This is Serling at not only his worst, but his dullest too. The dialog is preachy, full of corny moralizing, hence it's fitting that the story is preachy and corny as well. Cardboard characters with goofy accents talk and talk and talk some more.
The boy looks bizarrely unmoved by all of this, so in that sense he is like the viewers. He is one of us, a victim of this script. In a rare scene where something does happen, a man hits another man with a bottle on the head - yet the kid shows zero reaction. Serling seems to believe that children have no fear, or at least a lot less than adults. So from what planet is Rod?
Let's face it, the boy must be autistic. This is literally how an autistic child behaves. (Or a bad child actor.)
The alien is so very dull, so let's assume he's from planet Boring. This dialog is worse than most pulp fiction comics. It is plastic, cliched and completely uninteresting.
The guitar-strumming "soundtrack" is reminiscent of Ed Wood's "Jail Bait", just very cheesy and dreary.
Why didn't these Boring aliens simply send humankind their damn gift by post, with a nice little video or letter explaining everything? You gotta love these dumb, clueless aliens who botch every attempt to be do-gooders - and then Serling predictably blames everything on the humans! As if being fearful is unnatural or evil. Fear is normal, it's what protects us from danger, and these stupid left-wing Boring aliens should have known this in advance. But then again, left-wingers must be the same all over the universe - bloody confused and clueless.
These "superior" aliens know all about human literature (the Latino alien quotes from "Of Mice and Men") yet they're too stupid to bring their "gift" directly to a medical institution rather than land in a primitive village full of illiterate peasants. Truly dumb.
The boy looks bizarrely unmoved by all of this, so in that sense he is like the viewers. He is one of us, a victim of this script. In a rare scene where something does happen, a man hits another man with a bottle on the head - yet the kid shows zero reaction. Serling seems to believe that children have no fear, or at least a lot less than adults. So from what planet is Rod?
Let's face it, the boy must be autistic. This is literally how an autistic child behaves. (Or a bad child actor.)
The alien is so very dull, so let's assume he's from planet Boring. This dialog is worse than most pulp fiction comics. It is plastic, cliched and completely uninteresting.
The guitar-strumming "soundtrack" is reminiscent of Ed Wood's "Jail Bait", just very cheesy and dreary.
Why didn't these Boring aliens simply send humankind their damn gift by post, with a nice little video or letter explaining everything? You gotta love these dumb, clueless aliens who botch every attempt to be do-gooders - and then Serling predictably blames everything on the humans! As if being fearful is unnatural or evil. Fear is normal, it's what protects us from danger, and these stupid left-wing Boring aliens should have known this in advance. But then again, left-wingers must be the same all over the universe - bloody confused and clueless.
These "superior" aliens know all about human literature (the Latino alien quotes from "Of Mice and Men") yet they're too stupid to bring their "gift" directly to a medical institution rather than land in a primitive village full of illiterate peasants. Truly dumb.