****SPOILER****
Sometime ago my mother and I were in Wal-Mart looking around the DVD bins and stumbled upon a four-disc set for "One Step Beyond" for cheap. We also found a couple more for cartoons, Alfred Hitchcock, but my mom remembered this show at least once or twice in her lifetime more than the others (we did still take the cartoons, despite the rather below average quality of that collection). With nothing else better to do we decided to give a few of the shows a watch. Now mind you that even though I'm 20 years old, I live with my mom and sister and my mother has a very DEEP sense of nostalgia... most of the movies or television show collections she picks up at the DVD are never movies made from 1980 into the present. She usually decides what seems appropriate only for herself, without me or my younger sister's say for that matter, and for this reason we were/are with "One Step Beyond". Let's just say she wants us to relive her childhood, which is fun sometimes yet also utterly painfully to recreate.
But enough about that. As of right now we'd have watched just about every episode on our DVD collection of this show, and I'm afraid on the contrary of most here who've posted positive comments about this show, I felt the need to express my feelings that I'm not quite sure I feel the same wavelength of approval. The episodes seem to constantly consist of yelling matches amongst the characters now and then, while seem so completely out of the ordinary (and not in the "pyschic phenomenon" (sp?) that John Newland states) that it kinda makes me feel like the characters from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Maybe I'm just not getting it, or someone needs to guide me through the episodes carefully. Some of the acting varies from good to pretty laughable, considering the times these were created. At one point a woman repeats "MY CHILD IS DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!" over and over again, that now we use it whenever our computer internet service conks out.
Don't get me wrong there are a few episodes that intrigue me, but if I had to watch an episode about a very awkward boyfriend abusing his (younger than him) girlfriend for no apparent reason until a clown gets his revenge. Sorry, I'll take Rod Serling's living doll instead.
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