(I've tried to keep the spoilers vague.)
Although The Twilight Zone (TZ) likes to indulge in sermons -- which often ride on broad, melodramatic flights of purple prose -- at least it usually has the excuse of a humane heart and thoughtful mind genuinely interested in the human condition and serious issues. Night Call, by contrast, is astonishing in its arrogance, cruelty and pointlessness. The word "stupid" often serves as a putdown. In this case, it's merely another accurate adjective.
Already stressed by a loud, fierce nighttime thunderstorm, the elderly and crippled Elva Keene is confused, then frightened by persistent phone calls from a weird, mostly non-responsive caller. She finally screams at him to leave her alone. And mightn't any of us? Her reaction is entirely understandable. The calls sound very much like the work of a malicious prankster, even a dangerous stalker. They'll scare a woman in Elva's vulnerable position especially. To today's viewers, the caller might also sound like a more sympathetic case -- a mentally retarded person -- but a woman of Elva's age, back in that era, would be less likely to understand this. It was still early in the days of advocates like Rose Kennedy.
Yet Night Call holds Elva's natural reaction against her, ultimately punishing her simply for not understanding something that no one could. The basic plot elements of her undoing -- a gotcha matter of semantics taken too literally -- are silly enough. They also tie into a backstory on which TZ slams what may be its most childishly reasoned hammer of judgment. (Complete with misogynist tinge -- basically, "Never let your uppity woman get her way, gents, least of all driving privileges.")
This is bad enough, but then Rod Serling's narration chimes in to actually celebrate her fate as right and proper, capped off with a cruelly literal metaphor about this paralyzed, largely bedridden woman "making her bed and having to sleep in it". Serling, creator of a beloved, socially conscious series, has never sounded so smug and small-minded.
I wonder if Serling was responsible for the judgmental ending, apparently a change from screenwriter Richard Matheson's short story. At the least, he should've known better than to narrate this text.
He wasn't aware of his hypocrisy, either. The narrator who claims the crippled woman deserved her sickbed died on the bed of an operating room at age 50, after a life with much overwork and heavy smoking on screen and off. Probably Serling still deserved a better eulogy than the one he gives Elva Keene.
Although The Twilight Zone (TZ) likes to indulge in sermons -- which often ride on broad, melodramatic flights of purple prose -- at least it usually has the excuse of a humane heart and thoughtful mind genuinely interested in the human condition and serious issues. Night Call, by contrast, is astonishing in its arrogance, cruelty and pointlessness. The word "stupid" often serves as a putdown. In this case, it's merely another accurate adjective.
Already stressed by a loud, fierce nighttime thunderstorm, the elderly and crippled Elva Keene is confused, then frightened by persistent phone calls from a weird, mostly non-responsive caller. She finally screams at him to leave her alone. And mightn't any of us? Her reaction is entirely understandable. The calls sound very much like the work of a malicious prankster, even a dangerous stalker. They'll scare a woman in Elva's vulnerable position especially. To today's viewers, the caller might also sound like a more sympathetic case -- a mentally retarded person -- but a woman of Elva's age, back in that era, would be less likely to understand this. It was still early in the days of advocates like Rose Kennedy.
Yet Night Call holds Elva's natural reaction against her, ultimately punishing her simply for not understanding something that no one could. The basic plot elements of her undoing -- a gotcha matter of semantics taken too literally -- are silly enough. They also tie into a backstory on which TZ slams what may be its most childishly reasoned hammer of judgment. (Complete with misogynist tinge -- basically, "Never let your uppity woman get her way, gents, least of all driving privileges.")
This is bad enough, but then Rod Serling's narration chimes in to actually celebrate her fate as right and proper, capped off with a cruelly literal metaphor about this paralyzed, largely bedridden woman "making her bed and having to sleep in it". Serling, creator of a beloved, socially conscious series, has never sounded so smug and small-minded.
I wonder if Serling was responsible for the judgmental ending, apparently a change from screenwriter Richard Matheson's short story. At the least, he should've known better than to narrate this text.
He wasn't aware of his hypocrisy, either. The narrator who claims the crippled woman deserved her sickbed died on the bed of an operating room at age 50, after a life with much overwork and heavy smoking on screen and off. Probably Serling still deserved a better eulogy than the one he gives Elva Keene.