Speaker 1: Day twenty four of the twilight Zone podcast, I'd vent Colander.
Speaker 1: It's Christmas Eve, everyone, Zach, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2: Well, happy Christmas time every time.
Speaker 1: Every time. Our friend Ben Kickem says, if there's a
Speaker 1: sequel to any Twilight Zone episode in the original series,
Speaker 1: which one would it be and how would it play out?
Speaker 1: So I'll hand over to you fast for this one, Zach.
Speaker 2: Well, here's what I'm thinking. You know, Bill Muomi has
Speaker 2: a daughter, right, so now you know obviously, had they
Speaker 2: not made a sequel to It's a Good Life in
Speaker 2: the two thousand and two show, that would have been
Speaker 2: such an obvious answer. That's why that's such a slam
Speaker 2: dunk episode, because it's such a brilliant one to make
Speaker 2: a sequel out of. So hats off to them there,
Speaker 2: say what you will about that two thousand and two series.
Speaker 2: They nailed that. This was a hard one. I was
Speaker 2: scrolling through episodes and I was like, hmmm, hmmm, because
Speaker 2: you want to think, what can you even So many
Speaker 2: of these are so I don't know, definitive or personal
Speaker 2: or like, how can you even continue these? Even some
Speaker 2: of the greatest episodes, like It's It's over like you
Speaker 2: can't continue Willoughby, right, for example, let's go follow him
Speaker 2: and Willoughby like, let us let that's not a story, right,
Speaker 2: So what I came up with, and I think this
Speaker 2: actually really works in like real world production too, if
Speaker 2: they had wanted to do it just even a few
Speaker 2: years ago, a kind of stopwatch Okay, okay, So at
Speaker 2: the end of the episode, the stopwatch breaks and the
Speaker 2: world is frozen, right, So everything is frozen. He's frozen
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty or whenever that is. Richard Erdman is
Speaker 2: the actor, right, and he's stuck in this world. And
Speaker 2: Richard Erdman he lived to ninety three years old. He
Speaker 2: was in a community. In the last few years of
Speaker 2: the community, he was a recurring character Leonard. It was
Speaker 2: kind of a gag that he that he was just
Speaker 2: kind of a character that I'll do all these ridiculous
Speaker 2: things and anyway, so he was a very active actor
Speaker 2: even in up until near the end of his life.
Speaker 2: So you could have really done kind of done this,
Speaker 2: you know. So you just I don't know when you
Speaker 2: follow it up, right, but maybe it's just it's kind
Speaker 2: of like this, what's what's weird? It's like it's kind
Speaker 2: of this comedy episode ish, but then it has like
Speaker 2: one of the darkest endings of the whole show. And
Speaker 2: uh so how do you do that? I mean, it's
Speaker 2: kind of like a kind of like a I AM
Speaker 2: legend kind of set up, right, He's just wandering around
Speaker 2: the world and X amount of years have passed and
Speaker 2: everything's frozen, right, It's frozen in time.
Speaker 1: And you've kind of still nineteen sixty, right.
Speaker 2: So like that's that's kind of interesting, right, And you know,
Speaker 2: I don't do cars work. I don't know. You can
Speaker 2: explore what the mechanics of this actually is, right, like
Speaker 2: how what has actually stopped that's like the first act
Speaker 2: or whatever, right, But then you have to what is
Speaker 2: the story? What is it? Like he has to like
Speaker 2: find somebody else at some point, who's who's also you
Speaker 2: know in motion maybe that person has a device as well,
Speaker 2: and you kind of go from there. I don't know
Speaker 2: where you go from there, but I just think that's
Speaker 2: a world you can explore. The kind of creepy, but
Speaker 2: it will be kind of interesting, be something to kind
Speaker 2: of and you'd have to say something with the story too.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you say either. I have no
Speaker 2: I have no narrative depth to this, just just the
Speaker 2: setup of something that that would have been an interesting
Speaker 2: status quo too to follow up on. And maybe, you know,
Speaker 2: give this guy, I mean, not a happy ending because
Speaker 2: he was stuck in this purgatory for decades, but at
Speaker 2: least don't have him suck there forever, right, that'd be
Speaker 2: nice because you know, yeah, he was annoying, but talk
Speaker 2: about you know, we've talked about this on and off
Speaker 2: on the Advent Calendar and other places. People that deserve
Speaker 2: their face. I don't think this guy deserved this fate,
Speaker 2: you know, so you can you can kind of give
Speaker 2: him a better ending and then revisit an interesting concept
Speaker 2: like that. So that is what I came up with.
