"Static", Poll and discussion topic

An old radio seems to pick up radio shows from the past. With Dean Jagger, Carmen Mathews.
Originally aired March 10, 1961.

List of musical cues

This is the preferred thread for any and all of your "Static" posts--facts, opinions, questions, speculations, and whatever else you can think of.* You can also give your opinion of the episode on a 1 to 10 scale, in the poll shown above.

Let the discussion begin!

*More specific instructions and suggestions about posting questions/comments related to this episode are located here.

I feel it is an underrated episode, this one is nostalgic, sentimental, yes abit slow,
but overall a charming episode,imho.
I am a fan of old time radio, even though I am only in my early 30s, love The Shadow radio dramas.

9 Zones

I was more a fan of old radio as a kid then I am now, but I still listen once in a while. Yes, a very sentimental episode, and the Tommy Dorsey music ("I'm Getting Sentimental Over You") and the cues from "What You Need" help create that feeling very well. Also a funny parody of TV in the beginning.

I like the way Dean Jagger plays Ed Lindsay, too. Even when he's grouchy, there's more of a reasonableness and even good-natured humor (deep down, maybe, but it's there) to Lindsay's grouchiness than there is to, say, Ben Conroy's grouchiness in "Kick The Can." Ed Lindsay could have been either one of my grandfathers on a grouchy day or in a grouchy moment. (They weren't like that most of the time, thankfully...and probably neither of them would ever have told a boy helping them carry something to "Go get yourself a switchblade" with his tip money. ) But Ben Conroy, as decent-hearted as he is deep down, is like the grandfather I'm glad I never had.

The finest example of what's special to me about Jagger's performance is the moment when Lindsay says in the cellar, "Don't you know what a radio is, boy?" The way Jagger speaks the line, it's more than a "Kids don't know anything these days, dag-nab it" kind of line. Ben Conroy hates kids. Ed Lindsay doesn't hate kids, though he does seem to hate rock-and-roll, which is unfortunate for him but, given his love for the music of his own youth, understandable.

When Lindsay addresses the "boy" in the cellar, I think you can hear that a part of himself hasn't stopped being a boy, hasn't stopped being young, hasn't stopped hoping. He can still see the boy he once was in the boy that stands across from him, and when that boy doesn't recognize the old-fashioned radio, he feels disappointed, almost betrayed. In my opinion, there's a part of Ed Lindsay's heart that has still "stayed gold"* in a way that Ben Conroy's hasn't, and I think it explains a lot about other differences between them--including the different ways their stories end.

* See http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/robertf...thinggold.shtml,
http://www.danagioia.net/essays/efrost2.htm

This one goes up and down on my list. Today I like it. I like the idea of radio shows before TV. And Jagger seems to love it so.

Leen

This is a pretty decent one, not bad at all, I always enjoy the mood of nostalgia.

I've been listening to Groucho Marx radio shows and laughing more at those than I do modern TV. The guy was brilliant on his show "You Bet Your Life". There's a lot to be said for old radio.

Under-rated by most. Especially like the end where Jagger and Carmen Matthews are reminising about what could have been. I give it a 7.

Not too bad--I kinda like the episodes that were shot on video. It gives them a "corny", 50's feel to them.

I'm not sure why but this one never clicked for me. I thought his old girlfriend was sort of annoying and man, would I have been pissed if someone went and sold a possession of mine without asking me.

The best part is when that kooky kid starts dancing like an idiot when the radio sparks to life!

You may remember that kooky kid from Leave It to Beaver. That's Stephen Talbot, who played Beaver's friend Gilbert Bates (or Harrison in his earliest appearances).

Excellent episode! VERY underated IMO. Has a special meaning for me, Dean Jagger was born in my hometown, Lima, Ohio

Very blah, middle of the road Zone for me. Gave it a 6.

I did like the scene where they're at dinner, eating dessert I think, and the landlady scolds someone reminding them, "they're at table." When I was a kid, I had realtives in their nineties at the time that would say that...

Some personal thoughts...

How things have changed unless the television show perspective was inaccurate.

As I watch this and "Kick the Can" I wish the folks in these homes today were that active and communicative. My mother has been in an assisted living facility for a year now after a fall in which she broke her hip. She had been suffering from dementia/alzheimers and just would never be well enough to go back home without 24 hour care. Now don't get me wrong it's a nice place run by an Italian family with a homey atmosphere as opposed to a cold antiseptic one.

