TVSquad

I got a great letter this week from a TV fan named Jim R.

"Dear TV Squad, About 15 years ago, I watched an episode of a scifi/fantasy TV show wherein an Elvis impersonator traveled back in time to meet (and eventually kill) the real Elvis. Could you please tell me the name of this program? Thanks"

(S04E14) Out of all the dreams Allison has awakened from this season, tonight gets my vote for "Most Likely to Make You Jump Out of Bed and Scare the Crap Out of Your Sleeping Husband."

One thing you have to get used to if you are fan of Medium, is the ever present scene where somebody doesn't understand how Allison knows what she knows. Even though Joe, Davalos, Scanlon and most of her friends are well aware why Allison acts so strange, there are still plenty of people who are baffled by her behavior and, as a matter of course, have to react with disbelief and/or confusion. It gets old but it's a necessary evil. The most genuine of these reactions, however, come from the Dubois children.

OK, if you're not all exhausted by the Sopranos talk and examination of that final scene, let me bring up yet another take on the episode, via a friend of TV critic Roger Catlin at The Hartford Courant.

During the scene in the safehouse in the episode, there an an episode of The Twilight Zone playing on the television. An alert viewer figured out that it was the 1963 episode "The Bard," where a TV writer gets help from the ghost of William Shakespeare, who gets angry at the meddling from advertisers and the network and eventually punches an actor (Burt Reynolds).

The SciFi Channel is airing a Twilight Zone marathon that will run from 9am on December 31 through 5am on January 2. As much as I'd love to record every episode, that's a bit much for ye olde Tivo to handle, so I had to cherry pick my favorite episodes and just record those. Someday I'll do what Bob did and buy the complete set on DVD, but for now I'll have to make due with what SciFi offers me. At least it's the original Rod Serling version and not any of those god-awful remakes that popped up later, though I think even fans like myself have to remember that not every episode of the original Twilight Zone was perfect. Some of them were rather heavy-handed and cornball, but memory sometimes has a way of only recalling the best of some things.

Speaking of the complete DVD set, you can watch some of the DVD extras on the SciFi site, including actor commentaries.

• Andromeda - Season 5 and The Slipstream Collection
• The Andy Griffith Show - Season 1, Disc 1
• The Brady Bunch - Season 1, Disc 1
• CSI - Season 1, Disc 1
• Forever Knight - Trilogy Part 3
• Frasier - Season 1, Disc 1
• Gimme A Break - Season 2 (Canada)
• The Greatest American Hero - Collector's Tin
• Medium - Season 2
• Penn & Teller's Bullshit - Season 3 Uncensored
• Return to the Planet of the Apes - Complete Series
• South Park - The Hits, Vol. 1
• Stargate SG-1 - Season 9 Slimset
• Three's Company - Season 8
• Tom and Jerry Tales - Vol. 1
• The Twilight Zone - The Complete Definitive Collection