"Djinn, No Chaser"

Original Airdate: December 13, 1984

Directed by Shelley Levinson.

Written by Haskell Barkin, Based on the story “Djinn, No Chaser” by Harlan Ellison.

Starring Charles Levin (Danny Squires), Colleen Camp (Connie Squires), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (The Djinn, Jan Bin Jan), Nate Esformes (Mohandus Mukhar).

SYNOPSIS: A day out shopping for Turkish home décor takes an unexpected twist for newlyweds Danny and Connie when they peruse the wares of an Arabian merchant’s tent that has appeared out of nowhere. Connie insists on buying the old rusty lamp that the merchant promises houses a genuine genie, but they soon come to find that the abrasive djinn is only interested in making their lives a living hell. 

CRITIQUE: Cause you know I’m all about dat djinn, bout dat djinn

No chaser

I’m all about dat djinn, bout dat djinn…

Curtailing my career as a successful songwriter for just a moment, our next episode of TFTD finds the program venturing further into the humorous territory that was first put forth by the previous segment, “A Case of the Stubborns.” But whereas Bloch’s story was of a decidedly darker and moribund mind, “Djinn, No Chaser” is clearly in the realm of the zany, patter-filled comedy that one might associate with the classic “screwballs” of the 30s and 40s. But “classic” the episode certainly isn’t.

In all fairness, the segment is perfectly fine, but at times it feels the need to try a little too hard for the laughs. As opposed to “A Case of the Stubborns” where the humor felt of a piece with the story and the characters were colorfully acted, “Djinn” shows its stretch marks from time to time, primarily in the lead performance from Charles Levin. Levin, whose biggest film credits include “Actor in Rehearsal” from ANNIE HALL (1977) and “Television Actor #1” from MANHATTAN (1979), ruthlessly mugs in front of the camera with the apparent philosophy that in spastic facial expressions lies the key to comedy. The fact that he cracks up at his own witticisms only makes the mixture even more unpalatable. Consummate comedienne Camp fares a little better, working mostly as stern foil to the hyperactive Levin, but her role tends to feel overshadowed by her co-star's "hilarious" antics. 

Yeah, that's how we felt too.

The script, adapted by Haskell Barkin (the IMDb credits a "Haskell Smith" as adapter but the episode's actual credits show Barkin's name--nice try, Haskell!), is promising and filled with many of the sarcastic asides that one would expect from a work of Ellison’s. (“Nervously, they approach the tent,” Connie narrates as they enter the shop.) Many of the insults hurled by the characters in the episode are lifted wholesale from Ellison's story, a wise move considering the author's infamous tirades and snappy criticisms. The scene between Levin and Nate Esformes as the mysterious merchant does work pretty well, with each actor leveling blasphemous curses given modern twists at one another as they haggle over the price of the lamp. Ellison’s vitriolic side gets further exercise in the form of the genie’s own rude remarks to his new owners, at one point colorfully referring to Connie as a “charnel house harlot.” (The mind wonders!)

The turn of the screw that the story rests on—an impoverished couple gets the means to make unlimited wishes only for their lives to get exponentially worse because of the genie’s temper tantrum—is indeed a clever one, and the Squires’ misery is smartly shown rather than having the characters laying it all out for us with a “Oh! If only we hadn’t taken it all for granted!” It’s an idea that’s implicitly understood by the viewer, and it’s nice that it goes uncommented on. The tortures the genie wrecks on the household are amusing and, for the most part, are handled creatively in conjunction with the show’s frugal budget. Naturally, the plagues the djinn visits on the Squires in Ellison's original are much more elaborate and abundant, from bloody floods to indoor lightning. In the episode, some of the more grandiose curses (wild animals marauding in the hallway) are only hinted at, and the original story's ending that finds the couple living in luxury in an opulent Connecticut mansion is toned down in the episode to a return to the small (but cleaner) apartment after the djinn has been freed from his lamp.

With such abundant room for drama and fantasy, there are several sequences in the episode, like Danny’s midnight craving for a glass of milk, that go on for inexcusable durations. It not only brings our attention to the fact that it’s merely padding, but in a rapid-fire, neurotic comedy like this it leaves the madcap rhythm dead in the water. It's a shame that the creative team would resort to these kinds of empty tactics with such a winning concept on their hands. The given circumstances of the program (i.e. its quick shooting schedule) could be blamed, but in light of other episodes utilizing their time slots more wisely that excuse doesn’t have much weight.

"Djinn, No Chaser" ends on a wryly silly note (you can almost hear the “Pop Goes the Weasel” theme from the Three Stooges’ shorts at the climax), marking this episode as diverting if only occasionally amusing fluff.

"Djinn, No Chaser" originally appeared in the April 1982 issue of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. Interestingly, Ellison would find himself sharing a space in that issue's fiction section with Dan Simmons' first published work "The River Styx Runs Upstream," the winning entry from the magazine's first contest of submissions from unpublished writers. Simmons notes in his introduction to the story from his collection PRAYERS TO BROKEN STONES Ellison's infamous first reaction to receiving the story at a writer's workshop:

"Who is this Simmons? Stand up, wave your hand, show yourself, goddamnit. What egomaniacal monstrosity has the fucking gall, the unmitigated hubris to inflict a story of five thousand fucking words on this workshop? Show yourself, Simmons!"

