And then we get the episode’s strange, eerie final sequence, as Paul-B runs just ahead of our Paul, the two images stitched together in post-production with an effect that should look cheesy but instead enhances the oddness of what’s happening. He follows the man out into the darkness and sees just enough to know that… it’s another him. And then he sees somebody running out of the bus station, heading into the dead of night. Paul, retiring for a short nap before the next bus arrives in the morning, thinking he’s done the right thing, sees that his bag starts to shift places, too. When she’s hauled off by the police(!) and committed, it feels almost like a personal affront.Īnd then there’s the denouement. Rinse, repeat.) But her growing surety of what’s happened and the way that we know she’s right makes the way that everybody just writes her off as a silly little lady infuriating (again, perhaps in a way Serling didn’t entirely intend). (Millicent tells someone there’s another her. The long section that follows, as she tries to figure out what’s going on and talks with Paul and the older couple about whether they’ve seen the other Millicent is kind of one-note and hits the same beats over and over. (The other time Millicent sees her twin, the camera pans up from her standing outside of the bus to the malevolently grinning Millicent sitting on the bus, dead-eyed.) But because that shot with the mirror is such a corker, we’re right there with Millicent, waiting for the other ball to drop, for everything to start unraveling. And she’ll only see her one other time.īrahm only frames Millicent and Millicent-B in the same shot one time in the whole episode. From there, she’s looking for this evil twin. But Millicent does, and it’s like the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The bathroom attendant, standing to the side, doesn’t notice. And then Millicent turns to head out to the main room again, opens the door… and sees herself sitting on the bench in the main lobby in the mirror. The attendant clearly thinks she’s a little nuts, but she’s willing to humor her. She talks with the bathroom attendant, who’s also seen her just a few moments ago, even though this is the first Millicent’s been in the bathroom. Millicent’s gone to the bathroom to wash up, convinced that this business with the ticket agent claiming she keeps coming up to check when the bus will get there or the way her bag shifts places between the check-in counter and next to her on the bench. And then she steps into the Twilight Zone, and things start to unravel. (Think of how, say, the women in “Third From The Sun” don’t really have a lot of agency for themselves.) Millicent, however, is smart, capable, and decidedly not crazy. (One exception: Season two’s terrific “The Invaders,” which features a great Agnes Moorehead performance.) Yes, there are episodes with women at the center-and we’ve covered at least one really good one in “The Hitch-Hiker”-but the show often relegates women to the sidelines, as was common at the time. For the most part, this is a male-dominated show, and the women are there to fit into the conventional roles of girlfriend or mother or whatever. But I still really like this one, and I think a lot of that has to do with our hero, Millicent Barnes, played by Vera Miles.Īs I think about this, it strikes me that not a lot of the very best Twilight Zone episodes featured performances by women at the center. It’s as if the show felt like taking the dive into full-on, hardcore science fiction, then pulled back at just the last moment. And the ending is oddly unsatisfying, even if its remains nicely creepy and inexplicable. There’s not really enough to the story to support a full half hour, so everything after Millicent Barnes figures out she’s being stalked by Millicent Barnes-B is kind of superfluous (at least until she lays out-in true crazy crackpot fashion-just what’s going on). I wouldn’t claim “Mirror Image” as a “great” episode of The Twilight Zone, but I do think it’s an awful lot of fun.
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