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<\/a>By William Kozy<\/strong><\/p>\nSince I started writing these reviews, this is the first episode that I\u2019ve arrived at that I had never ever seen before. So, it\u2019s a unique experience to discover an episode that is 60 years old but brand new to me. I wasn\u2019t expecting much since \u201cThe Brain Center at Whipple\u2019s\u201d received only 4 votes in the survey that asked, \u201cWhat is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?\u201d tying it with 9 other episodes for 124th thru 132nd place. And unfortunately I\u2019d have to say those low expectations were met.<\/p>\n
The story has a bit of a cookie cutter feel to it, as though the writer had a list of popular Twilight Zone themed bullet points to cover, and they checked off as many of those as they could: man\u2019s fate in the face of advancing technology, working man facing off against heartless management, purple prose monologues, and a twist ending that in this case you\u2019ll probably see coming right down the assembly line of this episode set in the Whipple Corporation. Serling chose the name after a lumberyard in Binghamton where he and this episode\u2019s star Richard Deacon grew up.<\/p>\n
So, we open with Richard Deacon as CEO Wallace V. Whipple showing one of those in-company industrials to his Chief Engineer Mr. Hanley. The short film is hosted\/narrated by Whipple himself, describing for the stockholders the company\u2019s progress\u2014all that dry stuff like how many employees there are at the company\u2019s plant in the Midwest, etc. But then he gets to his main point. The introduction of the X109B14 assembly machine (looking suspiciously like the computer in “The Old Man and the Cave”) that will eliminate 61,000 employees, 73 inefficient machines, save the company $4 million a year. Total automation is the goal down the line in the future. And then Whipple\u2019s short film ends. So, okay that\u2019s actually not a bad way to sneakily get in a lot of exposition in a creative way.<\/p>\n
Whipple then asks Hanley for is opinion of the film and this plunges us into a debate between the two men that unfortunately is not performed with much finesse. Deacon\u2019s sitcom-leaning style pokes through the dramatic format too awkwardly. And as Hanley, Paul Newlan doesn\u2019t fare much better. Part of the problem is the overwritten dialogue. It\u2019s too transparently intended to seem clever: \u201cWhat the devil can I do with pride? Can it? Bottle it? Wrap it? Produce it? I\u2019m not selling pride, I\u2019m selling product!\u201d<\/p>\n
Serling\u2019s pen has the subtlety of a baseball bat as he writes this episode, and Deacon matches it with his unnecessarily sledgehammer-like portrayal of cold-hearted corporate greed. Why do actors do this to themselves? To the stories they\u2019re telling? I try to imagine how much more interesting this could have been if director Richard Donner instructed Deacon to play his role as if he were \u201cthe good guy\u201d in the story. After all, he does give a four-month pink slip notice to Dickerson\u2019s crew\u2014that\u2019s FOUR month\u2019s notice. Who gets four month\u2019s notice? That\u2019s not bad. A complexity could have emerged from this tale instead of the simplistic treatment of the realities of heartlessness and possibilities of compassion in the business world.<\/p>\n
Whipple orders Dickerson, the foreman, to haul the new computer down to where it will be performing its work, and informs him that it\u2019s not a matter of dissatisfaction with him and his staff, \u201cit\u2019s just progress. Automation.\u201d Clearly Whipple\u2019s attempt to ameliorate the disgruntled Dickerson doesn\u2019t work, although Whipple neither sees that nor cares to see it.<\/p>\n
Next, Dickerson is in a bar, drunk and surly. Actor Ted de Corsia lays his anger out for the bartender to hear. He growls all his lines, but I buy it. He asserts than man is better than machine and he\u2019s \u201cgonna prove it you\u201d challenging the bartender as though the bartender had anything to do with the situation. All in all, he plays the angry drunk very well and goes stumbling out, marching back to the factory.<\/p>\n
As Dickerson enters the computer room, Whipple steps out of his office on the landing high above the factory floor and berates Dickerson for barging in drunk and disorderly. These two men then engage in a debate and this time the staging and acting is better. We have Whipple placed high above looking down on Dickerson, a nice representation of their stations in the corporation, and the distance between them grants a more realistic scenario for their yelling, unlike the office scene where the blocking had Whipple and Hanley yelling at each other with their heads inches apart.<\/p>\n
What happens next as you can watch in sources besides Netflix is that Dickerson attacks the computer with a club, causing sparks to fly out. Whipple tells the guard to stop him, but when the guard hesitates, Whipple runs down, grabs the guard\u2019s gun and shoots Dickerson who collapses against the machine. He tells the contraption, \u201cYou see, machine? It took more than \u2026 you to beat me. It took a man.\u201d So I said \u201cbesides Netflix\u201d because Netflix has inexplicably edited out that scene from the episode. Why I\u2019m not sure. Certainly \u201cThe Twilight Zone\u201d has depicted other scenes of people getting shot (\u201cThe Monsters Are Due on Maple Street\u201d, \u201cLong Live Walter Jameson\u201d, \u201cDead Man\u2019s Shoes\u201d, \u201cI Shot an Arrow Into the Air\u201d, etc.), so why does this one get censored by Netflix?<\/p>\n
