# NOT in praise of The Twilight Zone **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted\ **Created:** [November 20, 2025, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021 "2025-11-20T20:39:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/1 "2025-11-20T20:39:21Z")
Which Twilight Zone episode least impressed you? This includes all versions of the show, but not the movie. For me, it would have to be the highly acclaimed episode “Time Enough At Last”. Meet Henry Bemis-A man too stupid to go to any glasses shop within a ten block radius, or even any drugstore in that same area with displays of reading glasses. Oh noes!! My personal glasses broke!! ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/2 "2025-11-20T21:01:22Z")
I remember his glasses being extremely thick. I doubt there were OTC glasses that would work. Maybe a magnifying glass if he could somehow find one by feel. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/3 "2025-11-20T21:02:49Z")
Yeah, rummaging through nursing homes filled with people with crappy eyesight would be totally out of the question. Also, he’s got all the optometrists, ophthalmologists, and eyeglass stores to rummage through. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/4 "2025-11-20T21:03:14Z")
Hunh? A man who was already at the verge of suicide due to loneliness is upset when his glasses break, which at a minimum will require days of searching (while also finding food and water with severely impaired sight). How dare he? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/5 "2025-11-20T21:04:36Z")
It’s entirely _possible_ that after the ending we saw, he did, in fact, look for a optical shop, though it might be difficult, given his limited vision. The ending is still ironic. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/6 "2025-11-20T21:07:17Z")
This was also 1959. I don’t think there were many glasses shops that would have the needed Coke bottles. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/7 "2025-11-20T21:15:56Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > For me, it would have to be the highly acclaimed episode “Time Enough At Last”. Meet Henry Bemis-A man too stupid to go to any glasses shop within a ten block radius, or even any drugstore in that same area with displays of reading glasses. Right, and remember, usually the victim in a TZ episode deserved what they got. What was his ‘crime” reading instead of watching TV? Terrible episode. > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > The ending is still ironic. Why? No irony to me, just sadness. “The Incredible World of Horace Ford”- they did that before and better. "Black Leather Jackets” not well done or thought out. ---
**Author:** ![Chad\_Sudan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chad_sudan/32/4509_2.png) [@Chad\_Sudan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chad_Sudan)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/8 "2025-11-20T21:16:22Z")
“Night Call” had an electrifying premise. An old woman is getting disturbing calls from someone moaning – and the calls are traced to a downed phone line in the graveyard! But what a rubbish ending: Terrified, she yells at the unknown caller to stop calling. Then it turns out the caller is her long-dead fiance! She can’t wait for the chance to speak to him. But he thinks he’s been rejected and tells her he won’t bother her any more. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/9 "2025-11-20T21:23:10Z")
I always thought this one was pretty lame. > **[Five Characters in Search of an Exit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Characters_in_Search_of_an_Exit)** > > "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" is episode 79 of the television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on December 22, 1961. > Clown, hobo, ballet dancer, bagpiper, and an army major—a collection of question marks. Five improbable entities stuck together into a pit of darkness. No logic, no reason, no explanation; just a prolonged nightmare in which fear, loneliness, and the unexplainable walk hand in hand through the shadows. In a moment, we'll start collecting clues as... Weirdly enough, that episode might as well have occurred in the same universe as the _Toy Story_ franchise. The reason I never liked it was because the “twist” just made me facepalm the first time I saw it. I thought it was so dumb. I think this episode was worse though. > **[A Nice Place to Visit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nice_Place_to_Visit)** > > "A Nice Place to Visit" is episode 28 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. The episode first aired on CBS on April 15, 1960. The title comes from the saying, "It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." > In 1965, a slightly modified version of this story was broadcast on the radio program Theater Five. "The Land of Milk and Honey", episode number 154, retained all of the important aspects of this episode, including the innuendos and the surprise e... Basically, a guy dies and wakes up in a place where his every wish is granted, and thinks that it’s heaven, but eventually gets bored and then starts going insane. Then he is told, no, you’re in hell!!! (As the Wikipedia article notes, this is extremely similar to the plot of The Good Place.) The reason why I dislike this one is that it seems like a pretty weak sort of eternal damnation. I think most people would be pretty good with it. I don’t buy that it would drive a person insane, unless they were particularly unstable to begin with. And if that’s your goal, there are far less pleasant ways to do that. It just really didn’t work for me. Not every episode can be a winner. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/10 "2025-11-20T21:24:31Z")
“A Quality Of Mercy”. Dean Stockwell is a trigger-happy lieutenant in the Phillipines in 1945, barking orders for his squad to wipe out a Japanese unit holed up in a cave. Then he drops his binoculars, and when he picks them up, suddenly he’s in yellow yellowface and he’s a grunt in a Japanese platoon three years earlier who has an American unit holed up in the same cave and his lieutenant is barking orders at him to kill them all. This teaches him that war is bad because sometimes white people die too (or something), but he never gets to act on this lesson, because as soon as he snaps back to the present, the announcement comes over the radio that Japan has surrendered and a ceasefire is in effect. Aside from the yellowface being cringeworthy, the moral just doesn’t really make a lot of sense and it relies on Stockwell and his Japanese counterpart being cartoonishly evil to make its point. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/11 "2025-11-20T21:25:49Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > (As the Wikipedia article notes, this is extremely similar to the plot of The Good Place.) Which was itself partly inspired by Sartre’s _No Exit_, on which the first episode in your post was partly based. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/12 "2025-11-20T21:28:33Z")
