May 5, 2003 - 801225 - A Holiday Visit

[Ross]

The first episode I taped as a kid. Check it out! I'll post my comments tomorrow.

- Ross

[vgarci]

A young couple return for Christmas, after a 12 year absence, to the woman's hometown of Runyanville, OH (I looked it up on Mapquest and no such town exists). Her parents are excited to see them but the young couple are involved in a car crash which leads them on an adventure.

Caution, story spoiler ahead: This play adds a holiday flair to a classic tale of despair - trapped in a ghost town diorama. The acting and writing are excellent, if a bit predictable, and offer perfect examples of why we loved the RMT plays. I especially liked the fact the Mrs. McGinnis threw me off as a character that made me question the diorama concept and I also liked the tie to the green logs. I'll definitely play this story for my kids next Christmas as their grandmother has a snow village comprised of about 150 different ceramic pieces that take an entire room to display. The kids will love it! Now, two quick questions: Why did the author allow a phone to be used with strange results and why did Mrs. McGinnis disappear from the scenes?

Finally, I have to wonder, and I'll pose this question to the reviewers (Brian, as a writer, I'll be disappointed if you don't give me a comment - no pressure ;): How would this story be wrtitten if the characters had the use of modern technology such as handheld GPS devices, two-way pagers and/or cell phones?

[brian1984_2001]

I, too had some questions about the script:

Just who did they talk to on the phone?

Why did the highway lead to a diorama under her parents' Christmas tree?

If they ran off the road and both hit their heads, why did they have the same dream?

Some comments as a resident of Toledo, Ohio: There is no town of Runyanville. Ohio has a State Highway Patrol, not a state police. There would be no town of Blue Mountain because OHio has no mountains. Cell phones and pagers would not work because everybody in Ohio knows that those things only seem to work near big cities.

I enjoyed the story as I enjoy any well-written story of the "strange little town." I didn't see the ending coming. My copy was cut off, so I never got to hear EG's final thought.

If you enjoy the "strange little town," story, I recommend you read "Rock and Roll Heaven" by Stephen King. This is the best of them.

[vgarci]

Brian,
Had to laugh at your "cell phone and pager" comment. I thought coverage was only a problem here in Wyoming (a place only slightly more advanced than third world countries). ;)

I, too, really liked this story. Ross, I can see why you'd be hooked with a great story like this on Christmas!!!!

[brian1984_2001]

You couldn't tell from my post, but I was blowing off a little steam. Maybe I should have included an emoticon like this one :evil:

I had a car engine blow in the middle of nowhere about an hour from home. Couldn't raise anybody on a cell phone because there was no service. I finally got picked up, but not before almost getting intimate with a tornado.

I complained to the cell phone company and they told me that there were certain "Dead Zones" in the area. Maybe I was close to that strange, little town.

[UNTIL NEXT TIME]

I did not understand the story. Who is Mrs. Mcginnius? Why and how do they both have the same "dream". Why does E.G. end the story saying all things don't have to maKe sense? UNTIL NEXT TIME

[Charlie]

Awesome program Ross - good choice!

This one had me hooked from the beginning. The Interstate that is not on the map - no cars, no signs, no exits ... great setup. I love that kind of story line because everything seems so innocent but strange and you know something is going to happen. No exits, no signs ... wait, that sounds like the Pennsylvania Turnpike to me but they are in Ohio. Okay...

Well, the lady is a strange one and while this was a great story, I was thinking by the way that it sounded that there was going to be no explanation for what happened. But, we do get something ... not an explanation but we know [b:5f0a278289]what[/b:5f0a278289] happened, just not [b:5f0a278289]why[/b:5f0a278289]. But as EG Marshall says, some things just can't be explained.

A great program to break out a day or two before Christmas!

[Ross]

All,

Yeah, I know there are some "ifs" when it comes to Mrs. McGinnis, and the phone. I assume that they "heard" the conversation that her father had while he was talking in the house, at the same time they were on the phone in the "town". As for Mrs. M, I think the writer had to add "someone" into the story to flesh it out a bit. It also gave Skip and Joan an "out" to get them back to their car for rescue.

The "green logs" were totally a mind blower and a good "tie-in" at the end. When I first listened to it, I had forgotten about the logs, and when they referenced them again, it was pretty interesting.

I have listened to this episode a hundred times at least. I still really like it, even though I know the ending. An absolute must for the holidays! I have played this one for several friends and relatives, and they all really enjoyed it.

Ross

P.S. vgarci, I know you tried to get me stuck with snow, rain and hail in Wyoming on my way to CO yesterday, but I managed to sneak through!

:lol:

[vgarci]

Ross,
We got a little of the same weather today and it's welcome because we really need the moisture. We should have about one more snow storm of significance before we can wrap this winter up.

As for the program, I really liked the green log reference, too. I didn't see it coming and this is the type of reference you just smile about when the lightbulb goes off. I think Mrs. McGinnis provided a cleaver way of disguising the plot and she gave us an alternate plot line to consider. The phone still bothers me and now that I think more about it, I believe I'm bothered by the fact that the phone connection deteriorated over the course of the story.

