The Jeopardy Room

The defector Major Ivan Kuchenko is under siege and trapped in a hotel room by Commissar Vassiloff and his assistant Boris. Vassiloff is a sadistic and sophisticated assassin that wants to kill Kuchenko in an elaborated way. He offers wine to Kuchenko and drugs him. Then he tells t Kuchenko that there is a boob trap in his room and he needs to find it to save his life.

"The Jeopardy Room" is an awful episode of "The Twilight Zone" that treats the soviet people as stupid one. Boris shoots many times to Kuchenko's room and nobody hears the shooting. Kuchenko drinks wine in the same bottle of his enemy, and loses the chance to eliminate his enemy. But the worst is the imbecile conclusion, with Boris shooting at Kuchenko first and answering a phone call. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Correndo Risco" ("Taking Risk")

Yes, as another reviewer said this episode reeks of Cold War stereotypes. But if that bothers you, just mentally replace the Soviet nationalities of the characters with a defecting al Qaeda terrorist or Taliban operative or whatever you like because this episode isn't about communism vs capitalism. It's about the ironic (and highly satisfying) comeuppance of an overconfident sadist with a huge ego at the hands of someone he hugely underestimates.

And in that sense it's a classic Twilight Zone plot. Most episodes are morality tales that depict a fundamentally good but unlucky character getting a second chance or an evil character finally getting his due. The only real differences in this one is that there's one of each type of character and they each earn their rewards by their own acts and wits, not through alien intervention or some inexplicable supernatural occurrence.

While a well developed storyline and a satisfying ending, this episode didn't feel like it belonged in the twilight zone. Decent acting.

Martin Landau stars as Major Ivan Kuchenko, an Eastern Bloc defector who is trying to reach the U.S., but is intercepted by Commissar Vassiloff(played by John Van Dreelen) who is assigned to kill him. The Major currently occupies a hotel room in a neutral country, but Vassiloff decides to play a dangerous game with him instead. After being knocked out with a drugged drink, the Major comes around to be told via tape recording that somewhere in his room is a bomb, and he must find and deactivate it in three hours, or the bomb will go off, and if he tries to leave too soon, will be shot... Interesting episode is more of a suspense piece than most, but contains fine acting and a most effective ending.

...in that nothing really supernatural, odd, or mysterious happens. Still, a tense and solidly scripted story from Serling about a man pinned down by a sniper, challenged to find a bomb triggered by a seemingly ordinary object in a hotel room. It was nice to see a young Martin Landau as the tormented protagonist. I think two things could have been done to make the story a bit more satisfying. First, the ending always struck me as a trifle tacked on, as if Serling couldn't think of a really good way to resolve the situation and so had the villain do something uncharacteristically stupid. Second, Martin Landau's character should have employed a few more tactics to try to get away before succeeding; as it stands, there's a bit too much time spent looking for the bomb, the location of which is fairly obvious from the start, and the way he escapes also feels a bit too easy.