The Twilight Zone: Escape Clause
Aug. 21st, 2025 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWhen it comes to happening on the Twilight Zone episodes I’m already familiar with through their adaptations, my fortunes may not ever get any better than “Escape Clause” following right after “Walking Distance.” That second episode seemed to have embedded itself further in my memories than the first. For that matter, too, its “deal with the devil” story came to mind as I was watching the similar-yet-different “One for the Angels”...
As I was watching this latest episode, its short story adaptation did come back to mind. That adaptation might have come back because I was remembering bits of it the episode didn’t include, which didn’t quite seem the case for the previous two episodes I was already familiar with that way. When I thought about that, I wondered if that could have something to do with the more unpleasant main character of the story not being delved into the way the other main characters could been examined before. On some level, I’d already been thinking he was a case of “he deserves what he gets.” Groping towards a symbolic interpretation, I did wonder if his spending part of the episode in dirty rags after his latest attempt to test just what he’d got from his deal in hopes of it feeling satisfying this time could have been a certain attempt to cut his character down. All of this, anyway, didn’t mean the characters weren’t interesting.
In acknowledging the twist ending of this episode, I did start wondering about alternative takes on things. That, though, reminded me of how easily I used to react to online criticisms of television episodes and other entertainments with the annoyed thought they kept amounting to “if only we clever armchair critics, and not those incompetent professionals, were in charge...”
As I was watching this latest episode, its short story adaptation did come back to mind. That adaptation might have come back because I was remembering bits of it the episode didn’t include, which didn’t quite seem the case for the previous two episodes I was already familiar with that way. When I thought about that, I wondered if that could have something to do with the more unpleasant main character of the story not being delved into the way the other main characters could been examined before. On some level, I’d already been thinking he was a case of “he deserves what he gets.” Groping towards a symbolic interpretation, I did wonder if his spending part of the episode in dirty rags after his latest attempt to test just what he’d got from his deal in hopes of it feeling satisfying this time could have been a certain attempt to cut his character down. All of this, anyway, didn’t mean the characters weren’t interesting.
In acknowledging the twist ending of this episode, I did start wondering about alternative takes on things. That, though, reminded me of how easily I used to react to online criticisms of television episodes and other entertainments with the annoyed thought they kept amounting to “if only we clever armchair critics, and not those incompetent professionals, were in charge...”