A Land of Both Shadow and Substance: Breaking Down Twilight Zone Episodes

A Land of Both Shadow and Substance: Breaking Down Twilight Zone Episodes

Rod Serling is one of my biggest inspirations as a writer, so it's no secret that The Twilight Zone is one of my favorite shows of all time. The iconic show is still beloved by many fans even today, and we gather around our televisions every 4^th of July and New Year's Eve for the marathons. Also, PlutoTV just aired a Twilight Zone channel that shows the original series 24/7, so you can imagine I usually have that on at some point during my week. Like any fan watching an anthology, I have my favorites and my least favorites, and what I consider to be weaker episodes when it comes to the Twilight Zone, so what I wanted to do was list my top ten favorites, my top ten least favorites, and give reasons why. I will also be breaking down what I feel are some of the most iconic and memorable episodes that we TZ fans always talk about, and some episodes that were way ahead of their time during the show's run from 1959-1964. So, join me in the fifth dimension as I travel into...the Twilight Zone.

My Favorite Episodes:

10. Kick the Can: An old man believes that the children’s game, Kick the Can, is magical and keeps kids young, and goes out of his way to prove it.

-I like this episode because it’s one of my and my late mother’s favorites. It’s sentimental and classy, and an episode that grows on you where you find yourself rooting for this man and wondering yourself if Kick the Can truly is the greatest magic of all.

9. The Rip Van Winkle Caper: 4 thieves steal gold and decide to go deep into the desert into a cave to go into animated suspension so that they are not only never caught, but their gold will be worth twice as much 100 years from when they first lived.

-I imagine most TZ fans don’t have this on their favorites. I remember the first time I ever saw this and immediately loved it. The idea of these bad men, each with a particular set of thieving skills freezing themselves for 100 years to evade capture in hopes that they’ll strike it big in the future, is an interesting concept. The end is absolute karma and ironic for one of the men, as gold went out of style around the time they went under into suspension. I just love the overall makeup of this episode.

8. The 7^th Is Made Up of Phantoms:

3 army men are supposed to be stationed at a certain area, but instead find themselves just outside where General George Custer took his last stand and was beaten in battle by Natives. The men go way off course and become fascinated by the area, and before they know it, find themselves a part of the battle at the Little Bighorn.

-I’m a bit of a Civil War buff, so anything that has to do with the Civil War, I usually enjoy it. This episode just has such a cool idea to think about, going back in time and being part of a legendary(and one could argue not a very successful) battle. I love how immersed the men become in the idea of the battle and the lengths they go through to make sure they become a part of it.

7. The Odyssey of Flight 33: A global jet breaks the sound barrier and not only gets lost in the clouds but also gets lost in time. The jet travels back to the time of the dinosaurs and then to the 1939 Chicago World’s Fair. They decide not to land because they realize it would be hard to explain who they are and where they’re from.

-This has been a favorite of mine for a long time. First off, I love it because of the idea of time travel and, in this case, accidentally time-traveling. Second, the pilot is played by the late John Anderson, who was a great actor and starred in five Twilight Zone episodes. I enjoy it because it's such a mystery as to how they end up back in time, and you find yourself pulling for them, wondering if they’ll ever make it home.

6. The Masks: An old man on the brink of death invites his kids over for a Mardi Gras party. He has them wear grotesque-looking masks that fit each of their soulless personalities. The catch is that if they don’t wear the masks until midnight, they won’t inherit his wealth and fortune. The ending is iconic as it's revealed that even after taking the masks off, they all now have the faces of the masks on them that they will live with for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, their father, who who a skull, looks totally fine and was wearing the face of death.

-Iconic episode and always good to watch right before midnight. I enjoy this one because it shows you how greedy, ungrateful, and spiteful some people can be, even to their own parents. Jason Foster doesn’t hold back by telling his kid how he not only feels about them but what they truly are, ugly and hateful people on the inside, which they end up wearing on the outside. It’s such a good episode for the message, the creepy masks, and the twist ending.

5. The New Exhibit: Martin Lombard Senescu works as a curator at a wax museum for its Murderer’s Row section. Here, he tells the tale of the real-life crimes and murders the men committed. When the museum owner tells him he’s closing the museum, Martin says he wants to take the wax figures of the murderers home with him. He does so and keeps them in his basement, where one by one, Martin’s wife, brother-in-law, and the owner of the museum are killed by the wax figures. At the end, it's revealed that Martin at some point had a psychotic break at some point, and it was he who murdered his wife, brother-in-law, and friend.

-This is one of the hour-long episodes in season 4 and the only hour-long in my top ten. Why is this one of my favorites? I love horror, so I am drawn to this episode and love the sheer creepiness and dark aspects of it. It's so chilling, and if you love horror, you easily find yourself appreciating it.

