1.38 --- A Matter of Minutes

Directed by : Sheldon Larry Written by : Rockne S. O'Bannon (story by Theodore Sturgeon) Starring : Adam Arkin, Karen Austin, Adolph Caesar First aired : 24th of January, 1986. Michael (Adam Arkin, Full Moon High, Chicago Hope) and Maureen (Karen Austin), a young married couple, are awakened one morning by some horrible noise which they can't quite identify. A glance at the alarm clock unveils the fact they slept in, which Michael soonly refutes by checking his wrist watch. They shrug off the incident as the alarm clock simply dying on them, but are startled when the noise from outdoors moves into their house. Investigating the situation, Michael and Maureen are amazed to see that their house is suddenly flooded with clad-blue construction workers, who have no face and don't speak. Running around their neighbourhood, they see the situation is universally the same, so they head downtown. Things aren't too much different there either - one distinguishable fact however is that all clocks are jammed at 11:37 AM. While snooping around downtown, the couple runs into a fellow who seems like the foreman for this working crew (Adolph Caesar, A Soldier's Story). He explains them what happened - by accident, they slipped through a loophole and landed four hours ahead of their own time, and the workers they see are "the time brigade" (my words, not his -- rev.note), who construct every minute in time. The foreman then informs them that they cannot return, a fact to which Michael and Maureen don't take lightly. Not quite ready to spend the rest of their days in a timeless void, they flee while the foreman is busy signing some papers. A chase through the city streets ensues, and the couple loses their chasers by hiding in a ticket booth of a nearby cinema, deciding to stick there until the "real" time evens out with the minute they are stuck in. They exit the booth 30 seconds before impact, just enough to grin victoriously at the foreman, who escapes into the void. The clocks match, and Michael and Maureen are back in the normal world. After another minute passes and they are convinced they are still where they should be, they leave for home, feeling happier than usual. *** Well ladies and gentlemen, here it is : the infamous "clad blue workers" episode. If you would round up 250 people who saw this series during the original airing and never again, for some reason, around 200 - at least - would find this episode the most memorable one. How memorable is this one though ? Well, the premise and initial execution of it are great. However, the script goes nowhere exotic, and the result is a interesting, yet rather bland episode - no twist, no nothing, just a neatly wrapped little story. For shame, as there could have been more intriguing ways to finish it. While it's fun to see Arkin before he porked up for Chicago Hope, the real show-stealer here is Caesar, who sadly died from a heart attack months after this one first aired. Caesar, who got some Academy lovin' for his portrayal of the brutal, sadistic sgt. Waters in A Soldier's Story, is given little time to excel, but his rat mug is hard to forget. Trivia : the movie theater downtown, whose ticket booth is used by Michael and Maureen as their hiding place, is showing Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits. How appropriate.