From time to time there have been threads about our favorite TZ episodes. But which ones do we thoroughly hate? Mine are:
“Jess-Belle”: A woman gets a love potion from a witch.
“Spur of the Moment”: A young woman is screeched at by an older woman on horseback.
“In Praise of Pip”: A bookie and his dying son.
“Come Wander with Me” with Gary Crosby as a “hep” musician.
Agree on the “Pip” one.
Also not a fan of the dolls in a barrel one.
I agree it’s not the best episode, but the commentary on that one revealed it was the first television episode to acknowledge Vietnam casualties of war. Thus I cannot say it is totally without merit.
I haven’t seen a ton of episodes, but I thought the dummy/ventriloquist one was stupid. Caesar and Me. Stupid and boring. I hate dummies.
The only one I really disliked was “Steel”. Completely pointless.
You know that in “Spur…,” the older woman is the young woman’s sadder-but-wiser older self, right? I actually love that one.
I’d say *Jess-Belle *and anything having to do with sentient dolls or ventriloquist dummies fits the bill. Oddly, though, the ones about sentient mannekins and toys in Salvation Army collection buckets are fine by me.
I like the one about the old man and his hound who both die while hunting racoons [The Hunt?], but it frankly makes no sense that the only thing keeping the old man from inadvertently entering Hell was that they don’t accept dogs. (If Heaven’s full of other people’s dogs and Hell doesn’t have any, I might just choose the latter for that very reason.)
Which one was that?
“Leather Jackets” Three aliens disguised as leather-jacket bikers rent a house to hide their nefarious plan to poison the water and kill all the humans. One falls in love with Shelley Fabares instead.
Lame, lame, lame …
Oh, I forgot the big-ass ham radio set they use to get their orders from Big Giant Eyeball. Complete with the fake needle-type gauges and panels of blinking lights that all electronic stuff had to have in Fifties/Sixties sci-fi.
I watched Mirror Image and I felt let-down. It’s the one at the bus station where everyone keeps insisting the woman had been there before. She keeps seeing doubles of herself and her luggage.
I thought there was a giveaway at the beginning when she was talking to the clerk and over her shoulder was a sign for the Ladies room, but all you saw was “dies.” I kept thinking her bus ride to Cortland was actually Cortland Cemetery, but it ended with some lame comment about parallel universes or some such thing.
My take on that exchange was that the devil was really testing the old man’s loyalty. Would you give up heaven for your dog? I like that episode too, although it’s often mentioned as a weak one.
Me too. Might be my fave of all time. It’s not really all that shocking, but I just love how it all plays out.
I agree with Black Leather Jackets. It’s fun to MSTK with a group of people but as an actual episode, it’s truly awful.
In general, I don’t like any of the episodes involving space. There are some exceptions (I like the one where the guys think they’re on another planet but they’re really on Earth), but generally they’re kind of disappointing.
I saw that last night! It was extremely crap. I’ll also agree with the “Spur…” nomination above, and throw in the very dull and predictable “Night Call”.
Can’t remember the names of the titles but…
The one that has been mentioned a couple times already, the old man and his dog dying. So, let me get this straight, people can be tricked into hell after they die?:dubious:
The one where an arrogant rockabilly singer meets a woman who sings about the past/future? And it turns out she’s singing about him dying, because it happened before?
And finally, one considered a classic by most, the one with Billy Mummy wishing people into the corn field.
Lots I don’t care for.
I just watched the one where the couple was wandering around a mysterious village where everything was fake. I hadn’t seen it before, but the twist was obvious before Rod Serling introduced it. I really find it hard to believe that no one in the 1950s was not able to figure it out.
The one where the monks have captured the devil is also pretty dumb. It’s also obvious from the start what’s going to happen.
I also dislike the one with Burgiss Meredith – Time Enough at Last. The twist is just so gratuitously nasty that it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Also, he’s such a wimp – surely he could find an optomistrists shop and jury rig a new pair.
Just three? I hate all the one-hour episodes. TZ only worked when it was a short, sharp, shocked 25 minute showdown.
The worst one-hour episode was called “Mute” I think, where the happy ending is that the telepathic child is mistreated until she fits in with society
The one I find totally “meh” is the one about the three National Guardsmen becoming part of the Battle of Little Bighorn.
I love “Night Call.” I can totally creep out my sister by saying, “Hellloooo?.. Hellooooo?”
I HATED the hour longs as well. They were all so dull.
Also, some of them did lose their punch after you knew the ending. There’s not much point (for me, anyway) in watching Time Enough at Last.
Twists weren’t as common then as now. We just sat back and enjoyed the ride. Same with One Step Beyond. I tried to watch those awhile back and it was painful, but in the original run, they were lots of fun.
I spent that whole episode trying to figure out where I’d seen one of those guys before.
It was Sgt. Hulka.