...bwha? The Original Twilight Zone is generally awful. Th' hell??

[Fenris]

@ukulele ike

it’s a little-known fact, one that was covered up by clever camerawork, but rod serling was only seven and a half inches tall.

this explains everything!!!

[Johnny_L.A]

All these years, I’ve been looking at a seven and a half inch Rod? :eek:

[Mr.Miskatonic]

@Fenris

Let’s be clear: there are some stunning episodes of Twilight Zone–maybe 3 or 4 per season and “It’s A GOOD Life” is possibly the best single episode of an anthology show ever. But…

I just watched all of seasons 3-5 of the Twilight Zone and maybe 4 seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I’d seen occasional episodes of each, but not full seasons.

While the AHPs only have maybe one really magnificent episode per season (“Lamb To Slaughter”, “Bang, You’re Dead”, “The Schartz-Metterklume Method”, the one with Peter Lorre as a gambler and Steve McQueen as a patsy, etc.), the acting’s consistently better, the camera direction was far better than TZ’s.

Meanwhile, good God…the Rod Stirling’s preachy, overwrought, overwritten narratives are terrible. So many dumb morality tales*, bloated and terrible dialogue (“Five Characters in Search Of An Exit” sounds like a Goth teen who’d seen “Waiting For Godot” and only got the pretentiousness) and just dumb plots (there’s at least two or three where the characters are toys or treated as toys by giants) just permeate the meat-and-potatoes episodes. “In Praise of Pip” is such an overwrought melodrama and Jack Klugman is so over-the-top that it’s somewhere between cringeworthy and campy.

This isn’t a case of “Eh…“I Love Lucy” or “Seinfeld” are old-fashioned because everyone else has done it.” Alfred Hitchcock Presents is contemporary with Twilight Zone and does not have these problems.

And AHP consistently got more from their actors. For example AHP and TZ both did comedy episodes (several). In one case, TZ got Carol Burnett and AHP got Dick Van Dyke–very comparable comedians at similar stages in their careers and similar styles. TZ got a terrible performance out of Burnett and AHP had some laugh-out-loud funny moments with Van Dyke.

Hell, AHP had Dick York in a half-dozen episodes and…who knew? He can do comedy, be sinister as fuck and be a mild-mannered Caspar Milquetoast type. I didn’t know he could do more than Angry Darrin the one-note-wonder. He was really allowed to exercise his range. Ditto with the guy who’d go onto play “Ol’ Inspector Luger” on Barney Miller. He appeared in a bunch of AHPs and showed a wonderful range that I didn’t know he possessed, and in the one (two?) TZs, he was in, he was flat and very wooden.

(Also, Stirling really, really loves Westerns and The Civil War. He must have done 15-20 episodes in that setting (including a ghastly/treacly one where the Civil War dead march past some lady’s house and the final dead guy is Abe Lincoln).)

I was really surprised at this. I’d thought TZ was the gold standard of anthology TV, but AHP is (to me, at least) far better overall, even if it doesn’t hit as many perfect home runs as TZ.

Anyone else have this reaction?

*Mostly with broken Aesops. “Don’t Drive Drunk or you’ll end up as dolls for a giant alien girl” doesn’t actually show a consequence from drunk driving. (Stirling actually says this is the moral)

Why should we listen to you? You’re Hitler!

[Fenris]

@Just_Asking_Questions

Now, the 1986 revival? I think that show is about 50/30/20. It really has some great episodes. I’d put Her Pilgrim Soul against anything in the first run. (Admittedly, I’m a sucker for those kinds of stories, though.)

Did you know “Her Pilgrim Soul” was made into half a musical (it’s one of two one-act musicals) by Menkin and Ashman (“Little Shop of Horrors” and “The Little Mermaid” to name two)? Brilliantly done. Weird Romance. The other act is James Tiptree’s “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”

[monstro]

For me, TZ’s are hard to watch because they are from a time period that is really hard for me to relate to. And god, the tropes kill me. You just know the guy who uses bad grammar and slang is going to wind up getting his just dessert by the end of the show.

But I do have my favorites.

[Last_Glacial_Maximum]

“A Stop at Willoughby”, is probably my favorite episode and still translates well today.
The protagonist was a decent guy who’s demonic boss was always yelling “Push push, push” !

The guy also had a nasty, demanding wife…
On a related note, I have two names picked out for my fishing boat:

One choice is “Mi Refugio” and my other choice is “My Willoughby”
I’ll probably choose the latter, {less obvious I guess}.
.

[Just_Asking_Questions]

@Quimby

… Serling was a genius at writing. .

When he wasn’t on a deadline. There are far too many episodes where every character talks like Serling.

You can see the same thing in Adam 12 and Dragnet in Jack Webb-penned episodes.

[Son_of_a_Rich]

@Fenris

…the one where the rocket captain and the crazy first mate crash on an (?) asteroid and the crazy first mate discovers a near-microscopic civilization and starts stomping on it to terrorize them until giant aliens show up and squish him, etc. And there’s at least a few more. What’s up with that?

Considering the people were microscopic, that human sized statue they built would have for them been about 10 miles tall. That’s some real engineering!

[Fenris]

@Son_of_a_Rich

Considering the people were microscopic, that human sized statue they built would have for them been about 10 miles tall. That’s some real engineering!

And they built it in less than 8 hours. Which is pretty impressive engineering.

As an aside, I honest-to-God don’t care about bad science in a Twilight Zone episode. When someone shows a picture of a galaxy on a 3 foot square panel and another guy points to a corner and says “Here’s the Sun, here’s Earth and you can see Jupiter here”, I just shrug and go with it. But there was one where it was just sloppy and stupid because it was basic elementary school math that they couldn’t bother to get right. The rocket-ship will be going to a planet (say) 140 light-years away. The ship can go (say) 70x the speed of light. So…naturally, it’ll take (say) 65 years to get there and back. Right? :rolleyes: That’s not bad science, that’s just lazy. (It’s the one where the guy gets there and back but decides not to go into hibernation because he wants to be the same age as the girl he met 10 minutes previous, when he returns. But she goes into hibernation so she’s young and he’s old when they get back rather than the other way 'round)

[Dale_Sams]

ST:TOS or TZ are my favorite all time shows. But i admit I couldn’t make the switch to season fours hour length eps. But thats my fault.

[Inner_Stickler]

@Fenris

(“Five Characters in Search Of An Exit” sounds like a Goth teen who’d seen “Waiting For Godot” and only got the pretentiousness)

That sounds like a riff on “6 Characters in Search of an Author”, a play which joins a long list of dramas that I had to read in college and didn’t understand for the life of me.

[Drunky_Smurf]

@dalej42

When you compare the best Twilight Zone episodes with some of the weaker ones, the weaker ones stand out. However, the worst Twilight Zone, even The Bard, is still much better than most television.

Especially those lame ass shows like Walking Dead, Firefly and Game of Thrones.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Johnny_L.A

All these years, I’ve been looking at a seven and a half inch Rod? :eek:

In reruns, the episodes get edited. You’ve been watching a seven and a half inch Rod, cut.

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

@Johnny_L.A

All these years, I’ve been looking at a seven and a half inch Rod? :eek:

Win.

[TBG]

I dunno, man, I think it’s a pretty good show overall. Whenever there’s a marathon on and I catch part of an episode while flipping channels, I usually wind up wanting to stop and watch the whole thing even though I’ve got other things to watch and do. And by whole thing, I mean marathon, not single episode.