The Twilight Zone: Perchance to Dream
Sep. 16th, 2025 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerMoving on to another Twilight Zone episode that had amounted to a title to me before, I did find my attention caught up by “Perchance to Dream.” That, though, reminds me of that recurring weakness of mine where I’ll suppose part of my interest came from “being surprised,” and then think that the best I can do with a post here is deny a comparable surprise to other people...
I did have a certain feeling the episode looked a bit more interesting to me than I suppose “filming for television” can manage most of the time, although there I have an unfortunate feeling I can’t articulate any specific observations a cinephile would find acceptable. It might be a little easier to say the disheveled man at the beginning of the episode got my attention without needing an immediate explanation for his state, and once he’d explained to a psychiatrist that he’d managed to stay awake for days because falling asleep would be fatal I stayed interested while waiting for the explanation of that.
There was some interest for me in a psychiatrist being part of the episode, having gathered the impression over the years they were recurring figures in mid-twentieth-century stories and culture alike. (For one thing, this episode first aired the year Lucy’s psychiatric help booth appeared in Peanuts.) I might have been a bit less able to bring the specific stock ideas associated with psychiatry of the period to mind and apply them to what was shown having happened outside of the office, but the twist ending was intriguing for leaving open interpretation of who was at fault and why.
I did have a certain feeling the episode looked a bit more interesting to me than I suppose “filming for television” can manage most of the time, although there I have an unfortunate feeling I can’t articulate any specific observations a cinephile would find acceptable. It might be a little easier to say the disheveled man at the beginning of the episode got my attention without needing an immediate explanation for his state, and once he’d explained to a psychiatrist that he’d managed to stay awake for days because falling asleep would be fatal I stayed interested while waiting for the explanation of that.
There was some interest for me in a psychiatrist being part of the episode, having gathered the impression over the years they were recurring figures in mid-twentieth-century stories and culture alike. (For one thing, this episode first aired the year Lucy’s psychiatric help booth appeared in Peanuts.) I might have been a bit less able to bring the specific stock ideas associated with psychiatry of the period to mind and apply them to what was shown having happened outside of the office, but the twist ending was intriguing for leaving open interpretation of who was at fault and why.