Day twenty four of the twilight Zone podcast, I'd vent Colander.

It's Christmas Eve, everyone, Zach, Merry Christmas.

Well, happy Christmas time every time.

Every time.

Our friend Ben Kickem says, if there's a sequel to any Twilight Zone episode in the original series, which one would it be and how would it play out?

So I'll hand over to you fast for this one, Zach.

Well, here's what I'm thinking.

You know, Bill Muomi has a daughter, right, so now you know obviously, had they not made a sequel to It's a Good Life in the two thousand and two show, that would have been such an obvious answer.

That's why that's such a slam dunk episode, because it's such a brilliant one to make a sequel out of.

So hats off to them there, say what you will about that two thousand and two series.

They nailed that.

This was a hard one.

I was scrolling through episodes and I was like, hmmm, hmmm, because you want to think, what can you even So many of these are so I don't know, definitive or personal or like, how can you even continue these?

Even some of the greatest episodes, like It's It's over like you can't continue Willoughby, right, for example, let's go follow him and Willoughby like, let us let that's not a story, right, So what I came up with, and I think this actually really works in like real world production too, if they had wanted to do it just even a few years ago, a kind of stopwatch Okay, okay, So at the end of the episode, the stopwatch breaks and the world is frozen, right, So everything is frozen.

He's frozen in nineteen sixty or whenever that is.

Richard Erdman is the actor, right, and he's stuck in this world.

And Richard Erdman he lived to ninety three years old.

He was in a community.

In the last few years of the community, he was a recurring character Leonard.

It was kind of a gag that he that he was just kind of a character that I'll do all these ridiculous things and anyway, so he was a very active actor even in up until near the end of his life.

So you could have really done kind of done this, you know.

So you just I don't know when you follow it up, right, but maybe it's just it's kind of like this, what's what's weird?

It's like it's kind of this comedy episode ish, but then it has like one of the darkest endings of the whole show.

And uh so how do you do that?

I mean, it's kind of like a kind of like a I AM legend kind of set up, right, He's just wandering around the world and X amount of years have passed and everything's frozen, right, It's frozen in time.

And you've kind of still nineteen sixty, right.

So like that's that's kind of interesting, right, And you know, I don't do cars work.

I don't know.

You can explore what the mechanics of this actually is, right, like how what has actually stopped that's like the first act or whatever, right, But then you have to what is the story?

What is it?

Like he has to like find somebody else at some point, who's who's also you know in motion maybe that person has a device as well, and you kind of go from there.

I don't know where you go from there, but I just think that's a world you can explore.

The kind of creepy, but it will be kind of interesting, be something to kind of and you'd have to say something with the story too.

I don't know what you say either.

I have no I have no narrative depth to this, just just the setup of something that that would have been an interesting status quo too to follow up on.

And maybe, you know, give this guy, I mean, not a happy ending because he was stuck in this purgatory for decades, but at least don't have him suck there forever, right, that'd be nice because you know, yeah, he was annoying, but talk about you know, we've talked about this on and off on the Advent Calendar and other places.

People that deserve their face.

I don't think this guy deserved this fate, you know, so you can you can kind of give him a better ending and then revisit an interesting concept like that.

So that is what I came up with.

That's pretty great.

Would you have heard the world start up again at some point where it's still like the nineteen sixties and he's now an old man?

Yeah, that's that's the only way to do it, really, And that's kind of like, Okay, you were annoying, so you have to be old now, but you're not stuck in this purgatory forever.

So that's the half carmic justice, I guess.

Because he was like stealing banks and stuff.

But still, just because you robbed a bank doesn't mean to be stuck in furgatory forever.

But that's kind of yeah, it would still be the sixties and he would just be old, right, and interesting stuff would happen in there somewhere.

But that's my pitch.

That's pretty brilliant, man, that's pretty brilliant.

I was very proud of that, by the way, because I was thinking a long time about a lot of these questions, because these are some, by the way, great questions this year everybody, so hats off to y'all.

And I got to this and I was like, man, I don't know, so I spent you know, this is the last one.

I obviously it's the last day, right, so it's the one that we answered last.

