Revisiting The Twilight Zone: S05E27: Sounds and Silences

Revisiting The Twilight Zone: S05E27: Sounds and Silences

Whether the basic plot of this episode is believable or not probably becomes the hinge as to whether you enjoy it or not greatly. Because to be honest, if you had been forced to be quiet in your home as a child I can’t see that you would then surround yourself around such noise that you can’t hear anything else going on around you.

Anyway, that’s the premise, that our protagonist is so loud, and has such noise so constant that his wife leaves him (but really, would she have put up with this for twenty years? I can’t see it). Of course, as soon as she leaves, every little sound around him, such as a dripping tap, now sound like cannons. Eventually, he goes to a psychiatrist who says that it is all “mind over matter”, and that he can will the sound away, which he duly does. Regaining his pompousness he mentally tunes out his wife’s returning salvo, until he realises he’s gone too far, and he has tuned out the world and is unable to recover it. Which, in its own way seems a little convenient, because if he is able to tune the world down through “mind over matter”, surely he can tune it back in again…

While the episode is interesting enough, John McGiver as the bellowing Flemington is perhaps just a bit too belligerent in the role, over stating the character to such a point that none of it is really believable. It’s a reasonable premise but for me it just doesn’t have a solid enough base for the story to be as enjoyable as other episodes.

Rating: Hearing problems aren’t the only problems here. 3/5