NM
All of the hour long episodes generally sucked. The Bewitchin’ Pool seems to be the consensus, even if we have different preferences on the other episodes.
To the posters saying that the endings are so predictable and cliched, they were TZ classics and the reasons that you have seen them countless times since is because they were copied from the TZ. They were unique when they came out.
No mention yet of one of my unfavorites, “Number 12 Looks Just Like You”. It was an interesting concept, and while I used to think the acting was wooden (to put it mildly), I came to the conclusion that it was a side effect of the Transformation.
But the production values were far short of TZ’s usual standards, and apparently another side effect of the Transformation was that the people(?) couldn’t notice that their surroundings made ST:TOS’s Enterprise look positively Art Deco.
Probably won’t be too much of a surprise, but that may be my favorite episode. Certainly it is in my top five.
And yet, this one consistently shows up on “Best TZ epsiode” lists. I never understood why myself. I hate pretty much every bit of it.
But “The Bewitchin’ Pool” is still the worst!
I think the ending to “Time Enough at Last” made it very memorable. Sometimes that’s all it takes to end up on the “Best” lists. I don’t particularly care for the one with Buster Keaton, even though I like Buster Keaton’s movies, but it’s memorable-- if asked to come up with a random TZ ep., a lot of people can remember “Oh, there was one with Buster Keaton!” so it makes a lot of “Best” lists as well.
I think a lot of the hour-long eps don’t make “best” lists, because they tended not to be as tightly written, and therefore less memorable.
Probably the reason the same eps are ending up on “best” and “worst” lists are that they are the ones that are memorable, for whatever reason. The forgettable ones really are the worst ones, but they are forgettable, so, they don’t make lists.
Or he could read without them. I wear thick glasses, but I can read without them by holding the book close to my face.
“Time Enough at Last” is a poignant little fable, as long as you don’t think about it too deeply. Sanitation, illness, and shelter would be bigger problems for a real-life Mr. Bemis than the loss of his glasses.
What was the one with Elizabeth Montgomery and Charles Bronson that had the same twist, except they were the only survivors of a futuristic holocaust?
Elizabeth had only one line of dialogue: “Prekrasny!” (“Nice!” in ungrammatical Russian) when she sees the dress in the shop window (“Slavnoye!” or “Krasivoye!” would have been better).
How is he going to loot when he’s blind as a bat? :dubious:
The title of that one was “Two”. I don’t think they were supposed to be Adam and Eve though. I think that was more about US and Soviet relations. They never outright said she was a soviet but as you wrote they made it pretty clear.
Totally off topic, I ran those Russian words through Google to “hear” them and the computer souded so bored with Славное (Slavnoye) it was like having a teen in the room with you 
Heathens :D.
You had to have watched these all when you were age 10-12 and decades ago, when those ‘sting in the tail’ endings really resonated. I long claimed TZ as my favorite serial TV show as a young man…until I went back and watched them as an adult and realized how not-so-awesome so many of them were. Still - Serling was a ground-breaking talent, despite the many clunkers and dusty gems.
Also Jerome Bixby’s “It’s a Good life” is just a great little short story :). It works much better on the page than on the screen.
I liked and still like “It’s a Good Life.” I saw “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” when I was about 13, but thanks to parents determined to make me precocious, I knew about things like Sarte and Pirandello. Yes, I had parents who would drag an eight-year old to a production of No Exit. I’d get promised something if I’d sit through it quietly, so I did. But I liked the experience of going to live theater, so it wasn’t so bad, and eventually I developed a taste for even the weirdest stuff.
Anyway, some of the episodes were truly original, but some were already derivative, and the toys in the barrel was one of them.
Many years ago I was in a discount bookstore where they just had dozens of tables of unsorted books for really cheap and I found a short story collection that was every short story that a Twilight Zone episode had been based on. Most were good but this was one of the best. Much more terrifying on the page.
The ending narration, IIRC, made it clear they were indeed Adam and Eve. Or at least, it was very strongly implied. A parallel implication was that their civilization had preceded ours but destroyed itself.
I had a Russian girlfriend who was obsessed with shopping for shoes. Every time she found a pair she liked, she’d say “Aren’t these slavniye?” The word actually means “glorious” rather than “beautiful.”
This was the twist, BTW. Because of the futuristic uniforms and weapons, and because it seemed like it was an American against a Russian, you went through the whole episode thinking it was the aftermath of WWIII between the US and USSR—until the ending narration revealed that it wasn’t.
That’s a great story. I think the big difference between the short story and the TZ episode is that Anthony in the story must be in some way abnormal looking. It’s mentioned that his first act of disappearing someone is when he zaps away the doctor who tried to kill him when he was born.
First of all, it’s the opening narration. So, not exactly a “twist.”
Second, both interpretations are offered, with the time frame being explicitly either the near future, or the distant past.
The *opening *narration reveals that they’re Adam and Eve? :dubious: This makes no sense whatsoever.