The Storyteller (The Twilight Zone)
"The Storyteller" is the first segment of the twenty-seventh episode (the third episode of the second season (1986–87) of the television series The Twilight Zone.
| "The Storyteller" | |
|---|---|
| The New Twilight Zone episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 2 Episode 27a |
| Directed by | Paul Lynch |
| Written by | Rockne S. O'Bannon |
| Original air date | October 11, 1986 |
| Guest appearance(s) | |
Glynnis O'Connor: Dorothy Livingston | |
Opening narration
Two women. A man. A chase down library steps. And so, our story begins. Like life, all stories have a beginning, a middle and end. But the distances between beginning and end, between story and life, can sometimes be deceptive. Especially when viewed through the shifting prisms of the Twilight Zone.
Plot
Retired teacher Dorothy Livingston is visiting her niece when she bumps into a man she has never been able to forget. Seeing him leave by taxi, Dorothy and her niece decide to follow him and Dorothy tells her niece how she met that man in 1933.
During that time, Dorothy was assigned to a small school in West Virginia and replaced a teacher who informed her that Mica Frost, one of her students, should be allowed access to the library at all times. She meets Mica and discovers that he is a boy who enjoys scribbling in his notebook. She believes Mica's behavior to be unusual and asks him to schedule a parent-teacher conference. Mica declines and informs her that his parents are dead and he lives with his grandfather, who will neither meet her or be met under any circumstance.
Mica secretly takes extra books home to read. When the teacher confronts him, she finds that the boy is reading the books to his ailing grandfather - but Mica now confesses that the old man is not his grandfather but actually his great-great-great-grandfather who he claims to be more than a hundred and forty years old. Mica further claims that he's keeping the old man alive by reading to him a story every night, but never finishing the story until the next night, claiming the suspense is the only thing keeping the old man alive. He claims he's continuing the tradition as his father, grandfather, etc. have all done.
The next morning at school, Mica accidentally falls from a tree, hits his head, and breaks his arm. He is taken to the town doctor to spend the night but he fights back because no one will be home to keep his great-great-great-grandfather alive.
Feeling responsible for Mica’s grandfather, Dorothy goes to their house and reads the old man a story she makes up on the fly. The next day, Mica rushes home to find that his great-great-great-grandfather is still alive and well. He is also surprised to find out that Dorothy was there to read to the old man. She tells Mica that she’s still not convinced that she saved his life but she said she read the story just in case it worked.
Back in the present, the adult Mica gets out of the taxi and enters an apartment building followed closely by Dorothy and her niece. Entering an apartment, the scene switches and Dorothy’s voice can be heard reading to her own mother who asks excitedly, “What happens next? Did you find the man? Was he really 200 years old?” A much older Dorothy smiles and answers her: “Tomorrow, mother,” and leaves with the old woman waiting for tomorrow’s story.