Speaker 1: That's pretty great. Would you have heard the world start
Speaker 1: up again at some point where it's still like the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and he's now an old man?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the only way to do it, really,
Speaker 2: And that's kind of like, Okay, you were annoying, so
Speaker 2: you have to be old now, but you're not stuck
Speaker 2: in this purgatory forever. So that's the half carmic justice,
Speaker 2: I guess. Because he was like stealing banks and stuff.
Speaker 2: But still, just because you robbed a bank doesn't mean
Speaker 2: to be stuck in furgatory forever. But that's kind of yeah,
Speaker 2: it would still be the sixties and he would just
Speaker 2: be old, right, and interesting stuff would happen in there somewhere.
Speaker 2: But that's my pitch.
Speaker 1: That's pretty brilliant, man, that's pretty brilliant.
Speaker 2: I was very proud of that, by the way, because
Speaker 2: I was thinking a long time about a lot of
Speaker 2: these questions, because these are some, by the way, great
Speaker 2: questions this year everybody, so hats off to y'all. And
Speaker 2: I got to this and I was like, man, I
Speaker 2: don't know, so I spent you know, this is the
Speaker 2: last one. I obviously it's the last day, right, so
Speaker 2: it's the one that we answered last. And I was
Speaker 2: really stuck for a while. But when I found that,
Speaker 2: I feel like I unlocked it. And I'm proud of this.
Speaker 1: Unlike you say, the age of the ACTA to you know,
Speaker 1: Live till ninety three just feeds into the story paerfectly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, brilliant, brilliant. Okay, So I went a bit
Speaker 1: deep on this one because it just sort of kept
Speaker 1: running and running in my head. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: start with an open narration. I'm not going to do
Speaker 1: a rod sailing impersonation because that's just not what I do.
Speaker 1: But I'll start with this open narration and then let's
Speaker 1: see where we go from there. So portrait of a
Speaker 1: legend growing weary. You know him by many names, Saint Nick,
Speaker 1: Chris Kringle, or simply Santa Claus. But once a long
Speaker 1: time ago, he was just Henry Corwin, a man who
Speaker 1: found redemption in a bare lap sack. Mister Corwan has
Speaker 1: spent sixty years delivering the impossible to the overlooked. But tonight,
Speaker 1: on a globe spun dizzy by instant gratification and digital disconnect,
Speaker 1: Henry Corwen faces a crisis that no amount of magic
Speaker 1: can solve. He's about to discover that in a world
Speaker 1: where you can order anything with a clique, the one
Speaker 1: thing you can't buy is the one thing he's forgotten
Speaker 1: how to give. Tonight, mister Corwin makes his rounds in
Speaker 1: the Twilight Zone. Now, the problem with this is, I've
Speaker 1: said it sixty years later, but you can't use our
Speaker 1: Carnee anymore, and we don't want to be having any
Speaker 1: ai or Carne's running about.
Speaker 2: No blurry man or Carnie.
Speaker 1: No. No, so we would have to recast. But I
Speaker 1: guess a way to do it would be to, you know,
Speaker 1: get a really good actor in there and you know,
Speaker 1: make him a bit more Santa Clause he you know
Speaker 1: that over the years, he's sort of filled out a bit,
Speaker 1: you know, something like that. Yeah, I don't know. The
Speaker 1: premise of this is, like we saw back in the sixties,
Speaker 1: the sac gave people the presence that they you know,
Speaker 1: were quite fitting. It either kept them warm or it
Speaker 1: was just a nice little thing for them because they
Speaker 1: want we're a lot less than than ours are. Now,
Speaker 1: the problem that he is having now is when he
Speaker 1: tries to give like a present to a teenager, the
Speaker 1: Sack will give them what they actually need, but they
Speaker 1: won't necessarily want it. So for the teenager who's glued
Speaker 1: to his smartphone, the Sack would give them like a
Speaker 1: pencil and some paper, you know, to draw to settle
Speaker 1: their mind down from being on their phone twenty four
Speaker 1: hours a day, But they don't want that. So it's
Speaker 1: all starting to go a little bit wrong, you know,
Speaker 1: And he's starting to become a bit weary because the
Speaker 1: Sack is getting heavier and heavier. Are you with me
Speaker 1: so far?
