I don’t know the name, but the episode where the man makes a bet with a loudmouth that he can’t stay quiet for a whole year is awful. Not the acting, it was good… The whole episode, the glass box, the twist (he had his vocal cords taken out, but the other man lost the money). It left a bad taste in my mouth just as Time Enough at Last did to the poster above. Whereas many TZ episodes are out there enough to suspend disbelief, this one involved no supernatural powers, space travel, aliens, or post-apocalyptic worlds. Its like the “Uncanny Valley” for TZ episodes.
I never watch TZ without ready access to IMDB for that very reason!
This one, the one where the elderly man makes his greedy family wear Mardi Gras masks, and the one where the astronauts land on a cemetery planet and the caretaker kills them.
It was hard to choose just three. I’m with **monstro **on not really liking most of the ones that are set in space, and agree with those who aren’t a fan of a lot of the hour long episodes.
I admit that’s one of my favorites. The teacher was such a stone cold bitch that I kinda fell in love with her.
But I agree that the hour-long ones usually sucked.
The Talking Tina one with Telly Savales bothers me too. Why the hell would that woman marry a man who has such contempt for her and her daughter?
Likewise, in Time Enough At Last, Henry Bemis’s wife is a steel-clad bitch! My god, if my partner did or said half the things that horrible woman did in that episode he’d be climbing into a cold bed by himself that night and every night from now on.
I’m slightly puzzled as to the question of if this was something typical of the time or if it’s just literary license. Does it derive from the difficulty and social stigma of divorce at the time? Put up with your bitch/bastard of a spouse because even if you CAN get a divorce you’ll be ostracized?
Eric is Christy’s step-dad, so we can assume Annabelle was either widowed or divorced (I don’t think, considering the mores of the day, that Serling would dare depict a woman as having a child out of wedlock). So, presumably, Annabelle dated Eric and accepted his marriage proposal, but why, if he was so nasty to Christy, is a mystery to me.
I’m sure that figured into it. This was also pre-Vatican II for Catholics, and there was a viciously conservative, censorious, and often anti-Semitic streak in the Catholic hierarchy then. Divorce was a far bigger no-no back then for everyone, but even more so for the RCC crowd.
It was also pre-Pill, pre-Roe-v.-Wade, pre-VCR, pre-cable, and pre-PC, and even sports coverage on TV was in a primitive state of pre-ESPN supersaturation. So couples were often saddled with more kids than they really wanted, had more limited entertainment options and so probably spent more time in each other’s company (often with their one TV set showing a program that one wanted to see but perhaps not the spouse).
All of which helps explain the enduring popularity of the cocktail hour, and the burgeoning problem of bored, anxious housewives becoming chemically dependent on Valium.
I used to enjoy the old black and white TZs,they were imaginative and thought provoking and IMO generally much better written.
The later TZs I find tedious,boring predictable and pointless.
A disappointing mutation of a once genuinlly innovative idea.
That was “The Silence”. I actually quite liked that one…more for its humour value than anything else. When the old crabby guy was trying to rile the younger man up, and he was scratching the glass in frustration, that had me in bits. Diff’rent strokes, eh? 
One reason why I preferred Captain Scarlet to Thunderbirds, it was half an hour shorter.
I watched it knowing how it would end, but it wasn’t bad to see the build up. Similarly the Shatner episode (always forget the name, Nightmare at 20000ft?) and How to Serve Man are equally enjoyable despite knowing what’s going to happen. They’re well acted and directed for a quick SF/Fantasy jaunt on TV, enjoyable despite no longer having a shock twist.
See my post, #2 in the thread.
BTW, the little girl in “Mute” was Ann Jillian.
(I guess I’m not the only one who thinks the hour long episodes are generally weak.)
Steel: In a future where only androids are allowed to box, a human boxer (Lee Marvin) desperate for money decides to take the place of his android after it breaks down. Marvin gets beaten to a pulp. I didn’t like it because you could see the outcome coming a mile away. I think that even worse than that was the ending. He decides he has to fight again because he didn’t make enough money the first time. Like I said pointless. Not only pointless but depressing as well.
Wow! I wouldn’t have noticed that if you hadn’t said.
Well, like I said, I forgot the names of the titles.
Anyway, there seems to be a lot of episodes I’ve never seen, or at least the descriptions don’t ring a bell. And I’ve watched some of the marathons on the Sci-Fi channel.
One more I’ll add, and if anybody already named it, my apologies :). In a post apocalyptic world people take directions from an old man who lives in a cave. Some guy gets curious, challenges the old man, and when he goes to seek him out, the old man turns out to be a computer. That one was kind of meh.
I’m glad someone else feels the same way as I do about this episode.
I do appreciate that the episode was, at least in very small measure, based on the story of Eizo Nomura, who just before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, was sent by his boss to the basement of his building to retrieve some documents. He was the closest known survivor to the hypocenter, at only 100 meters away.
This probably is a good place to mention that TZ is one of the 20 classic TV shows to be getting its own US postage stamp next year (the image will be of Serling’s face and not one particular ep). 
Well, if they did do a stamp of a face of one particular ep, I would want it to be this one; from my favorite ep of all time!
ETA: I see Nobody has already referenced my favorite episode, and she didn’t say very good things about it. She said bad things. I don’t like it when people say bad things.
I came in to post the one about the Mardi Gras masks, but someone beat me to it. So I’ll add the one where the young woman finds out she’s a robot (or a clone, or something) and that everything she remembered about her childhood was fictional, implanted in her brain by her “parents.”
The concept is cool (and has been repeated many times since), but I remember it taking sooooo lonnnnnng to get to the ultimate reveal. It may have been one of the hourlong episodes. It certainly felt that way.
Wish her into the cornfield, Nzinga!
That’s a good thing you did. A real good thing!