Twilight Zone episode review — 2.19 — Mr. Dingle, the Strong
Episode 2.19 “Mr. Dingle, the Strong”
Original air date: March 3, 1961
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: John Brahm
Rating: 8/10
This is another strong comedic episode, probably the best by Serling.
Burgess Meredith plays Luther Dingle, a sad and pathetic but well-meaning vacuum salesman. He gets beaten up by a sore loser of a gambler (Don Rickles) at a neighborhood bar. A two-headed alien(s) appears. The aliens have a funny look to them, letting you know to not take this seriously. They remark upon how weak Dingle is, and they decide to make him 300x stronger than the average human.
The episode then follows Dingle into various situations in which he underestimates his strength. Most of it is quite funny. The news gets a hold of it, and he makes the front page, which he finds after he wakes up and breaks his alarm clock by just touching it.
He goes to the bar, now packed with people trying to talk to him. One man offers him a job at his traveling carnival. Another offers him the lead on a television program. A nervous, awkward man (James Millhollin) enters and immediately starts shooting for a television program. He asks Dingle to demonstrate some feats of strength. Dingle punches through a wall and breaks a table in half with ease. Then he lifts a barstool that was nailed to the floor with just one finger. He then sees Don Rickles’s character, and lifts him up and spins him around, throwing him down. He now attempts to lift the very building.
The crowd seems skeptical, and the aliens, unseen by humans as they were before, arrive, and are disgusted to see him using his gift for petty exhibitions. They take away his power as he is raising the roof, and he starts feeling funny. He goes back to the tasks he had done successfully before, and embarrasses himself as he attempts and fails. People laugh at him, and the man shooting the television program apologizes to his camera, and leaves. Even Don Rickles humiliates him, before the bartender breaks it up.
As the aliens go to leave, two small aliens show up from a different planet and say they are experimenting on humans by giving them incredible intelligence. The aliens before suggest they try Dingle, who is probably stupid. They do so, and using calculus and laws of probability, Dingle correctly predicts the next batter in a baseball game on TV to hit a home run.
This is a good, lighthearted episode, elevated by Burgess Meredith’s charm. It’s pretty effective slapstick, and most of the effects look pretty good. If you look closely, you’ll see a few strings, but it’s actually done pretty well.
