The Twilight Zone is truly a wonderful show, fully deserving its iconic status. In its best episodes, it explored aspects of the human character that were not often talked about in the early '60s.
We all know the great episodes, like “Eye of the Beholder”, “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street”, “A Passage For Trumpet”, and so many others. This thread isn’t about them.
No, this thread is for the stinkers. Serling himself admitted that perhaps a third were “pretty bad”. In the Twilight Zone-a-Thon! thread, I referenced two such:
So, when SyFy runs their holiday Twilight Zone marathon, which ones do you automatically switch quickly away from – or perhaps watch helplessly in horrified fascination?
I have to admit the one with the Talking Tina doll never scared me. In fact, Telly Savalas’s ugly mug was a lot scarier than that doll.
There’s another one with a young woman who keeps seeing a mysterious young girl who knows all about her past - that her parents were killed by a home intruder. Conveniently, an “old friend” of her parents pays her a visit on the same day and it turns out that he was her parents’ killer. Not a big surprise, not scary.
Oh, and the “funny” ones - like the one with Carol Burnett and her guardian angel. (Was Jim Nabors her angel?) That one looked like it was supposed to be a backdoor pilot for a series. But it didn’t belong in…'the Twilight Zone."
In any long-running series, there are going to be some clunkers, and some episodes where the writers were in such a hurry to crank out a story by deadline that they cut corners and used ideas that have already been done to death.
One good example is the episode where an astronaut is stranded on a planet with a beautiful female alien… and of course, they turn out to be Adam and Eve.
"The Bewitching Pool " is indeed useless. It came on yesterday and I changed the channel pronto. I also avoid the ones with Jack Klugman. I have nothing against him but his episodes are always preachy and dull. And any that start with the typical “whimsical, 50s syle music” are not my cup of tea either.
Even the half hour shows move a bit slowly by current standards. But there were some very good hour shows, including Burgess Meridith’s tour de force, “Printers Devil”. But it also included some real dogs.
The funny thing is is that is one of my favorites because I saw it when I was a kid and to me, that wasn’t a cliche yet so the twist really got me.
As I wrote in the other thread, most of the “funny” ones are kind of lame and I will add a lot of the heartfelt ones bore me (with a few notable exceptions like “Walking Distance”).
Wow, I’ve never heard “A Passage For Trumpet” mentioned as an obvious great. In fact, I was going to bring it up in agreement with WOOKINPANUB about Jack Klugman’s episodes (although I was going to stick up for “Death Ship”).
I recently watched one I thought was really lame. A woman was born “hideously deformed” in the face and she has the bandages still on from the last surgery they are willing to try to fix it. The whole episode only shows the the bandaged woman and you can hear the voice of the doctor talking but not see his face. Later, you can hear a nurse but not see her either. It was blatantly obvious what the twilight zone twist was going to be 30 seconds into it and the whole episode moves so ssssllllooowwwllyy. I only watched it to the end to see what the doctor really looked like. It had to be the worst costume I have ever seen on TV. You would have to work hard to find one that bad even at a dollar store these days.
ETA: Oops, I just looked this one up and it is “Eye of the Beholder” listed in the OP as one of the greats. I guess the title is true then.
I actually like that one because of the lead up to it.
I’ll nominate Black Leather Jackets. Great fun to mock with a group but other than that, totally eh.
I agree that the hour long ones sucked. I hated the one with Dennis Hopper, He’s Alive. What’s supposed to be the shocking part–that a Neo Nazi is evil and meets a bad end?
I agree about the Jack Klugman episodes, with the exception of “Death Ship.” In that one I just hate the Jack Klugman character, not the whole episode.
But worst place is a 3-way tie between “The Bewitching Pool” and “Little Girl Lost” and “Come Wander with Me.” I really can’t decide which makes me more revolted.
I just remembered . . . For whatever reason, my ex had never watched TZ, so I showed him “Eye of the Beholder” (one of my favorites). He literally screamed when he saw the “normal” people. I think it permanently traumatized him.