The Twilight Zone Season 1: Episode 2 - One for the Angels

When death comes knocking for Mr. Lou Bookman, pitchman, he never expected to be outwitted by a foolish old man.  Mr. Bookman manages to get a reprieve upon his departure from this earth until the occasion he was able to make the pitch of a lifetime, the pitch for the angels.  It was a pitch Mr. Bookman never planed to make, but a pitch he would soon find himself making.  Because you see even when you cheat death, someone else must fill your spot.

Story - 6/10 - this episode is another occasion of the commonly used story of cheating death, only this seems to have a more unbelievable outcome.  While an interesting premise I find it highly unlikely that death would fall for Bookman's first ploy of asking for an extension until he had time to give his best pitch ever, not realizing that Bookman would purposely never give that pitch.  Then I find the conclusion of the story even more unbelievable as Bookman prevents death from arriving at his appointed time by selling him a bunch of crap.  Bookman's not that great of a salesman, and death must really be gullible.

Characters - 5/10 - Bookman's a foolish, yet kind hearted old man, the fact that he's able to outwit death, twice, doesn't say much for death.  Lou Bookman was played by Ed Wynn, whom you might recognize as Uncle Albert from Mary Poppins, Babes In Toyland, and the voice of the Madhatter in Disney's Alice In Wonderland (my favorite animated film).

Classic Value - 6/10 - like Where Is Everybody? there's not much here to remember.  The only classic aspect of this episode was the brief cameo of a miniature Robbie the Robot in the opening scenes.  Other than that I found this episode devoid of anything truly classic in the franchise.

Re-watch-ability - 6/10 - while One for the Angels isn't high quality Twilight Zone it's definitely still an interesting episode to watch.  It's entertaining, it's well written and it's got a lot of heart, the only problem is it's not remotely believable, even by science fiction terms.  If death was that gullible twice in a row the world would be a lot more crowded, or there would be a lot more car accidents to make up for all the people who got an extension on life.  Because Bookman really was more of a bag of hot air than a truly compelling pitchman!

5.8/10

Watch the full episode below