Episode 20 : "The Watchers"

Summary

McCarthy rules!

Review

Kevin McCarthy is amazing in this episode. He plays two men, each trying to be the same person, but playing the role with just enough of a difference so you can tell who's who. Get it? It's a tricky acting feat, and he pulls it off with a slight change in his hair, a tic in his mannerisms and a nervousness in his voice. That's the best thing about this episode. An unintentionally funny moment occurs at the beginning, when a hysterical hotel manager runs onto an airport tarmac and complains to the Manager on Duty that aliens have taken over his hotel. Then two aliens drive up and corner the man with their Weapon Of Choice For This Episode -- a hypnotic prism. With it, they convince the hotelier to walk in front of a speeding airplane, where he is ground up by the propeller. The show's budget won't allow such elaborate special effects, so instead we see the man walking, then the plane coming closer, then some quickly-edited shots of the man and the plane, then we hear a THUD, and we see all the witnesses cringe, adding to the comic effect. In another rather obvious scene, Leonard Stone is a hapless human who stumbles into the aliens' secret viewing room. As penalty for this transgression, his dead body is found later at the wheel of his crashed car. Why don't the aliens simply make him disappear? Or doesn't this particular group of aliens possess that technology?

Review by Gerald Fitzgerald, submitted 2002-12-19

BACK