This is the FOURTH PART of an article by Bryant Burnette summarizing the Golden Years television show.
Episode 4 (airdate
08/01/1991)
The fourth episode begins with Dr. Ackerman
calling Crewes in a panic, insisting that he needs protection from Andrews, who
-- obviously -- will be coming to kill him. Crewes tells Ackerman to get a
grip, and the doctor realizes that he's going to have to protect himself, so he
decides to steal a bunch of paperwork and make copies of it, presumably so that
he can have some leverage against Andrews. In so doing, he turns into a
bumbling idiot; he runs into doors, trips over his own feet, stutters, and
generally seems like a nincompoop.
All for naught, too; he gets in his car to
leave Falco Plains, and the car promptly explodes. Jude, watching from the
shadows, has struck again.
His real quarry, meanwhile, has decided to pull
into the barn on an apparently deserted farm and give their stolen hearse a
paint job. It's now a Christine-esque shade of red that would undoubtedly catch
every eye on the road. Remind me to never allow Terry Spann to be in charge of
taking me on the lam. She's made more than a few moronic decisions here, but
let's not blame her; let's blame Stephen King, who is clearly not cut out to be
a rogue government agent.
There is yet another tender scene between
Harlan and Gina in which she expresses dismay at the entire situation, not
without merit: this time, she's upset because she feels old for the first time.
See, because she and Harlan were aging together, she never actually felt the
weight of their years, whereas seeing him growing younger by the day is only
making her feel more and more decrepit. King is better-suited to the mechanics
of an emotional scene like this than he is to the mechanics of evading capture
by state-sanctioned killers. That's not to say the scene is perfect; the
dialogue is clunky and repetitive, and if not for decent acting, it wouldn't
work terribly well at all. Still, there is a core of emotional truth to it that
definitely feels like King's skills as a novelist came briefly to the
fore.
That is certainly not evident in a horrible
scene involving Toddhunter. One of his new assistants approaches the mad doctor
to tell him that preparations of some sort -- they are not explained -- are
ready. Toddhunter tells him, "Do it now!" The man is about to respond, but
Toddhunter cuts him off to tell him how time is tip-tip-tapping away. He starts
hollering "Tip-tippy-tap!" and "Do it now!" and so forth, and the actor goes so
far over the top that he threatens to enter
Bronson-Pinchot-in-The-Langoliers territory. He doesn't quite get there,
but it's close. It's an embarrassing scene, and you can bet your life that
director Allen Coulter doesn't have it on any of his demo reels.
Later, Toddhunter has a better scene, in which
he visits his father's grave. His watch has stopped working, and while he is
speaking to his father, he digs up a metal box, which houses a bunch of other
dead watches; he puts this new one with the others. This dude is clearly nuts,
and thankfully, this scene shows us a bit of that in a useful, non-annoying
fashion.
Jude visits Crewes and informs him that, as per
the DSA, he is now in charge of the investigation and manhunt surrounding the
Williams case. Crewes is not too pleased about this; he's even less pleased
when he discovers that he is barred from leaving the base. Andrews packs up his
shit and abandons his temporary office at the local police station, which for
some reason pisses off the sherriff or the constable or whoever the guy is. In
an additional bit of WTF, Andrews is wearing a black t-shirt during this scene
that reads "Let Go and Let God." Huh?!?
While they're chilling out at the conveniently
abandoned barn, Terry and Harlan have a talk, in which he wonders what their
chances are. Terry tells him that when she was at The Shop, everyone told her
that John Rainbird was the best; but she thinks Andrews is better, so if he's
after them, they don't have much of a chance at all. Yay, a Firestarter
connection!
A few scenes later, Terry concocts a plan: if
Harlan and Gina can get themselves arrested for shoplifting, and get put in the
care of the local law enforcement, they could then use their one phone call to
get a lawyer and thereby get some protection of the legal variety. It's not a
bad plan, but later, they all come to the realization that if Lee Harvey Oswald
wasn't safe in the hands of local police custody, then a small-timer like Harlan
Williams definitely wouldn't be safe.
It's interesting to consider how different the
implications of this scene are from the novel King published twenty years later,
11/22/63. Here, clearly, King is playing into the paranoia of the
times. Golden Years as a whole feeds off of that paranoia; Andrews
counsels Ackerman at one point that perfect paranoia is perfect awareness, and
this show is so paranoid that it wants us to believe that not even the
government can trust the government. Golden Years came only four years
after the publication of The Tommyknockers, in which one character
constantly thinks of untrustworthy governmental powers under the umbrella "the
Dallas Police" (clearly, a Ruby / Oswald reference). Two decades later, in
11/22/63, King had swung all the way around to be convinced that Oswald
had acted alone, and, by implication, that Ruby had, too. I'm conflicted,
personally; both sides have their persuasions. I'm not taking a stance, and it
doesn't bother me the way it apparently bothers some that King's mind on such
topics has changed over the years; but it is interesting.
The episode ends with a scene in which our
heroes pass a wreck on the side of the road. At Gina's insistence, they stop to
see if they can help, and of course, the first cop who stops by recognizes the
trio and tries to apprehend them. Terry, always the genius, steals the
policeman's cruiser.
I guess we'll find out how that plan works out
next week.
This is not a particularly good episode, what
with Terry's constant stupidity and Toddhunter's over-the-top insanity.
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