And I was really stuck for a while.

But when I found that, I feel like I unlocked it.

And I'm proud of this.

Unlike you say, the age of the ACTA to you know, Live till ninety three just feeds into the story paerfectly.

So yeah, brilliant, brilliant.

Okay, So I went a bit deep on this one because it just sort of kept running and running in my head.

So I'm going to start with an open narration.

I'm not going to do a rod sailing impersonation because that's just not what I do.

But I'll start with this open narration and then let's see where we go from there.

So portrait of a legend growing weary.

You know him by many names, Saint Nick, Chris Kringle, or simply Santa Claus.

But once a long time ago, he was just Henry Corwin, a man who found redemption in a bare lap sack.

Mister Corwan has spent sixty years delivering the impossible to the overlooked.

But tonight, on a globe spun dizzy by instant gratification and digital disconnect, Henry Corwen faces a crisis that no amount of magic can solve.

He's about to discover that in a world where you can order anything with a clique, the one thing you can't buy is the one thing he's forgotten how to give.

Tonight, mister Corwin makes his rounds in the Twilight Zone.

Now, the problem with this is, I've said it sixty years later, but you can't use our Carnee anymore, and we don't want to be having any ai or Carne's running about.

No blurry man or Carnie.

No.

No, so we would have to recast.

But I guess a way to do it would be to, you know, get a really good actor in there and you know, make him a bit more Santa Clause he you know that over the years, he's sort of filled out a bit, you know, something like that.

Yeah, I don't know.

The premise of this is, like we saw back in the sixties, the sac gave people the presence that they you know, were quite fitting.

It either kept them warm or it was just a nice little thing for them because they want we're a lot less than than ours are.

Now, the problem that he is having now is when he tries to give like a present to a teenager, the Sack will give them what they actually need, but they won't necessarily want it.

So for the teenager who's glued to his smartphone, the Sack would give them like a pencil and some paper, you know, to draw to settle their mind down from being on their phone twenty four hours a day, But they don't want that.

So it's all starting to go a little bit wrong, you know, And he's starting to become a bit weary because the Sack is getting heavier and heavier.

Are you with me so far?

No, this makes a lot of sense.

And as you've been talking, I haven't paying attention, no worry, But as you've been talking, I looked it up.

Art Carney had a son named Brian Carney who is currently seventy nine years old and is an actor in a comedian and he has recently appeared in The Good Wife, for example.

So I think we just found out Santa Claus.

So this is the premise.

You know, his his giving just isn't having the same effect anymore because the world has changed around him, but the sack still gives people what it thinks they need.

At that point, you know, this bit might be a bit hokey, but on his travels he meets like a tech bro who's set up like a drone present delivery service based on you know, the algorithm from your phones, so you know, because of what you look at depends what you get on Christmas Day, because you know it's been the algorithm is kind of choosing what you get and it's always what you want, you know, So he's got that to compete against.

So you know, we play this bit of the story for a while where we're seeing how downhearted he's getting with all of this, but in the end, he's, you know, he's kind of done, and he stumbles into a park and he's even contemplating buying a bottle of booze again.

But he sits next to a little girl on a bench.

Now she's not like a poverty stricken girl or anything like that.

She's well dressed, but she's holding a smartphone and she's kind of looking at it with a blank, lonely expression on her face.

And then a little further down the path we see that her parents are both sitting there blankly looking at their phone screens as well.

Then the little girl kind of looks up at Henry Cowen and has that kind of reaction of hold on a minute, is that Santa Claus?

You know?

And Corwen, you know, he notices her, but he's he's going through his own things, and he just starts to talk and he's like, you know, she used to mean something and so on, and they get into a little conversation and she's like, well, what are you talking about, and then he kind of starts to tell her the story of how he became Santa Claus.

We could have a couple of flashbacks in there.

Oh yeah, yeah, okay, And as he's telling the story, she starts to become more animated, and then he starts to become more animated because he's remembering what all this was about.

And you know, by the end of it, they're both a lot happier.

And he kind of points the present sack towards her for her to put her hand in and take something out, and then we just see her hand go in and when her hand comes out, there's nothing in it, and you know, he's just kind of beside himself.

