In a small town in the Midwest Sheriff Charlie Koch is getting up to go to work.\u00a0 His wife Ella criticizes him for getting up in the middle of the night but he tells her that even though it\u2019s pitch dark outside, it\u2019s morning.\u00a0 He tells her to have breakfast ready for a condemned prisoner named Jagger who is being hanged that morning.<\/p>\n
When Charlie gets to the jail Deputy Pierce remarks on how strange it is for it to be so dark at eight o-clock in the morning.\u00a0 Pierce is upbeat about the hanging but is upbraided by the local newspaper owner Colbey for having perjured himself by lying about powder burns he had seen on the victim.\u00a0 And Colbey indicts himself and Koch for not doing more to bring the facts to the attention of the court.\u00a0 We also hear that Jagger killed a \u201cbigot\u201d who burned crosses on lawns.\u00a0 We are led to believe that maybe it was self-defense.<\/p>\n
Colbey goes in to talk to Jagger.\u00a0 He asks Jagger if he wants to talk to a priest but Jagger says he doesn\u2019t believe in God.\u00a0 Jagger tells Colbey that all he feels is fear and anger.<\/p>\n
At the scaffold a crowd assembles to watch the hanging.\u00a0 Reverend Anderson a black man asks Jagger if he enjoyed shooting the victim and Jagger says he did.\u00a0 Then Anderson tells the crowd that Jagger was guilty.\u00a0 Jagger rebukes him.\u00a0 But based on what Anderson says the guilt he is talking about is not legal guilt for murder but guilt for the sin of hate.\u00a0 Jagger jeers at the crowd and tells them that he will choke and dance for them but he won\u2019t ask for forgiveness.<\/p>\n
Jagger is hanged and it gets even darker until the crowd says they can\u2019t see almost anything.\u00a0 Reverend Anderson theorizes that the blackness is hate and that the crowd has so much of it that they can\u2019t hold it in anymore so it is escaping into the air and enveloping the whole town.<\/p>\n
The sheriff, deputy and newspaperman return to the jail and Pierce tries to encourage them by claiming that any minute now the fog will break up and the sun will emerge as bright as ever.\u00a0 Colbey turns on the radio and we hear that other dark spots are appearing at especially hateful places around the world.\u00a0 The radio mentions the north of Vietnam, a street in Dallas, Texas, a prison in Hungary, Birmingham, Alabama and the Berlin Wall.<\/p>\n
Rod Serling was a pretty straight forward progressive.\u00a0 So naturally his convictions show up in his work.\u00a0 But only in a few episodes does he let it get out of control.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this is one of those.\u00a0 The litany of straw man moments is long.\u00a0 The man Jagger killed was a cross-burning bigot who intimidated black people.\u00a0 The perjured deputy, the cowardly sheriff and newspaperman.\u00a0 The death penalty claiming an innocent man.\u00a0 The crowd baying for blood at the foot of the gallows.<\/p>\n
The episode is not without artistic and storytelling merit.\u00a0 In fact, if it had just been evenhanded, I think it would have made its point.\u00a0 No one can deny that the world is full to overflowing with hate.\u00a0 We all feel it and suffer from its effects.\u00a0 But Serling always points the finger of blame at those he sees as his political enemies, namely the non-progressives.\u00a0 It\u2019s his default move.<\/p>\n
In deference to the competent acting I\u2019m going with a C.\u00a0 If I were judging it on honesty the grade would be much lower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a small town in the Midwest Sheriff Charlie Koch is getting up to go to work.\u00a0 His wife Ella criticizes him for getting up<\/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":[2105,38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-8379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-i-am-the-night-color-me-black","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