Jack Klugman plays a small-time pool player named Jesse Cardiff.\u00a0 He is bitter that even fifteen years after the death of pool master Fats Brown everyone still considered Fats the greatest pool player.\u00a0 And he rails at a photo of Fats on the wall of his local pool hall and says, “I’d give anything, anything to play him one game!”<\/p>\n
In the next scene we see Fats Brown (played by Jonathan Winters), apparently up in Heaven, and he\u2019s being summoned by some kind of celestial appointment intercom.\u00a0 He heads down to Earth and appears in Jesse Cardiff\u2019s pool room and tells him his wish has been heard and Fats is there to grant it.\u00a0 The catch is that the stakes for winning and losing are life and death.\u00a0 Now Jesse is taken aback.\u00a0 Sure, he\u2019s anxious to prove his skill but betting his life seems nuts.\u00a0 But Fats goads him and mocks him until he agrees to the bet.<\/p>\n
They now engage in a long, skillful and fiercely fought game of pool.\u00a0 At last it comes down to one ball and it is obvious that Fats has thrown the point and he tries to give Jesse one last chance not to take the crown of being the greatest pool player in the world.\u00a0 But Jesse sinks the ball and wins.\u00a0 Fats congratulates Jesse and leaves with a mysterious smile.\u00a0 Jesse revels in his victory but then seems almost deflated by the anticlimax of having won.<\/p>\n
In the next scene we\u2019re back in heaven and Jesse is dejectedly sitting next to the celestial pool table waiting for the next challenge to take.\u00a0 Being the champ is a grueling existence and Jesse must be envying Fats who Serling announces has gone fishing.<\/p>\n
This is one of those goofy fantasy episodes.\u00a0 Heaven arranges pool rivalries and allows life or death stakes on the outcome?\u00a0 But who cares!\u00a0 Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters ham it up to the hilt.<\/p>\n
In my family, pool was a bizarre fetish.\u00a0 My paternal grandfather had a pool table in his basement.\u00a0 But we, his poor grandsons were anathema and weren\u2019t even allowed to hold a cue near \u201cthe felt.\u201d\u00a0 There was a shrine where an autographed photo of Willie Mosconi presided over the pretty terrible players that my grandfather surrounded himself with.\u00a0 So, pool had the reputation of being a boring waste of time.\u00a0 We preferred street football or stickball.\u00a0 Watching these two pool players agonize over fractions of a millimeter and an invisible degree of angle is strangely familiar in its futility.\u00a0 Funny thing is there was a full sized pool table in my basement when I bought this house so I make a point of letting the grandsons play on it any way they please.\u00a0 \u201cThe felt\u201d is starting to look less than pristine but I don\u2019t mind and neither do they.<\/p>\n
Obviously, I have no objectivity about this subject but I find myself always enjoying this episode immensely.\u00a0 I\u2019ll call it an A.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jack Klugman plays a small-time pool player named Jesse Cardiff.\u00a0 He is bitter that even fifteen years after the death of pool master Fats Brown<\/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":[1813,38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-6553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-a-game-of-pool","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rod-serling","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n