Castro stand-in Ramos Clemente (Falk) has just led his ramshackle peasant army to overthrow the despotic deCruz (Kuluva), and is celebrating with his four trusted lieutenants. Clemente summons the defeated deCruz before him, who in turn introduces his conqueror to a strange mirror in his office, which had been provided to him by an old woman who claimed that it would enable its owner to see his would-be assassins. Before long, Clemente begins seeing his closest friends as potential assassins.
When The Twilight Zone switched to an hour-long format in its fourth season, one of the common knocks on the show was that many of the scripts seemed padded, as the format of the series was best suited for a two-act, thirty-minute format. "The Mirror" presents the opposite problem - because the format gives Serling only thirty minutes to work with, there is barely enough time for him to introduce the four lieutenants in the most perfunctory fashion (as if to emphasize this point, Clemente introduces each of them to us by the use of a single adjective), have the confrontation between him and deCruz introducing the eponymous mirror (easily the best scene in the episode, thanks to some good work from Kuluva), and to have him work through each of the lieutenants before the invevitable epiphany. The format gives no time for any definition of the characters, their prior relationship with each other or what about Clemente led them to follow him. This not only leads to each of the lieutenants being little else but ciphers, but also leads Clemente to being nothing more than a stick figure, which in turn results in an uneven, overacted performance from Falk; while Falk was as capable of overacting as most actors, here, it's difficult to blame him, as Serling gives him nothing to work with.
This is all kind of a shame, because the concept of the episode is a sound one and by fleshing out the characters, it could have added an extra layer of tragedy and irony to the story - "The Mirror" does pass more than a passing resemblance to the last four acts of "Macbeth - that would have enabled the episode to avoid the charge of being an anti-Castro polemic. As it is, the episode still has a decent twist ending and at least one strong scene, justifying the 4/10 rating, as opposed to a much lower one.
When The Twilight Zone switched to an hour-long format in its fourth season, one of the common knocks on the show was that many of the scripts seemed padded, as the format of the series was best suited for a two-act, thirty-minute format. "The Mirror" presents the opposite problem - because the format gives Serling only thirty minutes to work with, there is barely enough time for him to introduce the four lieutenants in the most perfunctory fashion (as if to emphasize this point, Clemente introduces each of them to us by the use of a single adjective), have the confrontation between him and deCruz introducing the eponymous mirror (easily the best scene in the episode, thanks to some good work from Kuluva), and to have him work through each of the lieutenants before the invevitable epiphany. The format gives no time for any definition of the characters, their prior relationship with each other or what about Clemente led them to follow him. This not only leads to each of the lieutenants being little else but ciphers, but also leads Clemente to being nothing more than a stick figure, which in turn results in an uneven, overacted performance from Falk; while Falk was as capable of overacting as most actors, here, it's difficult to blame him, as Serling gives him nothing to work with.
This is all kind of a shame, because the concept of the episode is a sound one and by fleshing out the characters, it could have added an extra layer of tragedy and irony to the story - "The Mirror" does pass more than a passing resemblance to the last four acts of "Macbeth - that would have enabled the episode to avoid the charge of being an anti-Castro polemic. As it is, the episode still has a decent twist ending and at least one strong scene, justifying the 4/10 rating, as opposed to a much lower one.