Ed Lindsay is an old man living in a rooming house that features a communal living space where the residents gather to watch tv at night.\u00a0 When we meet them, Ed is playing checkers with the \u201cProfessor\u201d who is also paying more attention to the tv western than to his game.\u00a0 This enrages Ed who goes off on a tirade on the stupidity and unhealthiness of the tv content.\u00a0 His fellow boarders barely respond to his invective and remain glued to the tube.\u00a0 Finally, in disgust, Ed heads down to the basement to reclaim his antique console-sized radio and with the help of a neighborhood boy carries it upstairs to his apartment.<\/p>\n
Once powered up Ed attempts to tune in some kind of acceptable programming.\u00a0 After rejecting the local rock and roll stations he finds that the rest of the dial is just static.\u00a0 But just as it seems he will be defeated he bangs the top of the radio with his hand and he hears the sound of his favorite Tommy Dorsey song coming over the radio.\u00a0 Ed is delighted to hear his old music and afterwards the radio plays others of his favorite radio shows from more than twenty years ago.\u00a0 Ed calls to the neighbors to share his discovery.\u00a0 But when the Professor and a female resident named Vinnie come to his room to hear what he\u2019s excited about there is nothing but static.<\/p>\n
The pattern repeats itself where Ed hears some old time show but when anyone else enters the room the broadcast is gone.\u00a0 When the Professor recommends that Ed call the radio station to find out how to improve reception the operator informs Ed that the radio station, he named went out of business ten years ago.\u00a0 Ed isn\u2019t disturbed by this revelation but the other tenants assume that Ed is imagining hearing things that aren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
The next day Ed returns to his room to find that his radio is gone.\u00a0 He confronts his neighbors and Vinnie admits that she gave the radio away to the junk dealer.\u00a0 Ed goes off in a rage down to the junk dealer\u2019s store and pays the man to take back his radio.\u00a0 When he returns Vinnie shows up at his apartment and gives the back story to what is going on.<\/p>\n
When She and Ed were twenty years younger, they were engaged to be married but Ed\u2019s mother was ill so they postponed it and events conspired so that they never married and became bitter ex-lovers who lived next to each other in disappointment and regret.\u00a0 And she further notes that every year on the anniversary of their engagement Ed waxes nostalgic for his earlier life.\u00a0 For instance, the Tommy Dorsey song he keeps hearing was actually the song that Ed and Vinnie had considered their own.\u00a0 Ed rejects this explanation and forcefully sticks to his story that he was hearing the programs he said he heard on the radio.\u00a0 And he tells Vinnie to leave his room.<\/p>\n
Once alone, Ed tunes in the radio and he hears Tommy Dorsey again and is so excited he calls out to Vinnie to come back and hear it.\u00a0 She walks through the door and this time she\u2019s a young woman again and she\u2019s still in love with Ed.\u00a0 And Ed is much younger too.\u00a0 And now they will relive their lives the way they should have, together and in love.<\/p>\n
Dean Jagger plays Ed and he puts all the right amount of cranky old man and someone mourning for the good old days when things were great.\u00a0 The rest of the cast do well enough and the story moves along without slowing down enough to annoy me.\u00a0 The plot is simple wish fulfillment around a magic talisman, in this case the radio that has a direct link back to the old world that Ed longs for.\u00a0 This type of story is done quite often on the Twilight Zone.\u00a0 I won\u2019t claim that this version is particularly special but it seems to work and I like it enough to give it a B.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ed Lindsay is an old man living in a rooming house that features a communal living space where the residents gather to watch tv at<\/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":[38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,1793,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-6403","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-static","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n