Yes – I mentioned it above. It’s “Penny for your thoughts”, and uit starred a pre-Bewitched Dick York.
My faviorite part is where he’s standuing next to a woman with a stack of money, tries to listen to her thoughts, and comes up blank. She’s not thinking of anything.
Did Hitchcock ever do any stories involving the supernatural?
Or was it the one where the hypochondriac made a deal with the devil?
That bothered me too.
But I also certainly didn’t see Mr. Beemis as the only sane guy. See:
Bob Ducca and amarinth, you are both correct. I got the Lonely one mixed up.
Wow, my experience of it was the complete opposite of yours. I thought that bank customer was a snooty bitch, the boss was an overbearing asshole, and the wife was a screaming harpy. Henry was a bit eccentric, for sure, but a lovable eccentric.
Anaamika, I think if you check you will find “I shot an arrow into the air” aired before the US had put a man in space (maybe before the USSR too), let alone orbit, or land on the moon. I don’t think the general public knew that these guys really did have “The Right Stuff” until a little later on.
Yes, I agree, they were all those, AND Mr. Beemis was stupid and surprisingly ignorant for a book reader.
Yeah, Time Enough at Last is stupid. Look, clearly he’s nearsighted. Thus he can just walk into any drugstore and pick up a pair of readers, or just use a magnifying glass. Both of which are likely right there in the library in a desk.
So is “I shot an arrow into the air”- they think they are on a asteroid? With earthlike air and gravity???
“To Serve man” is also silly. In order for the story to make sense, you have to assume that they can translate the title but not the text (and in the text version, they try to explain that a little) but that both of the puns work in both languages. If we are being realistic it would either be :The title was in English or the title was translated “to cook humans”.
The Lonely”? only epi I know by that title is:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lonely_(The_Twilight_Zone)
Twilight Zone is great. It’s right up there with Addams Family and Medieval Madness.
We’re talking about pinball machines, right?
The Twilight Zone hating heretics should be burned at the stake.
but I won’t suggest that because I may have been mysteriously and unknowingly hurled back in time and you’ll turn out be be my grandparents.
There were some duds like “The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms”. Seriously, fighting with Custer at Little Big Horn?
But some were also awesome like “The Silence”. I’m we have all come across someone we would willingly pay to Shut The F Up!!! I’m also sure we can also understand the sinking feeling of knowing we loss after taking extreme measures.
much, much more Awesome than not, IMO
I saw no reason he couldn’t have groped his way to an optician’s shop, found a pair of usable specs on hand, then hied to a medical library to learn how to grind his own prescription.
I LURVES me some Twilight Zone. I’ll admit that some are duds, but most are terrific.
My favorite book is The Twilight Zone Companion. Everything you ever wanted to know about writers, makeup, music, actors, Rod Serling.
I actually like this episode. He knew his only way to happiness was stepping of at Willoughby.
I’d be happy know what what episodes people consider the absolute best of the series.
Here are three TZ episodes that I think hold up well:
[ul]
[li]A Stop at Willoughby[/li][li]Two[/li][li]The Jeopardy Room[/li][/ul]
I agree many are not good. I like the original Outer Limits more but many of those episodes are also weak.
I don’t think the episode is condoning suicide. It’s not a Disney production – not every story needs to have a happy ending.
In my youth when the show was in its syndication heyday (the late 70s) I read an article about Serling in *Starlog *magazine. He himself was quoted as saying, “About one third of the episodes I’m proud of, one third were okay, and another third were dogs!” Remember that the show is over 50 freakin’ years old! There are always going to be elements that seem very dated, even in the good episodes. Story structure and character depth were just not always as nearly sophisticated as they are today. Even saying that, I think a lot of the episodes still outclass most of the garbage that’s been on TV since then (and even now).
Great episode, one of the best. Interesting thing about it, I’m not sure if it’s the only one, but it’s at least one of the very few TZ episodes that contain no supernatural, alien, or scifi elements whatsoever! It’s purely a human cautionary tale set in contemporary times.
Serling also wrote the screenplay for The Man, an above average (TV?) movie about the first black US President (in 1972).
I think that’s the problem with a lot of Twilight Zone episodes. They’ve become to ingrained in our (pop) culture that a lot of the shocking twists aren’t so shocking to a modern audience. I do LOVE the Zone, but you can really tell which ones focused on writing and which one were like “We have X number left in the season…”. The hour long one also sucked. I’m surprised the OP didn’t mention “The Witching Pool”. That has to be one of the worst episodes and last I check IMDB, most fans agree.
Much of TZ was more along the lines of sf written by Bradbury, not Hal Clement. Star Trek, way after TZ, was one of the first TV series that even tried to have a consistent and logical method of space travel. I know, I watched them all back then.
I’m not arguing that there weren’t plenty of stinker episodes - not surprising given his budget and time constraints. It is far more surprising that there were so many good ones.
But I totally disagree that TZ had anything to do with pulp science fiction. It was really a TV version of 1950s Galaxy more than anything. I have a very large chunk of 1950s sf magazines, and a good bit of older pulp magazines, and I know the difference. TZ is more like Gravy Planet than even good mid or late '30s stories, not counting Astounding after Campbell took over, of course. Galaxy had the social relevance of TZ - look at Gravy Planet. My set of Galaxy’s is sitting right behind me - not a pulp page to be found.