After the melee, we\u2019re back in Whipple\u2019s office as Whipple tinkers away. Hanley enters after having visited Dickerson in the hospital. Whipple shows Hanley his newest automated acquisition and he\u2019s as giddy as a schoolboy showing it off. Whipple is either unbelievably oblivious or unbelievably cruel; he tells Hanley without a hint of facetiousness, \u201cOh this should please you\u201d the machine replaces \u201conly one, just one. As a matter of fact Hanley it replaces you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hanley registers his surprise (coming perilously close to a comic double take reaction), but he\u2019s not too fazed since he\u2019s come by to give his notice. The two men seem engaged in a combat to see who can give a shit less. \u201cOh good, good\u201d responds Whipple as matter-of-factly as possible. Whipple has suspected Hanley would resign, nonetheless he tells Hanley how grateful he is for Hanley\u2019s service to the family business over the years and tells him he will give Hanley a very generous severance pay and pension. Well that sounds pretty good indeed, especially looking at Hanley\u2019s worn out looking advanced age. Which makes it not believable to me that Hanley\u2019s response is to smack Whipple across the face and actually refuses to accept the offering. Sadly again, Newlan\u2019s comeuppance speech getting the last word in, carries little juice. I even get the sensation the actor wasn\u2019t 100% familiar with his lines? The flow isn\u2019t there and so the parting salvo is pretty bland.<\/p>\n
A montage of more downsizing flows by, and finally Whipple calls in a technician to run more efficiency checks. Jack Crowder playing the technician has reached his limit, explaining to Whipple that running these efficiency checks ad nauseum is a waste of time. So we get yet another debate on the same subject of technology eliminating so many people that pretty soon there will be no people to buy whatever the Whipple company is producing. And again, Whipple fires an employee only to learn that said employee is quitting anyway. The technician gets in a good one though as he leaves, telling Whipple \u201cI think it might be a good idea if you ran an equipment check on yourself!\u201d Okay it\u2019s no backhanded smack across the face, but it\u2019s something.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, that last comment actually gets under Whipple\u2019s skin. As Whipple goes about tinkering with buttons on his machines, various salient lines of dialogue start playing back to him: \u201cWhen you\u2019re dead and buried who do you get to mourn for you?\u201d Lights start blinking on and off, buzzers start sounding, more dialogue unspools, a cacophony of chaos assaults Whipple. He runs from machine to machine trying to gain control as the camera pulls back high and wide. Who\u2019s looking down on who now?<\/p>\n
We end up in the same bar Dickerson sat in as a disheveled Whipple enters. He toasts Hanley who sits at the far end. He asks Hanley how he\u2019s enjoying retirement and then tries to work himself up to feeling positive about something that is obviously bothering him. He goes into his story, and reveals that the stockholders have fired him. And then he loses it, launching into a tirade about being mistreated, how the company felt that being alone with the machines had \u201cwarped\u201d him. He\u2019s distraught and whines sadly, and Deacon is fine here. He makes up for his one-layered obnoxiousness earlier.<\/p>\n
Closing image of the new chairman: Robbie the Robot (one of his three TZ appearances along with \u201cUncle Simon\u201d and \u201cOne For the Angels\u201d) is running things now from Whipple\u2019s office, twirling a pocket watch just as Whipple had a penchant for doing in his scenes. I\u2019d like to wrestle that heartless robot to the ground but as Mr. Whipple told me, \u201cPlease don\u2019t squeeze the chairman.\u201d<\/p>\n
My automated episode rater computes this episode to be 2.875<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n [si-contact-form form=’2′]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [AdSense-A] By William Kozy Since I started writing these reviews, this is the first episode that I\u2019ve arrived at that I had never ever seen before. So, it\u2019s a unique experience to discover an episode that is 60 years old but brand new to me. I wasn\u2019t expecting much since \u201cThe Brain Center at Whipple\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":[24881],"class_list":["post-98368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing-news","tag-the-twilight-zone-review-the-brain-center-at-whipples"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98368","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=98368"}],"version-history":[{"count":-3,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}