His outrage was soon placated by the fact that Simmons' story was actually good, and afterward Ellison even offered to submit the story for TZ's contest himself.

"And may all your children need corrective lenses from watching too much TV!"

***

Rating: 2 Lizzies

Coming Up: Harry Anderson doesn't like getting talked back to in "All A Clone by the Telephone."

"The Word Processor of the Gods"

Original Airdate: November 25, 1984

Directed by Michael Gornick.

Written by Michael McDowell, Based on the story “The Word Processor of the Gods” by Stephen King.

Starring Bruce Davison (Richard Hagstrom), Karen Shallo (Lina Hagstrom), Patrick Piccininni (Seth Hagstrom), William Cain (Tom Nordhoff), Jon Shear (Jonathan), Miranda Beeson (Belinda).

SYNOPSIS: Richard has just received a homemade word processor from his recently deceased nephew Jonathan, the victim of a car accident that also claimed the lives of his mother Belinda and drunkard father. Richard’s wife Lina derides him for his writerly ambitions, and his punk son Seth is too busy wailing on his guitar to pay him any mind. Not the best life, but Richard finds that the machine is here to fix that with whatever command he types on the keyboard.

CRITIQUE: Is there some unwritten rule that stipulates that all ambitious writers must be wed to total jerks? Richard’s wife has a complete lack of faith in her husband’s talents—even though he has published a novel—and sees the whole pursuit as a waste of time. It’s true that the vocation can be a very unfulfilling one, but I can’t help but notice that in almost all of the stories of this type the spouse of the struggling scribe must be the kind of “you’ll-never-really-amount-to-anything” bully that invariably sets up our protagonist for a “Well I’ll show them!” comeback.

For some inexplicable reason, Mr. Nordhoff remembers he left bacon on the stove. 

The cliché is given a further dollop of tired tropes by having Lina be an overweight, shrewish wife who guzzles soda and donuts in between emasculating her sweater-vested hubby and letting the house go to a messy hell of dirty dishes and garbage. Oh, and she plays Bingo. So now the stereotype is officially complete. This is all perfectly serviceable for the story—this is not one of King’s more powerful tales, working more in the simplistic E.C. vein that some of his early work did—but sometimes I just wish someone could turn everything around and maybe show the wife supporting her husband’s goals but growing steadily weary of the financial strain. Something that would show she actually did love him but also had her own personal limits. But I digress.

This is another in a long line of wish-fulfillment stories that the series will present to us, but this is a rare case where our hero doesn’t come to regret his desires and actually gets what he wants, probably because he wears glasses. Poor vision is usually a solid “Get Out of Eternal Judgment” card. An intriguing spin occurs when we discover that Richard had loved the late Belinda and had felt a fatherly kinship with whiz kid nephew Jonathan. It adds some perspective to Richard’s desire and makes his plight more sympathetic to us: he only wanted what was in his reach, but he could never have it.

The episode also realizes one of man’s deepest inherent wishes, to be able to write the book of our lives and dictate an upturn in our fortunes by the mere click of a key or rub of a magic lamp. The rest of the segment operates under the same trajectory of events that we have come to expect from this type of drama: Richard gradually realizes the power of his enchanted totem, here represented by the “Execute” and “Delete” buttons on the keyboard, first experimenting on some random object (a framed picture of his wife) before making a legitimate wish to further glean its power (first for twelve Spanish gold doubloons and then for his son's disppearance) only to hurriedly issue a final plea to restore order as everything goes up in smoke. If you’ve read “The Monkey’s Paw,” you’ve seen this before.

There’s a touch of W. W. Jacobs in a bit where Richard answers the door after he’s zapped Seth into the ether to find a weeping Lina in funeral garb, her running mascara giving her the look of a revenant as she stumbles forward and accuses Richard of killing their son. This is just a fake-out, a nervous vision inspired by Richard’s guilt, but it does distract for a little while with its expressionistic blue lighting that recalls the vibrant hues of CREEPSHOW (1982). The lead-up to Seth’s deletion is also reminiscent of THE BODY SNATCHER (1945) when we hear the guitar’s shrieking cut off after the duct tape-bound machine has carried out its function.

Rock all day. Every day.

McDowell’s adaptation of the material carries over King's tone and content so completely that it almost appears that Gornick simply filmed the story, adding a few small filmic touches that allow it to play out a little better for the aural/visual medium. The faithfulness to King is both for better and worse as some of the author's hinky dialogue gets carried over; at the conclusion Richard asks the revived Jonathan to "delete [the word processor] from our lives." The episode takes the overly-sweet final note of the boys indulging in a cup of hot cocoa like a real family and gives it some emotional resonance with the heavenly image of the radiant Belinda waiting for them, silent but smiling. It’s enough to make you forget the formulaic journey it took for us to get here and ask “Wouldn’t it be nice?”

"The Word Processor of the Gods" originally appeared in the January 1983 issue of Playboy, the magazine for shrimpy writers with fat wives fantasizing of better lives (and hotter women) everywhere. Pair with a cold Budweiser for optimium satisfaction.

“It’s always the wrong people who die, Mr. Hagstrom.”

***

Rating: 2 1/2 Lizzies

Coming Up: Christian Slater finds his grandpappy is restless in peace in "A Case of the Stubborns."