4. Walking Distance: Martin Sloan, a 35-year-old businessman from New York, finds himself getting gas near his old childhood town. As he walks into it, he finds that not only is he back in his hometown, but back in time when he was 11 years old. He wants to enjoy that time again, but eventually realizes he has already lived that great time in his life.

-Another sentimental episode that is calm, tranquil, and really just makes you appreciate what you have and the simple things in life. I like it for all those reasons, and after seeing it so many times, I just found myself enjoying it more and more the older I get.

3. A Penny For Your Thoughts: A man decides to get a newspaper at a stand on his way to work. He tosses a quarter into a box to pay for the paper, and it lands on its side. This suddenly allows him to hear people's thoughts, which he finds can be both a good and bad thing.

-There’s just something fun about this episode that I’ve always enjoyed. Between the fact that it's somewhat of a comedic episode, the idea of hearing people's thoughts and what they think of you, and how you’d use the ability to your advantage if you had it, it’s an all-around great episode. I love it for all these reasons, and I’ve seen it so many times I can quote many parts of it.

2. To Serve Man: Aliens called Kanamits, who are over 7 feet tall and weigh 300lbs, land on Earth and promise to make humans' lives much easier. They leave behind a book called To Serve Man. Mr. Chambers works for a coding team that must try to decipher what the book is. As it becomes his turn to board the ship to the Kanamits planet, his colleague gets there just in time to tell him, “to serve man..it’s..it’s a cookbook!”

-I think we all know why this is one of my favorites. The ending is one of the most iconic in television history, never mind Twilight Zone history. The reason it's my second favorite is for this reason, and the whole idea throughout the entire episode, where everything seems too good to be true, and you wonder what the twist could possibly be. After you know what it is, it just stays with you, and no matter how many times I see it, I still get chills and a big smile.

1. A Stop at Willoughby: Gart Williams takes the train home from work every day. One day, he dozes off and has a dream of a place called Willoughby. It’s a beautiful and happy sunny place in 1888, where everyone seems friendly, and it seems like a nice place where a man can live full measure. The more pressure he finds himself under at work and the more his wife nags him at home, the more the idea of Willoughby appeals to him, and he wishes it were real.

-Why is this my favorite episode of all time? Well, for starters, I am by no means like Gart Williams, so let's get that out of the way. Like other episodes on the list, I appreciate it for its sentimentality and message that it's the small and simple things in life that matter the most and can make us happy. I also love the fact that despite this idea on which the episode is built on it ends with such an opposite twist that I can’t help but enjoy it. The ending is, of course, that in his dream he gets off the train and stays in Willoughby, but in reality he ranted about Willoughby and jumped off the train to his death. When he’s put in a body bag and onto a stretcher and put into a hearse, and the door closes, we see the name of the funeral home is called Willoughby & Sons. Such a great twist at the end that just gets me every time. I would also like to point out that poor Gart didn’t really deserve to go out the way he did, but I suppose if it meant going to the Willoughby he knew and loved, then it was meant to be.

My Least Favorite/Weak Episodes:

10. Black Leather Jackets: Three men from another planet land on Earth and plan on conquering it. To fit in, they wear leather jackets and act like hooligans to fit in for the time being. One of the men ends up falling for the young neighbor girl, and when he tries to warn her that the planet is being invaded, it's too late.

-I imagine this episode is at the bottom of most people's list, and when it's on during a marathon, that means it's time to go into the kitchen for a snack, or it's a bathroom break. I admit it’s not the strongest episode, and given all the episodes that feature aliens, this is definitely the weakest and gets lost. The message of the episode is that they're going to take over Earth, but because they wear leather jackets and talk to an eyeball on a screen in their home just comes off as cheesy and weird, and you can’t really get into the episode.

9. Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room: A loser, yes man, criminal hides out in a cheap motel room as he waits orders from his boss for his next job. While he waits, he talks to his conscious, a cooler, more put-together version of himself in the mirror.

-This episode bothers me for several reasons. One, it takes place solely in this one room, which I guess wouldn’t bother me so much if it weren’t for the fact that it’s just him talking to himself in it. Two, the number of times he says the name George, the name of his boss(Over thirty times easily, and I think at least 40? I’ll have to count next time it's on), is so annoying you’d think he didn’t know anyone else. It’s just a dull episode, yes, he grows a pair at the end, and his more confident self is now out in the real world while the loser version of him is in the mirror, but it’s just a bland and annoying episode.