Speaker 2: No, this makes a lot of sense. And as you've
Speaker 2: been talking, I haven't paying attention, no worry, But as
Speaker 2: you've been talking, I looked it up. Art Carney had
Speaker 2: a son named Brian Carney who is currently seventy nine
Speaker 2: years old and is an actor in a comedian and
Speaker 2: he has recently appeared in The Good Wife, for example.
Speaker 2: So I think we just found out Santa Claus.
Speaker 1: So this is the premise. You know, his his giving
Speaker 1: just isn't having the same effect anymore because the world
Speaker 1: has changed around him, but the sack still gives people
Speaker 1: what it thinks they need. At that point, you know,
Speaker 1: this bit might be a bit hokey, but on his
Speaker 1: travels he meets like a tech bro who's set up
Speaker 1: like a drone present delivery service based on you know,
Speaker 1: the algorithm from your phones, so you know, because of
Speaker 1: what you look at depends what you get on Christmas Day,
Speaker 1: because you know it's been the algorithm is kind of
Speaker 1: choosing what you get and it's always what you want,
Speaker 1: you know, So he's got that to compete against. So
Speaker 1: you know, we play this bit of the story for
Speaker 1: a while where we're seeing how downhearted he's getting with
Speaker 1: all of this, but in the end, he's, you know,
Speaker 1: he's kind of done, and he stumbles into a park
Speaker 1: and he's even contemplating buying a bottle of booze again.
Speaker 1: But he sits next to a little girl on a bench.
Speaker 1: Now she's not like a poverty stricken girl or anything
Speaker 1: like that. She's well dressed, but she's holding a smartphone
Speaker 1: and she's kind of looking at it with a blank,
Speaker 1: lonely expression on her face. And then a little further
Speaker 1: down the path we see that her parents are both
Speaker 1: sitting there blankly looking at their phone screens as well.
Speaker 1: Then the little girl kind of looks up at Henry
Speaker 1: Cowen and has that kind of reaction of hold on
Speaker 1: a minute, is that Santa Claus? You know? And Corwen,
Speaker 1: you know, he notices her, but he's he's going through
Speaker 1: his own things, and he just starts to talk and
Speaker 1: he's like, you know, she used to mean something and
Speaker 1: so on, and they get into a little conversation and
Speaker 1: she's like, well, what are you talking about, and then
Speaker 1: he kind of starts to tell her the story of
Speaker 1: how he became Santa Claus. We could have a couple
Speaker 1: of flashbacks in there. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, And as
Speaker 1: he's telling the story, she starts to become more animated,
Speaker 1: and then he starts to become more animated because he's
Speaker 1: remembering what all this was about. And you know, by
Speaker 1: the end of it, they're both a lot happier. And
Speaker 1: he kind of points the present sack towards her for
Speaker 1: her to put her hand in and take something out,
Speaker 1: and then we just see her hand go in and
Speaker 1: when her hand comes out, there's nothing in it, and
Speaker 1: you know, he's just kind of beside himself. Now he's
Speaker 1: devastated that the magic sack seems to be gone. But
Speaker 1: the camera just zooms in slightly and we see that
Speaker 1: she didn't pull anything out of the sack, but she
Speaker 1: actually puts something in it. She put her cell phone
Speaker 1: into it. Now she's looking up at him with all
Speaker 1: the wonder that a child should have when they see
Speaker 1: Santa Claus, even in this kind of wounded state. He
Speaker 1: paid here some attention, and she paid him some attention.
Speaker 1: They had a meaningful interaction with each other, you know,
Speaker 1: in a world where everyone is obsessed with their screens,
Speaker 1: they kind of found each other in a moment when
Speaker 1: they both needed to believe in something again. So you know,
Speaker 1: he kind of realizes that the sack was becoming heavier
Speaker 1: because it was carrying the weight of all the unfulfilled
Speaker 1: emotional needs of people. Now, you could go quite big
Speaker 1: with this or quite small. But the sack kind of
Speaker 1: begins to glow and tremble a little bit and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden boom. But instead of releasing presents,
Speaker 1: it just it sort of releases some kind of special effect,
Speaker 1: I suppose, but it just wakes people up a little bit.
