text: This is a clever episode of TWILIGHT ZONE that was comic rather than strange or tragic. Buster Keaton is Woodrow Mulligan, a janitor from 1890 America, works in a laboratory. He is constantly griping about the life problems around him: meat is too expensive (it's like $1.00 / lb. Unheard of!). He is always yelling after crazy speeders (on bicycles - autos haven't appeared yet). Griping to the end, he sees a helmet like device by a scientist, and puts it on and tries it. Suddenly he is in modern America. The beginning was a seven minute silent film. Now it is all noise, all talking, all beeping, all blowing. Keaton is here only a few minutes when he realizes that the world has changed and not for the better. He runs into Stanley Adams, a Professor Rollo, who realizes that Mulligan is from c. 1890 (he mentions President Cleveland). Rollo has always wanted to live in that charming, quiet age. He helps Mulligan get the helmet repaired, and they go back in time. Rollo gets bored after awhile, due to the lack of scientific equipment that he can use. Mulligan puts the helmet on him and sends him into the future. But now Woodrow is fully content with the quiet, simple age he lives in. He has found contentment.<br /><br />In his last fifteen years Buster Keaton was frequently on television (many times for Allan Funt on CANDID CAMERA, where he could help set up sight gag tricks on the public). He did make a few films as well (most notably A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM and THE RAILRODDER). But he occasionally popped up in television plays and episodes. He is in his element here, presumably advising the director (old comedy film director Norman McLeod - he directed the Marx Brothers in HORSE FEATHERS) on the tricks he could do. Watch how Stanley Adams and he time Adams picking him up when he is snatching a pair of trousers he needs. In terms of timing it reminds one of gags he did in the 20s in films like SHERLOCK JR. The episode does show Keaton in fine fettle for a man in his sixties.<br /><br />The appearances of Jesse White (here as a repairman, of all things) is always welcome. But look a bit at "Professor Rollo". Stanley Adams was a well known figure in movies and television from the 1950s onward to his tragic suicide in 1977. Plump, with unkempt appearance, and heavy, booming voice, his best known dramatic role was as the wrestling promoter in the film version of REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT (he wants Anthony Quinn to be a wrestler wearing a costume as an Indian). His best known television appearance was as the space trader who introduces the crew of the Starship Enterprise in STAR TREK to those furry, fertile little creatures "Tribbles" (as in "The Trouble With"). Adams was always worth watching (like Jesse White, and certainly like Keaton), enhancing most of the productions he appeared in. I have never understood his suicide, but it was a sad end to a first rate character performer.