Walking Distance
originally aired: October 30, 1959
written by: Rod Serling
starring: Gig Young, Frank Overton
"Martin Sloan, age 36, occupation vice president, ad agency. In charge of media. This is not just a Sunday drive for Martin Sloan. He perhaps doesn't know if at the time, but it's an exodus. Somewhere up the road he's looking for sanity, and somewhere up the road he'll find something else. A man can think a lot of thoughts and walk a lot of pavements between afternoon and night. And to a man like Martin Sloan, to whom memory has suddenly become reality, a resolve could come just as clearly and inexorably as stars on a summer night. Martin Sloan is back in time, and his resolve is to put in a claim to the past."
classification: drama
story: A weary ad agency vice-president travels back in time to his hometown, meets his father and himself as a boy, and returns to the present a wiser man.
my summary: A slow-moving rather dull "back in time" episode. Interesting to see Ronny Howard as a toddler, the story is not terribly interesting though. I think maturity factors into one's ability to enjoy this...the older you get the more the hometown fantasy is something that weighs on your mind. I wrote all this when I was 23. Now I'm almost 32. I can get behind M Sloan's eyes a whole lot easier today than I could then.....
"Martin Sloan, age 36. Vice President in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives, trying to go home again. And also like all men, perhaps there will be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime where he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of kaliope and perhaps across his mind there will flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old."
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