User reviews

This episode two from the 1985 "Twilight Zone" season on CBS was pretty good yet not one of the better ones the first "Wordplay" carries most of the weight. I will describe each one by one.

The first in the segment is titled "Wordplay" directed by horror film legend Wes Craven, it really trips with the mind showing that words don't have to be so hard to learn and seem sophisticated. It stars veteran comic and actor Robert Klein as Bill Lowery a company salesman for a medical agency which is advertising new high tech products with hard and long sophisticated names. And you guessed it Bill can't pronounce the words he sees he will have a devil of a time talking about the products much less selling them! Soon one by one this episode takes on a mind changing experience of altered sanity as when everyone speaks to Bill he hears these words in just common everyday talk! Everyone's speech has become gibberish to him! It ends so sad in a way as his communication level has reached a low point as he can't even talk with anyone it shows the Klein character in his son's room reading an elementary book of baby words! It just proved that Craven showed that powerful words and a strong vocabulary are important in life and those who can't master it feel burdened and live on a different planet! The second offering was okay nothing special it stars Meg Foster as a married woman named Jenny who seems happy at a country side picnic with her husband and two daughters. Yet is she really as the viewer finds this is the result of her being at a dream center of technological advance that gives customers dreams for the fact that they pay money. At the time this 1985 this episode gave a glimpse into the future of technology fantasy and the hope of new virtual reality experiments.

Finally the third offering "Chameleon" is about a group of NASA space shuttle crew members who during their journey come across an unusual return that's an alien like equipment piece that absorbs them and their memories! The segment had low key actors Ben Piazza and Terrance O' Quinn. Only fitting that a sci-fi series have an episode of space and an alien theme like this, but really a pretty low segment of this episode.

Watch this one really for "Wordplay" a good mind numbing story that changes a person's state of mind and communication, because the other two are somewhat futuristic and a yawn.

In the first episode, "Wordplay," Robert Klein plays a salesman. He sells medical equipment and has to become versed in a whole new line. He is trying to memorize the names of the products. The younger sales people have a superior attitude toward him and his older colleagues. Then a strange thing happens. Nouns and verbs begin to have whole new meanings. "Lunch" is replaced by "dinosaur." It starts slowly and pretty soon he is unable to understand anything or communicate in any way. His son is very ill but he can't talk to him. This plays out quite neatly. It is a really original idea. The title "Dreams for Sale" gives the plot away. A beautiful young woman is on a picnic with her husband and daughters. It is utterly idyllic, but soon things begin to repeat themselves, like a tape loop. If you have any imagination, it doesn't take long to figure out what is going on although why this woman is her is up to speculation. The final entry, "Chameleon," is about a trip into space on al Space Shuttle where there is a malfunction in a camera. When it returns to Earth, it begins to absorb people. Despite efforts to isolate the thing, it is able to morph into familiar things, even a nuclear weapon. This is interesting until the writers couldn't come up with a decent conclusion.

A normal life, a normal man. Something's changed. You are in deep troubles, specially if you don't want to run where the world's going. Our main character is the metaphor of transformation, and how difficult can be to turn ourselves into new human beings, when learning new skills. Changing or dying, seems to say this TV movie. The unexpected way of describing a change makes Wordplay a good work. I can't say I liked it so much, but in our Script school has been used to explain an alternative way of plotting. We enjoyed a lot by creating alternative ends, and my classmates realized some little masterpieces of sci-fi and drama. 80s Twilight Zone isn't definitely the Classical series, but it's a good product.

Really nice and funny episode with a salesman who is in an unexpected part of life and will have to leave again, the episode manages well to mix the atmosphere of anxiety with a lighter one .Cute episode even if not too inspired and with not too much sense that however manages to have a moral that is not even bad but it is a very wrong moral to teach.

WORDPLAY, an early story from THE NEW TWILIGHT ZONE, deals with a classic sci-fi idea of altered reality. In it, a brash salesman finds the world turning to chaos when the everyday language used by people begins to change; what was once "lunch" is now "dinosaur", for example.

It's different, that's for sure, although the choice of horror director Wes Craven to helm the episode is an odd one. Still, this is a tale of intellectual horror and one that works well mainly because it feels original. Forget demons and monsters, this is about mental disintegration in a familiar world turned strange, and it's all the more effective for it. A shame the running time wasn't longer (this is a 15 minute one) to develop the idea further.

The second story in this episode is DREAMS FOR SALE, featuring the memorable Meg Foster (her of the icy blue eyes) playing an ordinary woman who's enjoying a romantic picnic with her partner. Unfortunately for her, reality begins to glitch and break down, so much so that the truth about her real situatin is revealed. This tale's very short but has neat shades of THE MATRIX and VIRTUAL NIGHTMARE, and I liked the execution.

The last segment of the episode is CHAMELEON and it's a lot more interesting, feeling like an episode of THE OUTER LIMITS instead of an episode of this disappointing show. The underrated Terry O'Quinn stars as a NASA scientist who uncovers an odd situation when an astronaut returns to Earth: the astronaut isn't human at all, instead some kind of alien shapeshifter who demands his release. The premise of this one is solid and the execution quite acceptable, with the emphasis on the atmosphere. A shame the ending is weak but hey, it could be (and often is) worse.