The Twilight Zone “Mute”

Ann Jillian, an actress I vaguely remember from various TV sitcoms that I am not sure I ever watched–seriously, I am not at all sure why her name rings a bell for me–plays a girl of 12 in this episode.  As I type this, Wikipedia tells me she is still alive and 72 years old.

Let’s not forget how old these episodes are.

Basic Premise:  A little girl, orphaned by a fire, cannot speak because she was raised to communicate telepathically.

Writer:  Richard Matheson, adapting his own short story

Commentary:  Ugh.

Really, ugh.

I am not enjoying these longer episodes.  This one felt particularly long and melodramatic.  This little girl, Ilse, is orphaned when her German-born parents die in a fire, and they had sworn an oath to raise their children to only speak telepathically…for reasons.

Look, there’s a lot about this episode that seems a bit much, like how she is temporarily taken in by the local sheriff and his wife, the wife burning letters to Ilse’s surviving, well, family, I suppose, because the wife’s own child died and she wants a new one, the way the town’s schoolteacher, who dresses like Miss Gulch from The Wizard of Oz, seems to understand that Ilse was being raised telepathically for…reasons, but seems to assume Ilse was being trained to be a medium, not whatever her parents were up to.  There’s just one problem here:  I do not buy for an instant that you can raise a child so he or she cannot understand how to talk.

Like, parents don’t really go out of their way to train their kids to talk.  They pick it up just by listening to others.  Even if Ilse’s parents had somehow spent the first 12 years of her life ensuring she never heard a single word in any language, she should still be able to make sounds with her throat, and it wouldn’t take too much effort to learn at least her own name.  Maybe she doesn’t know what words mean, but when she does speak telepathically, she seems to.  She should be able to use words.  The whole premise falls apart in less than ten seconds.  Talking isn’t something you are taught.  It’s something you pick up just by existing as long as you have working vocal cords.

The Twist:  Ilse learns to talk, so she can’t join another family of budding telepaths because either you can communicate with telepathy or with verbal words, but not both.

Man, this whole thing turned me off.

What about Rod?  Still in the void, but he’s sitting down on something this time instead of standing there.