Speaker 1: And you could either play it small where her parents
Speaker 1: sort of think, God, what are we doing. We've got
Speaker 1: a beautiful daughter and were sitting in the park on
Speaker 1: our phones and they sort of get together. Or you
Speaker 1: could go big and have it like be all over
Speaker 1: the city where people start to remember loved ones and
Speaker 1: call old friends and you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So there's a few options there.
Speaker 2: It's like the end of the Cable Guy when he
Speaker 2: knocks out the TV and people have to read and
Speaker 2: talk to each other again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: So you have an actual theme and narrative like to yours.
Speaker 2: Mine was just a cool idea. I love this. This
Speaker 2: is great and to the spirit of Christmas. On Christmas,
Speaker 2: Eve's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, So Corwen goes back to the sleigh and you know,
Speaker 1: the sack is empty, but it's as light as a feather,
Speaker 1: ready to be kind of filled up with whatever that
Speaker 1: it needs to be. And now he realizes that in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty the meek needed things like coats and food,
Speaker 1: but in the modern world that is there are those people,
Speaker 1: but you've also got people who are just kind of
Speaker 1: spiritually starved, I suppose, not in a religious sense, but
Speaker 1: in a you know, the spirit of humanity sense. So
Speaker 1: it's not his job to just be handing out stuff anymore.
Speaker 1: It's to be a connector, a connector of people if
Speaker 1: you like. So you know, we we we could go
Speaker 1: to Montage again and you know that teen who threw
Speaker 1: the pad away is now sitting there drawing while his
Speaker 1: phone's you know, locked away somewhere. You know that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. You can you can do as much or
Speaker 1: as little as you want with that. And in the
Speaker 1: end we get our clothes in narration, which would be
Speaker 1: a Christmas wish from Henry Corwen that the most precious
Speaker 1: gifts are not the ones wrapped in ribbon, but the
Speaker 1: ones wrapped in time. In a world of infinite inventory,
Speaker 1: mister Corwen found that the only thing truly worth giving
Speaker 1: is a piece of oneself, a simple transaction available to all,
Speaker 1: found exclusively in the Twilight Zone. And there you go.
Speaker 1: That's my sequel to my Twilight Zone episode.
Speaker 2: Oh well done, man. You know you spend enough time
Speaker 2: the Twilight alone. You start turning into talking about him,
Speaker 2: turning to Santa Claus. You're turning into rots earlier here.
Speaker 2: This is fantastic stuff. People are gonna want you to
Speaker 2: write this whole episode out time. I hope you know that.
Speaker 2: So another Patreon exclusive everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go, there you go. Well, Zach, not
Speaker 1: to be cheesy or anything, but I think you know,
Speaker 1: you and I have really benefited from the things that
Speaker 1: we do in terms of podcasting and so on, and
Speaker 1: the friends we've made. And it's another year that we've
Speaker 1: been friends because of our podcasting, which those are godess
Speaker 1: together and it's been great. So thank you so much
Speaker 1: for spending this time with me on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know, you start these things because you want
Speaker 2: to be part of something you love, and then you
Speaker 2: build a community and you connect to others, and it's
Speaker 2: just talk about the connection there, right, I mean, all
Speaker 2: these connections we've made. It's we enjoy the material obviously,
Speaker 2: that's why we do what we do, but we also
Speaker 2: enjoy the people that enjoy with us, right, because what's
Speaker 2: the point of enjoying the stuff? And yeah, of course
Speaker 2: you can enjoy this stuff just locked by yourself watching
Speaker 2: something right there. You know, you want to decompress after
Speaker 2: a long day and watch your favorite show and movie
Speaker 2: or whatever, right, But when you can there's a different
Speaker 2: gear of your fandom when you can engage in it
Speaker 2: with with like minded and fellow fans. And podcasts like
Speaker 2: yours have helped bring people together and it's been great
Speaker 2: and I'm thankful for our friendship and I'm looking forward
Speaker 2: to going to more surrounding fests and doing more advent
Speaker 2: calendars and whatever the future brings.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely well, thank you for joining me on this
Speaker 1: one again, and have a great Christmas, my friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good.
Speaker 1: Night, and we will see you soon. I don't know
Speaker 1: when it's gonna be, but it'll be soon here on
Speaker 1: the Twilight Zone podcast. Merry Christmas everyone,