Hell, I’d watch it again just to see teenaged Shelley Fabares. :o
I would have ranked this one as the worst, simply because of the laugh track. However, I just rewatched it on Hulu to refresh my memory, and guess what—the laugh track is gone.
It’s still a weak episode, but it’s marginally more tolerable this way. Now I’m going to have to rethink this whole “worst episode of Twilight Zone” thing. :mad:
Apparently the Blu-Ray release has the laugh track as an option.
I always found tedious the one wherein a motley group of people turn out to be a bunch of dolls in a trashcan. I think it was trying to be profound.
“Black Leather Jackets” is terrible, as well as “Caesar and Me”. But those (especially “Caesar and Me”) are so relentlessly stupid they are actually fun to watch, in an MST3K-esque way. I’d rather watch those that “Five Characters In Search Of An Exit”, in all its pretentious glory any day. Some episodes are so stupid that they aren’t even fun, like “Mr. Bevis”, “Mr. Dingle The Strong”, or “The Bard”.
there was one I forget the title of but apparently there was a nationwide drought and there was strum und drang personal drama but the supposed clincher was it was a dying old lady’s hallucination as she froze to death in the nuclear winter after ww3
I think you’re referring to this episode:
It wasn’t that there had been a nuclear war; the Earth’s orbit had just changed for some reason.
That’s Five Characters in Search of an Exit, =9th-13th best per the IMDB.
Yes, probably. Though second-hand by way of Sartre and I guess Pirandello (though I know nothing about his play but its title).
ETA: Also, I believe, the first Twilight Zone I ever watched.
I agree, and one of the themes in TZ is the bad/evil/nasty protagonist getting his just desserts.
But Henry Bemis is the good guy in this episode. Having him break his glasses (which since they are reading glasses are there in every drugstore) is just plain wrong.
That should’ve been Rod Serling’s closing narration.
ahh I missed that part …
I read a short story on which the Art Carney-as-Santa episode was based. One thing I found notable was that the protagonist, a down-on-his-luck alcoholic was temporarily making ends meet by working as a department store Santa. He took his lunch break (along with several other DSSs, IIRC) in a dive bar near the department store. When it was time for him to return to his Santa throne, he settlted up with the bartender, and his tab, which had consisted of six shots of rye and a ham sandwich, came to ninety-five cents.
NINETY-FIVE CENTS. For six shots of rye and a ham sandwich (the sandwich was a nickel).
When and where would this have been plausible? Okay, the Twilight Zone, obviously, but come on! I get that they were going for magical realism, but shouldn’t that imply some realism?
The fact that he needs his glasses in order to be able to read, as has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread, does NOT make them reading glasses. Reading glasses are straight magnification. They do nothing to help nearsightedness (in fact, make it worse) or astigmatism (whereby there’s more than one focal point for the eyeball). He could very well be nearsighted AND farsighted (old age presbyopia).
If my glasses were broken, there is no way I could use a pair off the shelf, due to having bad astigmatism.
In fact, the magnification I need on my reading glasses has to be ordered special as it’s so extreme, and his glasses are much more distorting than mine.
push push push push push
push push push push push
push push push push push
Worn-around-the-edges train conductor: Willoughby!
Yeah, buddy’s old boss’s head superimposed over that black background - bothersome.
An incredibly stupid line in the “Midnight Sun” episode - I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was something about escaping the stifling heat by going to, yes, Toronto. I’ve visited there maybe four times, in the middle of brutal summers, so - if it’s gonna be hot in the setting of that story, safe to say, then, that it’d probably be equally gross in T.O.
The comedic ones didn’t work for me except the Shelley Berman one. An elevator full of people with really angry, pissed-off Shelley Berman faces…beautiful, especially if a blonde wig was involved.
When I saw “The Bewitching Pool”, I was seven, just after my parents’ divorce, so, my impression of it was different from everyone else’s, here.
A nitpick I had with “To Serve Man” was how the aliens’ mouths never moved when they talked.
I thought it was quite goofily hilarious (wow there’s the adverb of the day) in “Come Wan…deerrrrr With Meeeeee” when Bing’s kid’s character kills buddy, prompting his love interest to react by singing that particular episode’s theme song, but with the lyrics changed, accusing him of murder.
Fun to imitate back in the day.
And of course still do.
This. In spades.
One of those shows I never watched when it was around. How was it creepy?
That.
A golden moment in TV, to be sure.
With a possible tinge of red.
I get occasional notices in my mailbox that this thread has been updated - this is the only thread I’ve ever written on The Straight Dope, and I see that Eddie The Horrible has just replied with a clearly well-informed post.
I’d LOVE to discuss all of these episodes (for example, I’m not sure what Eddie means by “the superimposed head” - the train conductor, btw, is Jason Wingreen.
Would also like to strongly submit “The Chaser” as the funniest comedic episode - the scene where the girl is sitting at the man’s lap like a Cocker Spaniel almost made me spew out a drink.
Several people agree with my answer to the OP that the worst episode - and I honestly don’t even think it’s close - is “Cavender is Coming.”
Anyway, my website is primarily known for restaurants, and I don’t want to troll The Straight Dope for Twilight Zone posters, but if anyone gets the inkling, I’m over there all the time, and know every episode in the series very well - I’m in the process of redoing the photos on this thread.
I hope to see some of you over there, as I’ve essentially been talking with myself; otherwise, I look forward to talking with you all here as time permits.
Cheers,
Don
Family Affair creepy? One of the little old ladies my mother was friends with at church thought it was “a good, clean, family show.”
Two little twins and their teenaged sister coming from Indiana to live with their rich uncle and his British butler in New York after their parents die? What could be creepy about that?
I’ve lived in Toronto pretty much full-time since 2008. Yes, it can get very hot in midsummer, but this doesn’t last for long (and I think it gets a lot hotter now than it did fifty years ago). Winters, on the other hand, can be very brutal (though I think they’re actually milder than they were fifty years ago).
Considering most of the Canadian population lives within 200 miles of the border, I think Toronto, as a major city about as far north as you can get in North America, is a pretty good choice for contrasting climates with the United States.
Much better to send them to a orphanage, eh?
The threat of being shipped back to relatives in Terre Haute was always hanging over their heads, at least in the early episodes. :eek:
Also, it never gets as hot here as it does In Saskatchewan or Alberta in the summer, thanks to the moderating influence of Lake Ontario.
There’s just something weird about it. Maybe I watched some of the episodes where Jody and Buffy were older, and approaching puberty, and they were still trying to make them look like they were 7. I dunno. I thought it was bizarre. There was some weird undertone about it. It was just too nice, like those families you know, and then later you’re interviewed by the police saying you never dreamed they were luring runaway to the house for Saturday night meals, as the main course.