Twilight Zone episode review — 1.2 — One for the Angels

Episode 1.2 “One for the Angels”
Original air date: October 9, 1959
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Robert Parrish

Rating: 8/10

This is one of The Twilight Zone‘s more sentimental episodes, and it’s one of its better (though far from best) forays into that type of storytelling. The thing that amazes me about Rod Serling is his versatility. It’s easy to think of him as a science fiction writer, but really, of course, he was a master of allegory, and would often tell very human stories. He seemed to have an interest in the universal story of the second chance, and this is a decent example of that, just as the next episode would prove to be.

The story features low-level street salesman Lou Bookman (Ed Wynn) in a confrontation with Death (Murray Hamilton, the mayor from Jaws and Mr. Robinson in The Graduate). It’s a pretty simple story that resembles a classic medieval allegory like Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale.

The strength of the episode comes primarily from the strength of the main character. Bookman is likable from the start, even if Wynn’s performance comes off as a bit hammy in the 21st century. He is close with the neighborhood kids (again, not playing well in the 21st century), and appears to exist primarily for the enjoyment of others around him.

Death meets him and tells him when he will die, to which Bookman reacts negatively. He eventually makes a deal that he will not die until he has made the biggest sale of his life, a “pitch for the angels.” While Death doesn’t want to grant him this, he does so out of pity, only to soon learn that he has been tricked. He reacts with one of the local kids being hit by a car.

Bookman’s desperation to save her and be taken himself in her place takes up the rest of the episode. There isn’t so much a twist as there is a satisfying end to what has been set up. Bookman distracts Death by essentially selling his cheap crap. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, considering that Death doesn’t appear to have any need for material goods, really, but it works as a scene of suspense. The reason it’s not really a twist is that Bookman does this knowingly. For it to be a twist ending, he would really have to do it by accident and unwittingly cause his death. Nevertheless, it’s a good, emotional ending about how death shouldn’t be feared.

It’s not the best episode, but it’s a good one. It has some goofy moments, mainly due to Ed Wynn’s performance, which comes off as very theatrical. Still, Murray Hamilton, who has been in dozens of classic movies and I’ve always found to be an excellent character actor, is quite good in his role.

The Twilight Zone would have better sentimental episodes, but this one is important as the first episode that’s truly an allegory. That would grow to become one of the series’s biggest strengths, and one of the reasons people still watch it nearly 60 years after it first aired.