A Game of Pool
"Jesse Cardiff, pool shark. The best on Randolph Street, who will soon learn that trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risk, in or out — of the Twilight Zone."
It's after hours in a pool hall, and local shark Jesse Cardiff (Esai Morales) stays behind to polish his game. Jesse considers himself the best player around, but is haunted by the legacy of the late James Howard "Fats" Brown, whose skills continue to overshadow his. Jesse muses that he would give anything to play Fats for a single game and prove that he's truly the best, but relents that Fats has been dead for the last 15 years. Suddenly, Jesse turns around to find Fats himself (Maury Chaykin) standing behind him, the late legend having been summoned from the afterlife to answer Jesse's challenge. With his life on the line, Jesse agrees to a one-on-one game of straight pool, vowing to finally beat Fats and become the very best.
Tropes
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: Jesse challenges Fats' ghost to a one-on-one pool game to determine which of them is the best and loses. In the original episode, Jesse wins, but has to spend his entire afterlife defending his title as the best pool player ever and winds up miserable. This version uses George Clayton Johnson's originally-intended ending, where Fats wins and tells Jesse that he's destined to die as a forgotten memory, as all those who are "second-best" do. After Fats disappears, Jesse grows furious and begins practicing even harder, determined to be the best no matter what.
- Always Someone Better: Jesse's skills are overshadowed by those of Fats, and unlike the original episode, Fats still overshadows him by the ending.
- Bad Guys Play Pool: Subverted. Jesse and Fats aren't genuine bad guys, just arrogant pool sharks who are playing to see who the best is.
- Bottle Episode: The entire episode takes place in the pool hall.
- Call-Back: The customers of the pool hall ditch the place at closing time to head to a bar called "Mulvaney's", named after the brutish Mike Mulvaney from Season 1's "The Little People of Killany Woods".
- Chromosome Casting: There aren't any female characters in the episode.
- Competition Freak: Jesse is an even bigger one here than in the original episode, as he loses to Fats and practices even harder to ensure he doesn't end up forgotten.
- Large Ham: Jesse is just as ham-tastic here as in the original episode.
- Minimalist Cast: Jesse and Fats are the only characters in the episode after the opening scene.
- On One Condition: Jesse laments that he'll never be regarded as the greatest pool player ever as long as people compare him to Fats, and wishes that he could play one game against him to settle the score once and for all. Fats' ghost appears and agrees to play one game with Jesse, on the condition that Jesse will die if he loses. Although he's initially reluctant, Jesse accepts. Instead of winning like in the original episode, Jesse loses the game and expects to die immediately. However, Fats reveals that he meant that Jesse would die forgotten, as is the destiny of all second-raters.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Fats appears from the afterlife as soon as Jesse inadvertently challenges him to a pool game.
- Posthumous Character: As in the original episode, Fats Brown, who's been dead for 15 years.
- Race Lift: In the original episode, Jesse is Caucasian. In this version, he's Hispanic.
- Second Place Is for Losers: In this version, Jesse loses to Fats and is destined to die being utterly forgotten, like every second-rater does. This sends him on the warpath, and he begins practicing even harder after Fats leaves.
- Shout-Out: The closing narration quotes a couple of lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1838 poem "A Psalm of Life".
"Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime. And departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time, on the earth as we know it, and — in the Twilight Zone."
