Lloyd Bochner always cheers me up. When describing him, a
lot of people use words like “interchangeable” or “bland” or “that one guy.” I
prefer to go with “Canadian” and “perfectly modulated voice” or sometimes I
just yell: “It’s a cookbook!”
That last one is because after a long career of guest
starring roles and small parts in movies, Bochner remains best known for his
episode of The Twilight Zone, “To
Serve Man.” But did you know he also made TV history with his recurring role on
Dynasty? He played the first television
character to die while doing the horizontal mambo, when Joan Collins’ Alexis
overwhelmed him with a heart attack in the sack. Never say I don’t teach you
things.
Today we’re watching him in an episode of The Big Valley. It’s the one where Jarrod
goes blind, and I’m honestly so happy because it’s the best
character-goes-temporarily-blind episode ever, with the possible exception of
the Happy Days where it happens to The
Fonz and they make him put his motorcycle back together as therapy. And by the
best, I kind of mean the worst.
Temporary blindness used to be on the trope list right after
amnesia. (There’s also an episode of Big
Valley where Jarrod gets amnesia, it’s called “The Man from Nowhere” and
two seasons later, Victoria – that’s Jarrod’s mother if this is your first
visit – has her own case of amnesia. It’s a show that never lets you down.) By
the mid-70’s, most primetime dramas figured out that blindness shouldn’t be a
gimmick, and we start seeing more accurate and interesting portrayals of blind
characters like in Little House on the
Prairie or Longstreet.
What stops the whole thing from being offensive, most times,
is that the trope had its heart in the right place. It was usually trying to
teach us about loss, or perseverance, or the things we take for granted. The
results were usually more cheesy than insensitive, as we’ll see shortly.