8. Mr. Bevis/Cavender is Coming: Mr Bevis: A quirky, down-on-his-luck man, can’t keep a job, man is given a guardian angel to improve his life, but the angel realizes that despite the fact his life is weird, he likes it the way it is. Cavender is Coming: A quirky, down-on-his-luck woman is given a guardian angel to improve her life, but the angel realizes that despite her weird life, she likes it the way it is.

-I put these two together as they are practically the same episode, only one has a man, and the other has a woman. Some would argue that Cavender is Coming is the worst episode of the two, and Mr.Bevis is more likable, which I can totally see, but since these episodes mirror each other, I decided to put them together. Overall, while they are both meant to be comedic episodes, they miss the mark way more than they hit it, which just makes them bad and usually at the bottom of most people's lists, including mine.

7. Static: An elderly man living at a boarding house discovers a radio station on his radio that plays music from the 30s when he was younger. He becomes a bit of a recluse and tries to track down the radio station, only to find it doesn’t exist. He stays in his room listening to his music, and eventually, he and his wife are transported back to the 30s.

-I find this episode boring and just lacking any substantial meaning for enjoyment. For the longest time, I didn’t know he was in a boarding house, as I thought he was in a retirement home, and I didn’t know if the woman was his wife or just a really close friend? I’m still confused. I just find this episode so boring, and while it does have sentimentality, I just think it gets lost in its own static.

6. I Sing the Body Electric: A family who recently lost their mother decides to go to a place that allows them to create their own robot. The father and kids create a robot in the form of a grandmother.

-You have no idea how badly I want to like this episode just because of the fact that it's the only one created by Ray Bradbury, but that’s just it, it's the only one he made, and it’s sad because it's not a good episode in my opinion. There are a lot of episodes that have to do with robots, so the idea that this one has kids creating one to be their grandmother is just weird. Also, the whole thing is just very cheesy and doesn’t work for me. I really wish Ray Bradbury got to do more episodes than just this.

5. Nightmare as a Child: Helen Foley sees a little girl singing on steps outside her apartment. The little girl claims to know her. Besides this, an older gentleman visits her and says he knew her mother. It is revealed that the woman blocked out her mother's death, and the man who visited killed her years ago, and the little girl is really Helen herself.

-I dislike this episode for two reasons, the first being that I find it boring, and it just never really appeals to my liking any time it's on. The second reason I don’t like it is because it doesn’t make sense, and it shouldn’t be an episode that I will explain. First off, let’s get the creepy thing out of the way. When the man says he had a crush on her when she was a little girl, eww. It was creepy then, and now hearing it is even creepier. It doesn’t make sense because the man saw Helen from across the street and recognized her, but she didn’t see him. When he approached her and introduced himself, she didn’t appear to recognize him, which means if he sees that, he can make small talk and go on his way rather than try to see if she does recognize him. My point is, he could have gone through life knowing he killed her mother and she would never have known it was him, but in BTK Killer fashion, he couldn’t help himself and decides to get her to not only remember but then admits to her he killed her mother. Makes no damn sense. Just a poorly executed episode.

4. Come Wander With Me: A wannabe Rockabilly singer travels into a town looking for a new song. When he offers to pay a man for a song and is denied, he goes into the woods upon hearing a woman singing.

-I’m not even going to finish describing the episode because it's too damn confusing, and the reason it's a bad episode, and at the bottom of many people's list, is because it’s confusing. The episode has many plot holes, including the fact that the song the woman is singing, he’s literally living out right until the very end when he dies. He doesn’t need to kill the men he does, and the acting by Gary Crosby is just so bad that it's really hard to enjoy any part of the episode. What makes this even worse is when you find out that more money was put into the song than the actual episode, which probably explains why it's one of the worst.

3. What’s in the Box?: A man who is cheating on his wife has his television fixed only to see him and the woman he’s cheating on his wife with on the screen. As he keeps watching, he sees himself and his wife getting into a fight and eventually him pushing her out the window to her death. When she comes in, she asks him what's wrong. Eventually, they fight, and what he saw on screen ends up happening.

-This episode has always bothered me since the first time I saw it, and the feeling has never gone away. I find that when the wife says, “Yonkers, Yonkers, Yonkers!” to be so corny and cheesy, but what really bothers me is that they don’t just get into a verbal fight; they get into a physical fight. The idea of a man hitting a woman is bad enough, but as an episode of The Twilight Zone in the 1960s? I just find it crazy that such a thing was allowed. It just comes off as bad taste to me, and I’ve always found it uncomfortable to watch.

2. The Encounter: A white man and former soldier hires the help of a Korean man to help him clean his basement. They have a heated conversation about the war that ends in tragedy.

