam awakens, puts on his glasses and demands to know how this spirit got in his bedroom. His spirit tells him that the time has come. But out of nowhere, with no explanation Sam has a complete reversal of character\u2014he has adapted a defensive and aggressive refutal of the rules he\u2019s been going by this whole time. The spirit tells him, \u201cHave you forgotten what your father told you? And your grandfather?…Didn\u2019t they always tell you that when the clock winds down you\u2019ll die?\u201d Um\u2026really? What a mean couple of men. Who would do that to their own child?<\/p>\n
But now Sam defies the stupidity of that belief, fortifying his stance with: \u201cI\u2019ve been to a psychiatrist!\u201d Sam accuses the spirit of being from a different generation whereas Sam lives in the present. The writing is full of mumbo jumbo as they banter. Flighty words with little relation to logic. Even the story\u2019s brand of logic.<\/p>\n
Marnie comes into his room to see how he\u2019s doing and all is well. They walk downstairs together to get some cocoa, and Sam assures Marnie that when that clock stopped ticking\u2026\u201dI was born again.\u201d<\/p>\n
I rate this episode a 3.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n [si-contact-form form=’2′]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [AdSense-A] By William Kozy With only two votes \u201cNinety Years Without Slumbering\u201d remained asleep near the bottom of the list that asked writers and Facebook fan page Twilight Zone members for their favorite episodes. It is tied with 11 other episodes for essentially 149th place out of 156 episodes. We open on Sam Forstmann, played […]<\/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":[23890],"class_list":["post-94953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing-news","tag-the-twilight-zone-review-ninety-years-without-slumbering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94953","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=94953"}],"version-history":[{"count":-3,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}