Booth Templeton is an old Broadway actor whose twenty something second wife is cheating on him.\u00a0 He is about to start on a new play and he is thinking back to his youth when life was more appealing.\u00a0 When he arrives at the theater the play\u2019s producer, Sid Sperry informs him that he\u2019s fired the director and installed in his place young firebrand Arthur Willis in his place.\u00a0 When Willis sees Templeton arriving late for rehearsal Willis hectors him about the importance of being on time for the first day of rehearsal.\u00a0 When he repeatedly asks Templeton whether he is ready to step up to the challenge, Templeton runs for the back stage exit onto the street.<\/p>\n
But when Templeton walks out of the alley, he sees a theater sign that says it\u2019s 1927 (thirty-three years earlier than the present time for him).\u00a0 When he meets up with an old theater employee from that era, he\u2019s told that his wife Laura (his first wife who died years earlier) is waiting for him in a speak-easy around the corner.<\/p>\n
Arriving at the club he\u2019s shown in and sees Laura with his dear but departed friend Barney Flueger sitting at a table eating dinner and enjoying the music.\u00a0 Templeton tries to tell Laura and Barney how shocked and happy he is to see them after all these years but they\u2019re not interested in his amazement and just want to enjoy themselves eating, drinking and dancing.\u00a0 When he tries to make Laura understand how important it is for him to spend some time alone with her, she just shrugs him off and continues to eat her steak and fan herself with some papers.\u00a0 Templeton grabs the paper from her and puts them in his coat pocket and then begs her to listen to him.\u00a0 She escapes to the dance floor and starts doing the Charleston.\u00a0 When Templeton grabs her and tries to stop her, she slaps him in the face and tells him to go back where he came from.<\/p>\n
Templeton rushes out of the speak easy and as he leaves the room; the music stops and all the people fall silent and look sad and the scene fades to black.<\/p>\n
Templeton runs out onto the street and heads back into the theater.\u00a0 When he gets inside it\u2019s 1960 again.\u00a0 He is shocked by the change and wonders if he imagined the whole thing.\u00a0 But he reaches into his coat pocket and finds the papers he took from Laura.\u00a0 When he reads it, he realizes it is a script that has the words that Laura and Barney were speaking to him.\u00a0 Now he realizes that they did all this to force him to stop his nostalgic sadness and reconnect with his present life.<\/p>\n
Now Sperry and Willis who have been waiting for him start complaining about his flight from the theater.\u00a0 Willis asks Templeton if he is in the play or out.\u00a0 Composing himself he replies that he is in but then tells Willis that he prefers to be called Mr. Templeton.\u00a0 Then he tells Sperry that he doesn\u2019t allow non-cast members to attend rehearsals.\u00a0 When Sperry objects, Willis, who now sees Templeton as an assertive authority figure, tells Sperry that Templeton is right and he should leave.\u00a0 Now Templeton has re-entered his life and is enjoying it again.<\/p>\n
This is a pretty standard Twilight Zone and the ending is a little pat but I actually kind of liked it.\u00a0 It\u2019s probably the upbeat ending that makes it more palatable for me.\u00a0 I\u2019ll say B.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Booth Templeton is an old Broadway actor whose twenty something second wife is cheating on him.\u00a0 He is about to start on a new play<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,240,1661],"tags":[38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,1758,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-6295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rod-serling","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-the-trouble-with-templeton","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n