He had all the time in the world to find another pair of glasses that worked. Everyone is dead, just walk around and try on other people’s glasses until you find something that works, may not be perfect but they work. Or find a glasses shop and make your own. The episode is bad because the whole world is destroyed, except for this library with stacks of books in perfect condition, all the time in the world to read them if only he had glasses. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/13 "2025-11-20T21:30:15Z")
> [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > The episode is bad because the whole world is destroyed, except for this library with stacks of books in perfect condition, all the time in the world to read them if only he had glasses. Admittedly, that’s a very weak twist. My twist would have shown him a day and a half later, struggling to turn the page of a book as he’s dying of dehydration due to all local water sources being either destroyed or contaminated. But maybe a bit too dark for TV at the time. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/14 "2025-11-20T21:33:02Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > The reason I never liked it was because the “twist” just made me facepalm the first time I saw it. I thought it was so dumb. Yep, good points. > [@Atamasama](#): > > The reason why I dislike this one is that it seems like a pretty weak sort of eternal damnation Yeah annoying, but not really torture. > [@Smapti](#): > > Aside from the yellowface being cringeworthy, the moral just doesn’t really make a lot of sense and it relies on Stockwell and his Japanese counterpart being cartoonishly evil to make its point. Not a good episode, i agree. > [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > The episode is bad because the whole world is destroyed, except for this library with stacks of books in perfect condition, all the time in the world to read them if only he had glasses. Well, at least his local area. But why pick on him? he is basically a nice guy. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/15 "2025-11-20T21:39:34Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Well, at least his local area. But why pick on him? he is basically a nice guy. - Nice guys finish die last. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/16 "2025-11-20T21:42:36Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Also, he’s got all the optometrists, ophthalmologists, and eyeglass stores to rummage through. None of those places stock prescription glasses, and even if they did, the chances of finding exactly the right ones would be practically zero. I quite enjoyed _The Twilight Zone_ in general, but it was more fantasy than sci-fi, and I’m not generally a big fan of fantasy. I’ve enjoyed the Alfred Hitchcock TV series more because it’s mostly solidly grounded in reality, although several episodes in the hour-long series venture into the supernatural (like _The Magic Shop_ and _Where the Woodbine Twineth_). ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/17 "2025-11-20T21:47:13Z")
> [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > He had all the time in the world to find another pair of glasses that worked. Everyone is dead, just walk around and try on other people’s glasses until you find something that works, may not be perfect but they work. Or find a glasses shop and make your own It’s still rather distressing to have that necessity thrust upon you, isn’t it? Particularly after being on the verge of suicide from loneliness a few minutes earlier? Also it’s a bit tricky to make glasses when you can barely see ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/18 "2025-11-20T21:52:36Z")
Perhaps he start by forming some sort of rudimentary lathe? ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/19 "2025-11-20T21:58:12Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Meet Henry Bemis-A man too stupid to go to any glasses shop within a ten block radius, or even any drugstore in that same area with displays of reading glasses. Oh noes!! My personal glasses broke!! Lenses are ground based on the prescription. For Henry’s extreme strength lenses, opticians wouldn’t have those pre-made glasses lying around just waiting for the right nearly blind person to walk in off the street. Reading glasses are straight magnification. If they weren’t to his degree of astigmatism, they wouldn’t have helped much. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2025, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021/20 "2025-11-20T22:07:40Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Right, and remember, usually the victim in a TZ episode deserved what they got. What was his ‘crime” reading instead of watching TV? Terrible episode. Minor disagreement. The opening and early narration shows Bemis as someone who is devoted to reading (admirable) to the point of neglecting his job, his wife, and other responsibilities (not so admirable, as it’s assumed no one forced him into that specific job/marriage). He is explicitly labeled as a “dreamer”. And his reaction to a world apparently destroyed is to not try to find and help other survivors, most of whom didn’t have a bank vault to survive it, or mourn the world, but to in some sense celebrate the end of all that kept him away from his true love, when everything about his life up until then was dependent upon the real world to provide him food, shelter, and the means to read. Is it heavy-handed in the extreme? Yeah. Is it a truly great episode? No, again, too heavy handed, too forced, and of course, too _brief_ to get past his almost-certain state of shock. But a lot of TZ episodes were some sort of morality play, some quite clever, others less so. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-in-praise-of-the-twilight-zone/1025021.md?page=2)