[brian1984_2001]

I've resolved myself to believing it was all a dream that they both had together.

I know it's strange that they had the same dream, but stranger things have happened in our macabre stories.

[Charlie]

Well, how about this: They are caught in some warp and end up on the little village under the tree. The old lady is a figurine or something that is part of it and someone is moving her around and that would explain her dissappearances. The phone call ... he could not hear her on the phone because they were shrunken or something and everyone knows that a telephone on a toy layout makes a poor connection to the public service. ;) (Yeah, I know, she thought she talked to him.)

Okay so it is a stretch but these are a few things that popped into my mind as I listened.

I did have fun listening to this one. Obviously, parts of it are left open to intrepretation rather than tying up all the loose ends.

Charlie

[vgarci]

[quote:7418cdcfc9="Ross"]

P.S. vgarci, I know you tried to get me stuck with snow, rain and hail in Wyoming on my way to CO yesterday, but I managed to sneak through!

:lol:[/quote:7418cdcfc9]

Ross,
You're lucky you didn't come through today. We woke to a few inches of snow with more flying. The roads are listed as "no unnecessary travel with slick conditions". Hopefully, this will be the last of the significant snow we see for the year.

[UNTIL NEXT TIME]

Help me out guys. What was the story about? UNTIL NEXT TIME

[Ross]

Yeah, it could have been a dream. I can live with that.

Vince, We got the same snow on the 10th!

I am back in CA now, nice and HOT!

-Ross

[hamlet2003]

"A Holiday Visit" is one of my all-time fav shows and in fact the only one I still have on audio tape from when I was a kid. I finally located it on-line and now have a cd copy that I listen to repeatedly at Xmas every year. The more I listen to it, the more I figure out about the mystery. At one point the wife remarks about how clearly she can see the stars, and then the lights in the town, including the stars all go out at once. Obviously, the stars were the lights on the xmas tree and someone had unplugged them. As for Mrs. McGinnis, she is obviously supposed to be a figurine in the diorama. The reason that she meets them more than once and doesn't recognize them is that the diorama has more than one copy of the Mrs. Mcginnis figurine. At one point, Mrs. McGinnis comments that there used to be more people in the town but every year a few more "go away." Apparently, this was the script writer's clever way of using the fact that every year we drop and break or lose parts of our Christmas sets (the dog chews them up or the kids take them to play with and they end up in the toy box--reminds me of how my own family eventually lost the original baby Jesus from our under-the-tree nativity scene.) I have to admit the one thing that still makes no sense to me is the phone call between the wife and her father. That said, it's still a totally cool episode.

[vgarci]

Hamlet,
Great insights! I like your notion of the lights and the explanation of Mrs. McGinnis.

[Charlie]

Hi Hamlet and welcome to the forums!

Great observations. The lights going on and off and your other points make perfect sense! There are probably a lot of other things like this in all of the CBSRMT programs that we miss the first time through.

Charlie smile.gif

[Ross]

I was also thinking that the tinsel on the tree conributed to the "stars" as well.

- Ross

[hamlet2003]

A couple of other ideas: When the couple go into the store when they first come into town, the wife comments that there is just one bare bulb lighting the room. Could this be a reference to how many of the xmas villages people have are lit by small bulbs inside the buildings to make them light up? Also, at one point they hear carolers singing and assume everyone is at a Christmas concert but they can never find the source of the music. Perhaps it was music playing in the room at the parent's house where the tiny town was on display.

[Charlie]

WOW! This is making more sense all the time! :shock:

Charlie

[hamlet2003]

It occurs to me that this episode is a lot like the old Twilight Zone episode "Stopover in a Quiet Little Town" where a couple wakes up inside a deserted little town and discover everything is like a movie set: the phone is not wired into the wall, the cupboards are empty, the drawers are glued shut, the trees are fake, and the train just goes in a big circle around the town. In the end we discover they have been abducted by giant aliens and placed into a little model town to serve as pets to an alien child. Not one of the best episodes but at least it gave a somewhat more satisfactory explanation for how the couple ended up in this strange town than does this CBSRMT episode. I suspect that "A Holiday Visit" was written by someone who had a little Christmas village and wondered what would happen if you shrunk down and could wander around inside it. The writer obviously was not concerned with the logic of the whole thing, but it's a fantasy so I suppose that is not really important.

[Ross]

I think TWZ had a big impact on the writings of RMT. There are a lot of parallels there. I love them both, so even better for me!

- Ross

[vgarci]

Ross,
I'll bet the majority of people who participate in this site have at least some affinity for the TWZ series. To me, it was the TV equivalent and I sure enjoyed it, too.

[geospart]

I wonder if that Phone Booth was a Red Brit looking ones that took shillings, well thats just me ...good story...
I like the others wonder about the old woman appearing in and out, like she was the ghost of the woman who brought it over from Scotland and was forever stuck in the village never to remember one second from the next. Either way I think too much, it was a cute Holiday story....

:roll: