I can't watch it. It's so well done and affecting that it brings me to tears every time as I am reminded of my own failings as a parent. Just reading the reviews and composing my own right now bring me right back to the heavy emotional state that this beautiful, but heart wrenching episode elicits. To me there are two equally compelling storylines here, the explicit one and the one only to be revealed over time and indicating Mr. Serling's prescience.
First, Klugman is a tour de force as the aging bookie, weighed down by a lifetime of bad decisions, who gets and takes his last shot at redemption. No one could play this kind of character as well as him as he - along with Burgess Meredith - crystalizes his legacy here, effectively as one of the TZ's actors in residency. He is so powerful, yet vulnerable, an absolute master of his craft working some Sterling's best, most poignant writing.
The second story line speaks to, what might be seen as Mr. Serlings' foresightedness. The release date was 27 September 1963. JFK had a little less than two months to live. The American public knew, and cared very little at that point in time about our nation's latest proxy war with communist forces and ideology ... the "conflict" in Vietnam. Kennedy, by his own admission was ambivalent about his intentions for the conflict with many, to this day, claiming that, had he lived, he would have withdrawn after the 64 election. We were still in the phase of sending "advisors" there, not actual combat troops. By years end, we would have over 16,000 advisors there with a little less than 200 total deaths since the beginning of our involvement. The first actual combat troops would arrive in March of 1965 under LBJ. At peak, by 1968, we would have over 550,000 troops deployed and by wars end, in 1975, over 58,000 American deaths. Estimates of "enemy" deaths range from 1 to 3 million people.
What is initially remarkable here is that it was one televisions earliest mentions of Vietnam, if not the very first. References to Vietnam anywhere, other than on the news were so rare and actually jarring to see and hear, even later on in the war and especially on entertainment TV. I know that on Route 66, one of the lead characters was called out as a Vietnam vet and, perversely, on the Munsters, when Herman was being given a baseball tryout, Manager, Leo Durocher, so awed by Herman's strength power, exclaimed that he didn't "know whether to sign him with the Dodgers or send him to Vietnam". To this day, given the polarizing tendencies of Vietnam, those sorts of references can actually be disturbing or at least disquieting.
Klugman's exasperated line: "There isn't even supposed to be a war going on there" might not have carried a lot of weight during the first broadcast in 1963, but given what Vietnam would become in less than two years and the fact that the overwhelming number of episode views would come later in syndicated reruns, that line would come to have both agonizing and ironic gravitas.
First, Klugman is a tour de force as the aging bookie, weighed down by a lifetime of bad decisions, who gets and takes his last shot at redemption. No one could play this kind of character as well as him as he - along with Burgess Meredith - crystalizes his legacy here, effectively as one of the TZ's actors in residency. He is so powerful, yet vulnerable, an absolute master of his craft working some Sterling's best, most poignant writing.
The second story line speaks to, what might be seen as Mr. Serlings' foresightedness. The release date was 27 September 1963. JFK had a little less than two months to live. The American public knew, and cared very little at that point in time about our nation's latest proxy war with communist forces and ideology ... the "conflict" in Vietnam. Kennedy, by his own admission was ambivalent about his intentions for the conflict with many, to this day, claiming that, had he lived, he would have withdrawn after the 64 election. We were still in the phase of sending "advisors" there, not actual combat troops. By years end, we would have over 16,000 advisors there with a little less than 200 total deaths since the beginning of our involvement. The first actual combat troops would arrive in March of 1965 under LBJ. At peak, by 1968, we would have over 550,000 troops deployed and by wars end, in 1975, over 58,000 American deaths. Estimates of "enemy" deaths range from 1 to 3 million people.
What is initially remarkable here is that it was one televisions earliest mentions of Vietnam, if not the very first. References to Vietnam anywhere, other than on the news were so rare and actually jarring to see and hear, even later on in the war and especially on entertainment TV. I know that on Route 66, one of the lead characters was called out as a Vietnam vet and, perversely, on the Munsters, when Herman was being given a baseball tryout, Manager, Leo Durocher, so awed by Herman's strength power, exclaimed that he didn't "know whether to sign him with the Dodgers or send him to Vietnam". To this day, given the polarizing tendencies of Vietnam, those sorts of references can actually be disturbing or at least disquieting.
Klugman's exasperated line: "There isn't even supposed to be a war going on there" might not have carried a lot of weight during the first broadcast in 1963, but given what Vietnam would become in less than two years and the fact that the overwhelming number of episode views would come later in syndicated reruns, that line would come to have both agonizing and ironic gravitas.