Now he's devastated that the magic sack seems to be gone.

But the camera just zooms in slightly and we see that she didn't pull anything out of the sack, but she actually puts something in it.

She put her cell phone into it.

Now she's looking up at him with all the wonder that a child should have when they see Santa Claus, even in this kind of wounded state.

He paid here some attention, and she paid him some attention.

They had a meaningful interaction with each other, you know, in a world where everyone is obsessed with their screens, they kind of found each other in a moment when they both needed to believe in something again.

So you know, he kind of realizes that the sack was becoming heavier because it was carrying the weight of all the unfulfilled emotional needs of people.

Now, you could go quite big with this or quite small.

But the sack kind of begins to glow and tremble a little bit and then all of a sudden boom.

But instead of releasing presents, it just it sort of releases some kind of special effect, I suppose, but it just wakes people up a little bit.

And you could either play it small where her parents sort of think, God, what are we doing.

We've got a beautiful daughter and were sitting in the park on our phones and they sort of get together.

Or you could go big and have it like be all over the city where people start to remember loved ones and call old friends and you know that kind of thing.

So there's a few options there.

It's like the end of the Cable Guy when he knocks out the TV and people have to read and talk to each other again.

Yeah, I love that.

So you have an actual theme and narrative like to yours.

Mine was just a cool idea.

I love this.

This is great and to the spirit of Christmas.

On Christmas, Eve's fantastic.

Absolutely, So Corwen goes back to the sleigh and you know, the sack is empty, but it's as light as a feather, ready to be kind of filled up with whatever that it needs to be.

And now he realizes that in nineteen sixty the meek needed things like coats and food, but in the modern world that is there are those people, but you've also got people who are just kind of spiritually starved, I suppose, not in a religious sense, but in a you know, the spirit of humanity sense.

So it's not his job to just be handing out stuff anymore.

It's to be a connector, a connector of people if you like.

So you know, we we we could go to Montage again and you know that teen who threw the pad away is now sitting there drawing while his phone's you know, locked away somewhere.

You know that kind of thing.

You can you can do as much or as little as you want with that.

And in the end we get our clothes in narration, which would be a Christmas wish from Henry Corwen that the most precious gifts are not the ones wrapped in ribbon, but the ones wrapped in time.

In a world of infinite inventory, mister Corwen found that the only thing truly worth giving is a piece of oneself, a simple transaction available to all, found exclusively in the Twilight Zone.

And there you go.

That's my sequel to my Twilight Zone episode.

Oh well done, man.

You know you spend enough time the Twilight alone.

You start turning into talking about him, turning to Santa Claus.

You're turning into rots earlier here.

This is fantastic stuff.

People are gonna want you to write this whole episode out time.

I hope you know that.

So another Patreon exclusive everybody.

Yeah, there you go, there you go.

Well, Zach, not to be cheesy or anything, but I think you know, you and I have really benefited from the things that we do in terms of podcasting and so on, and the friends we've made.

And it's another year that we've been friends because of our podcasting, which those are godess together and it's been great.

So thank you so much for spending this time with me on Christmas Eve.

Absolutely, you know, you start these things because you want to be part of something you love, and then you build a community and you connect to others, and it's just talk about the connection there, right, I mean, all these connections we've made.

It's we enjoy the material obviously, that's why we do what we do, but we also enjoy the people that enjoy with us, right, because what's the point of enjoying the stuff?

And yeah, of course you can enjoy this stuff just locked by yourself watching something right there.

You know, you want to decompress after a long day and watch your favorite show and movie or whatever, right, But when you can there's a different gear of your fandom when you can engage in it with with like minded and fellow fans.

And podcasts like yours have helped bring people together and it's been great and I'm thankful for our friendship and I'm looking forward to going to more surrounding fests and doing more advent calendars and whatever the future brings.

Absolutely absolutely well, thank you for joining me on this one again, and have a great Christmas, my friend.

Yeah, Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good.

Night, and we will see you soon.

I don't know when it's gonna be, but it'll be soon here on the Twilight Zone podcast.

Merry Christmas everyone,