-This episode didn’t air on television for 40 years for a reason. The first time I ever saw it, I wondered why I never saw it or even heard of it. I also saw George Takei and thought Oh, this should be good, yeah, not so much. Eventually, as the episode played out, I slowly began to see why I had never seen it. The things Fenton, the white man, says to Arthur are so racist and offensive that it makes it uncomfortable to watch. What makes it worse is that he always tries to downplay it, but it just makes him come off as a total scumbag. It gets so bad that eventually he makes poor Arthur question his life until he has a samurai sword in his hand and ends up killing Fenton. The episode just leaves a bad taste in your mouth and really makes me personally feel uncomfortable.

1. It’s A Good Life: 6-year-old Anthony Fremont lives with his parents. Anthony has powers and can make things disappear into what he calls ‘the cornfield’. It's because of this that he acts like a brat, and people in town walk on eggshells around in so that they don’t end up in the cornfield.

-Oh, I hate this episode so much, and I have for years, and I’ll never not hate it. Anthony is such a little terror, and the fact that no one, not one single soul, tries to stop him always pisses me off. The grandmother thinks about it, then reconsiders, and poor Dan Hollis just wanted to listen to his Perry Como record, and can’t even do that because he gets so drunk and mouths off to Anthony, which all but seals his fate. And everyone is saying, “It’s good that you did that, it’s very good.” Oh god, please just stop! It’s so annoying, it’s bad, and I can’t enjoy this episode. What makes it fifty times worse is that there’s a sequel in another reboot of the series, and he somehow has a daughter, and she's worse than him! And still nothing is solved! My least favorite episode.

List of Iconic Episodes in no particular order:

To Serve Man

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

Time Enough At Last

It’s A Good Life

The Masks

The After Hours

The Howling Man

Eye of the Beholder

Nick of Time

The Night of the Meek

The Invaders

Twenty Two

Living Doll

Number 12 Looks Just Like You

Queen of the Nile

The Bewitchin’ Pool

Episodes That Were Ahead of Their Time:

A Thing About Machines: A man grows tired and paranoid when it comes to machines.

-This episode was ahead of its time, for the fact that now many of us(myself included) don’t like AI. It takes away the whole idea of a person doing the work. Another reason it's ahead of its time is that as we grow, we come out with new technology, and many of the older generation of people don’t care to want to learn how new tech works, much like Finchley. It’s not that he doesn’t want to learn how to use machines; it’s the fact that he can’t quite get the hang of them and grows irritated at the mere notion of them and having to rely on them, which is very much like us today when it comes to certain tech and machines.

From Agnes With Love: A man takes over for another as he tries to contain a supercomputer that ends up sabotaging his love life, and falls in love with him.

-The idea in the 1960s that a machine could fall in love with a human? Crazy! These days again, we have AI, we have robots made to be partners for some really lonely people, and the whole idea of machines/computers falling for people isn’t such a crazy idea. It’s even been used as a plot for movies, which usually always ends in the robot/machine wanting to kill the person since they can’t be with them.

The Brain Center at Whipple’s: Mr. Whipple decided to use robots in certain areas of his business, but soon gets carried away and relies on them to where eventually there’s nobody left in the building that’s human. Mr. Whipple himself is eventually no longer needed as well as he pleads his case of a man who has value at the local bar.

-This was quite ahead of its time. I would say that while we haven’t fully reached this, it’s only getting to be more and more real as we rely on machines to do the work for us, and it's only a matter of time until we’ve entirely replaced a job with robots and machines.

The Trade-Ins: An elderly couple goes to a place where they can change their bodies for more youthful and healthier ones. The elderly gentleman has health issues, so he really needs it. He gets the procedure done only to realize it's only he who will be young and his wife won’t, so he goes back to his old body and lives with his wife as they were.

-The message is episode is that it’s been to grow old with the one you love than to change yourself to live longer, but the reason it was ahead of its time was the idea behind switching out an old body for a more youthful one. We haven’t gone near this idea, and this was created in the 1960s. The idea of putting one's consciousness and brain into another body hasn’t been thought of, but what it did sort of give us and what we have today are people with pacemakers, transplants, and artificial limbs.

The Lonely: A convicted murderer lives on a planet by himself and is given a robot as a companion.

-This was ahead of its time for two reasons. One, the obvious, is giving the man a robot to be his companion. This is similar to what I stated above about To Agnes With Love, the idea that robots are being considered as lovers and partners to humans. Again, this was made in the 1960s, so it has certainly come full circle today. Also, the other reason it's ahead of its time is the reason he’s on the planet to begin with; we haven’t thought of this concept yet. The idea that we could put criminals on another planet entirely away from the rest of the world to live out the rest of their lives is such a crazy idea.

But it’s also kind of genius, and part of me wonders why we haven’t thought of such a thing or at least something similar or in a smaller setting.