Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing The American Short Story, which ran semi-regularly on PBS in 1974 to 1981.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime and found on YouTube and Tubi.

This week, we have an adaptation of an Ambrose Bierce short story.

Episode 1.2 “Parker Adderson, Philosopher”

(Dir by Arthur Barron, originally aired on January 8th, 1974)

This adaptation of an Ambrose Bierce short story takes place during the Civil War.  Parker Adderson (Harris Yulin) is a Union spy who is captured behind Confederate lines.  Brought into the ramshackle Confederate camp, he’s put into a small cabin.  He knows that, as a spy, he’s going to be executed in the morning and he seems to be at peace with that.  For the most part, his captors treat him humanely.  Though they may be at war, there doesn’t seem to be any real animosity between Adderson and the Confederate general (Douglass Watson) who is in charge of the camp.  They are two men who have a job to do and they both seem to respect each other.  At night, the General and Adderson have a conversation, talking about the war and mortality.  Adderson gets a last meal.  Everything seems to be strangely peaceful …. until Adderson discovers that he’s not going to be executed the way that he wants to be executed.  By the time the morning sun rises, three men are dead.  The formerly philosophical Adderson dies in a rage against his captors while the General dies with the peace and grace that Adderson originally envisioned for himself.

This was an effective and melancholy adaptation of Ambrose Bierce’s short story, one that captured both Bierce’s anti-war sentiments and his cynical view of the human condition.  For all of his efforts to put himself above the realities of war, Adderson falls apart once the reality of his impending death becomes obvious.  Meanwhile, the previously boorish general finds a certain redemption in his death, perhaps because the General, unlike Adderson, never tried to rationalize the violence of war or the cruelty of fate.

It’s a nicely-done episode, featuring good performances from both Watson and Yulin.  I’ve gotten so used to seeing Yulin cast as corporate and government villains that it was really eye-opening to see him playing a complicated character for once.  Clocking in at a little over 30 minutes, Parker Adderson, Philosopher is a thought-provoking look at war and the men who fight it.