"The Twilight Zone (2002)" Retro Recap: "The Lineman"

Written by Scotty

It is always healthy to have dreams, I mean if we didn’t have them, what would be the point of getting out of bed in the morning.  Some people dream about power or money, while others just dream out being happy.  Since the prior two are supposed to lead to happiness, it is easy to get them mixed up and take over your life style, but as a wise person once said, money isn’t everything.

Telephone repairman Tyler Ward is a dreamer and wants to find a way to get rich quick.  Spending his money on lotto tickets to make it happen, he continues to wonder how great life would be when he hits it big.  With the occasional glace towards his supervisor Shannon, Tyler knows that she would have nothing to do with him unless he had something more to offer than just his winning personality.  His best friend Buddy does not feel the same way, since he knows Tyler inside and out and believes that his friend can be something much more than the loser he thinks he is, he just needs to make up a plan and stop wasting his time on these get rich quick schemes.

After a massive rain storm blows over, Tyler is given the order to get up and work on the downed phone lines by Shannon, but the storm is not over.  A strange electrical build up takes place over Tyler’s head and before he is able to get down a blast of lightning hits him.  Being revived in the ER after being dead for over three minutes, Tyler is a medical triumph, but something has changed inside of him.  Suffering partial amnesia, Tyler has selective memory coming back to him gradually, but he is starting to see strange lights coming out of people’s faces.  Not being able to explain this, along with the voices in his head, Tyler does some more digging around and finds out that the Sprite that has hit him is not out of the ordinary, but now he is holding onto an electrical charge that he cannot control.

Finding out that he is able to read minds, Buddy encourages him to put it to the test.  Winning at a high stakes game of poker, Tyler sees that his new gift will allow him to live the life he has always wanted.  Taking his powers to Wall Street, Tyler becomes one of the top traders in the game and everything is going right for once in his life.  But there is a draw back as he is trying to get closer to Shannon who feels responsible for his current condition, but she tries to push him away since he is becoming more money hungry than ever.  Thinking that this is what she wanted in a man, Tyler refuses to back off, but when he sees Buddy and Shannon kiss outside of his apartment, he loses his mind.  Turning up the juice, Tyler finds Shannon and tries to force her to love him with his gift, but it has to be a conscious choice in her mind and she refuses.  Trying the same tactic on Buddy, Tyler finds out that he is all alone in his quest for happiness and knowing that he will not be able to win either of them back into his life, tries to find a way out.

This is a very powerful episode, no pun intended, but you get to see how the human psyche works in someone that gets everything that they dreamed of.  As Tyler tells his story about how his family never had any money, it becomes clear that he refuses to go out that way.  With just this taste of information, Shannon is willing to be with him, but when he starts to take his gifts to the extreme, it scares her away.  Knowing how to control his new gift, Tyler puts it to work since he really loves the woman, but the harder he tries to convince her to love him, the further he pushes her away.  Starring Jeremy Piven as Tyler, Olivia d’Abo as Shannon and Vincent Laresca as Buddy, this is the cast that shows how true emotion can be a benefit and a burden at the same time.

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