But when they are not eating or sleeping they sit in the living room with hardly no communication at all. Only some of them are "all there" like our TZ characters but mostly not. It's just a heartbreaker knowing all of this folks had lives with stories all their own. My mom is very intelligent, well read, used to knit and sew and read. Now she is one of the ones that just sits there.

I always used to think unless we died young we would all sit on our rockers on our porches and die in our sleep hopefully. Or if going to a "home" was necessary it would be amongst people who could chat and play checkers or cards. Believe me folks, in the 21st century where folks are living longer it isn't the case at all.

I lost my dad two weeks ago. It was hard for him to not have mom at home with him after 49 years of marriage, but he just couldn't take care of her. In-home care is not covered by any type of insurance and is very pricey if one goes the private route. I was glad he passed away in his own bed. After 5 months of surviving lung cancer, two hospital and rehab stays, oral chemo and radiation treatments he was just worn out. He wouldn't have wanted to live the way he did the last few weeks of his life.

Sorry for the rambling. I hope all of us have happier endings.

Leen

Me too. Our thoughts are with you, Leen.

Beev

Leen, I think I know how you feel. My father was no longer alive to share this ordeal, but my mother spent the last six years of her life in a dementia home. For the last three of these years, I never heard her utter a syllable.

There are still facilities for the checkers and card players. One of the complexes I investigated had three levels of care. The highest level was for people with most if not all of their mental faculties intact, and who just needed some on-site medical assistance present, sometimes just as a precaution. As residents deteriorated, though, they might be moved to different levels in the same complex.

It's necessary to distinguish between the venues of "Static" and "Kick the Can," though. The latter has your checkers and cards elderly residents, but "Static" is set in a boarding house. That's where a person who can't afford or doesn't want to spend the rent on an individual apartment pays "room and board." That entitles him to a bedroom where he keeps his personal belongings, but otherwise he shares facilities with the other boarders, including meals and utilities. It's a living arrangement that's not necessarily connected with age or health issues, although perhaps some people go that route for such reasons.

It's true that Ed and Vinnie are up there in years, but remember what Vinnie says to Ed: "We met in this boarding house in 1940, and it was here that you proposed." So it certainly housed much younger residents at one time, and some of the other current boarders don't appear to be all that old. It's at a similar boarding house where Paul goes to live in Homeville in "No Time Like the Past," and there he meets Abby, another boarder, who is three or four decades short of geezerhood.

My condolences, Leen. My mother-in-law went in for a fairly routine double bypass-valve replacement but was the 1 in 10 that suffered a stroke during the operation. Needless to say, she isn't close to the woman she was. It's very tough getting old. She is now in the midst of dementia/Alzheimers and can barely put a ledgible sentence together. What a way to have to live? It just doesn't seem fair.

I like this one. It's a sweet story. Also seems to have an underlying warning about putting things on hold until (fill-in-the-blank) happens. You might be 'on hold' for longer than you expect, so to speak.

Leen, you have my condolences.

My grandfather died in June. He went in a nursing home two years earlier because he had dementia.

Pretty much of a yawner. Ed Lindsay is a hard to like grump who seems to think he's a lot wiser than everyone else.

The videotape transfer to DVD (Defiitive Edition set) must have been of poor quality as it is the worst looking of all episodes so far.

I agree about the quality; I think all the videotaped episodes look poor on the "definitive edition" sets.
I showed this to my girlfriend the other night (we're slowly working our way through the series) and she had an interesting take on it, one that I had never thought of - that the majority of the episode never actually takes place, but instead Ed Lindsay is getting a glimpse of his likely future if he doesn't seize the day and make sure things work out with Vinnie, and that only the very end of the episode actually happens. She thinks this partly because of how Vinnie, when we see her young again, seems oblivious to things ever having not worked out or having grown old. Sort of an Ed-Lindsay-as-Scrooge take. I doubt that's what the writer(s) intended, as it kind of negates the radio's unique magic, but an interesting perspective nontheless.

I like "Static" a lot. It's one of my top 10 favorite episodes.

Sorry to read about it Leen! You have my condolences!

This episode provides an opportunity to hear the inspiration for a cartoon character so famous that today the cartoon character is distinctly the better known. In the latter half of the episode, Ed lies down and enjoys listening to Fred Allen's show Allen's Alley. We hear Allen visit the home of Senator Claghorn, a characterization provided by Kenny Delmar. The good Senator, complete with his catchphrases ("Somebody, ah say, somebody ...", "That's a joke, son!", "Pay attention, boy!" and others), was given feathers and a barnyard setting and turned into Foghorn Leghorn by Warner Brothers animation director Bob McKimson.

More on the original Claghorn can be found in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator_Claghorn

I liked it. I give it a 6. Nice ending.

But there was one strange thing. I saw it for the first time during the recent 4th of July marathon. At the beginning he's flipping through the TV channels and it looked he was complaining about them, but I couldn't hear what he was saying! Did anyone else happen to notice this? Or am I crazy...

no you're not crazy.. he was mimicing the commercials and showing his distaste for the television as a whole. you couldn't hear him because he wasn't talking louder than the tv but at about the same volume.


i listened to the zicree interview with buzz kulik on the definitive edition dvd and zicree asked kulik if jagger improvised any lines because it seemed like he did. kulik says that no improvising was done but jagger felt that he did his job if the audience felt that he was saying his lines as if for the first time.

i haven't seen this episode befor

6
This is an okay episode for me, but below Beaumont's usual standards and one that definitely looked bad on tape.

This episode has gone up in my estimation. Though perhaps derivative in theme, it still has some pretty poignant moments.

Did anyone catch the call letters of the radio station he mentions? I want to check the FCC to see if those were ever real.

WPDA in Cedarburg, New Jersey, according to the TZ Site archive of this show.

that was fast. muchas gracias.

Currently there is a 106.1 WPDA (simulacast WPDH) in Jeffersonville, NY to the west of Poughkeepsie. In 1930 the Pasedena, CA police department used those calls on 1712 Mhz. There is no Cedarburg in New Jersey but there is one in Wisconsin outside Milwaukee. There is a Cedarville, and a Cedarbrook but neither has a local stick. This still may of coure be a veiled reference to some radio station from the resume of writers Oceo Ritch or Charles Beaumont.

OOOOO-K

Thanks for the info, Jose! Welcome! Hope you like it here.



There's also a Cedar Grove in NJ.

I heard something for the first time from this ep the other day. When Ed and Mr. Bragg are arguing over the radio Mr.Bragg, who is the tv addict said, "Gunfire's on in exactly four minutes," begging the question why couldn't they mention another tv show's real title from the same network? Unless they were trying to make a funny.

And while using my Companion for reference it listed Bob Crane as the deejay. I never knew this before. I did know that this was how Crane got his start before his days as Col. Hogan and that other hobby he had.

I gave it 7, good but not fantastic.

Gets a bonus point for mentioning my alma mater.

Revised rating for 2006: "7"

This one is rising on my list. I like the longing for the good ole days plus they mentioned the tv show Gunfire

"This is James Armrest. You know, it's only a short hop from the Twilight Zone to Plymouth City 'n' 'Gunfire.' Saturday nights over most of these stations."

Ed and Vinnie had both lived at this same boarding house since 1940 which would have been 20 or 21 years. Much of the furniture remained the same including the old radio which got 20 year old shows. A TV set was added because that TV didn't look like the TV you might have had in 1940 if you lived where you had TV such as New York city. They had both proposed in 1940 and ED was unhappy he didn't marry here back then so that is why he hears I'm Getting Sentimenal over you.

You have to rember when the eposode was written you still had a few enterainment radio shows on the air. The last of these was Suspense and Johnny Dollar which had their last airing on September 30, 1962. Back then you didn't have stations playing old radio shows like you had later on. However some radio broadcasts of both Tommy Doresey and Glen Miller was transferred to 45 RPM records which I got back in 1957. The you had some stories on Let's Pretend that were tranferred to 78 records at the time they were broadcast so you could actually hear old radio even then if the station played those records.

The people in the boarding house that he was crazy to hear those radio shows to the gave the old radio away and he bought it back for ten dollars. Back then it was just an old radio people wanted to give away that today you owuld see in an antique store for several hundred dollars if it is good condition. When he get the old radio back and turns it on the old shows are back and now it is 1940 again the both Ed and Vinnie look younger and all boarding house looks newer and the door nobs are shinier and the furiture doesn't look as worn out. This he gets his second chace to marry her.