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Forgotten Twilight Zone Episodes
My dad never went to his high school prom. Instead he
enlisted in the Navy and hopped aboard the first ship out of the one horse town
known as Pilot Mountain, North Carolina. He traveled the world, got married,
had a couple of kids, got divorced and by the mid 90's, ended up a single
parent living on the Naval base in Orlando, Florida. It was while living here
that he was able to attend the Navy Ball, a sort of prom night for enlisted men
and women. This experience helped fill that gap that was left by missing his
high school prom. But more importantly, this evening was the first evening I
was left home alone.
The dinner and festivities were held on New Year’s Eve and
started at 8 PM and ran until 3 AM. My brother was visiting family back in
North Carolina, so that left just me alone in the house. I had reached that
important age of ten, and my dad was ready to trust me in the house alone at
night. I got the usual speech about strangers, calling 911, and not touching
the stove. But we lived on a military base, that was all unnecessary and he
knew it. I guess it made him feel a little better about going.
What should have been a very uneventful transition into
more responsibility, turned into a life changing experience. That night alone,
I discovered something that would stay with me the rest of my life and would, in
a way, even shape it. That night I discovered The Twilight Zone.
That fateful evening, I was extremely excited that I was
going to be able to enjoy cable on the big console TV in the living room. I was
no longer restricted to my little nineteen inch Magnavox. No, this night, I got
to watch TV like a grown up.
I grabbed a Coke, stretched out on the couch mimicking my
dad the best that I could, and picked up the remote. I flipped from channel to
channel, disappointed that other than a larger screen, the TV wasn't that
different. There were no additional channels, it was the same old crap, just a
little bit bigger. There was nothing on. My first night of freedom from adult
supervision was supposed to be magical, and instead here I was struggling to
find anything to watch.
In desperation I flipped over to my favorite, the SciFi
Channel. Back then the SciFi channel was primarily made up of Mystery Science Theater 3000, crazy Dan
Aykroyd alien shows, and other assorted low budget crap, but I loved it! It was
my favorite channel and I hoped that it would save me from a night of boredom.
Of course, when I flipped to the channel it was on a commercial break. Woe was
me.
I decided to begin preparing my plan B for the evening. I
headed to the hall closet and struggled getting down our small box of VHS
tapes. This box contained my 1989 Batman
tape, a movie that never gets old. I figured if worse comes to worse and I
cannot find anything on cable, I'll pop in some Michael Keaton goodness.
I came back into the living room to see a black and white show
on. My heart sank, because like all ten year old boys, I hated anything black
and white. I just couldn't fathom why anyone would want to watch anything that
was not in color, especially in the mid-90s! I pushed in my Batman tape, and it needed to be rewound.
So I sat down while the tape warped back to the beginning and rested my eyes on
the screen.
On the screen I watched as a nerdy banker was verbally abused
by his wife and his boss. All the man wanted to do was read, but no one would
ever give him the time. He struggled daily, trying to sneak in a few minutes
reading whenever he could, and he decided to spend his lunch break reading in the
bank's vault. (SPOILERS) During his
lunch a nuclear bomb was detonated, but the lining of the safe had protected
him. He emerged battered, but grateful to be alive. He was now a lone survivor
in a very lonely world. He contemplated suicide until he realized that this was
a dream come true. He could finally spend all of his time reading, without the
interruptions of an ungrateful wife, or an overbearing boss. He made huge
stacks of books that he wanted to read in front of the library. Just as his
excitement peaked, he broke his glasses. He was now unable to see, so he was
unable to read. The dream had turned to a nightmare. The man was crushed. (END SPOILERS)
I sat with my jaw dropped staring at the TV. I had never
experienced any form of entertainment with an ironic twist ending. I was just
amazed at how awesome, yet chilling the ending was. Time Enough at Last was my gateway episode into The Twilight Zone. I sat there for seven
straight hours watching episode after episode. I never did watch Batman.
That night I learned that great storytelling extends beyond
the normal boundaries of entertainment. It doesn't matter what method of
exhibition, if a story is well told, it'll reach an audience, even one as
closed minded as a ten year old boy in the 90's.
I wish I could remember all the episodes I watched that
night, but I can't. What I do remember is the emotions that I felt. I went from
shock, to anger, to fear, and back to shock. It was an emotional rollercoaster
that had me all over the place. So began my love affair with The Twilight Zone.
Sadly, other than New Year’s Eve, The Twilight Zone wasn't easy to find on TV. I'd occasionally run
across it at midnight or one AM on SciFi. Sometimes I'd even see it on at 5 AM.
I did my best to set my VCR to tape any episodes that I couldn't watch, but I
seemed to be stuck in a rotation of about twenty episodes. I kept seeing the
same ones over and over again. These episodes are the ones that everyone seems
to know now. The Monsters are Due on
Maple Street, Nick of Time, and Nightmare
at 20,000 Feet amongst others.
As I grew older and took an interest in writing, I found
myself writing screenplays and short stories that would belong in The Twilight Zone. I couldn't shake my
love for the ironic, shocking, twist endings. Even now, as a thirty-one year
old man, I still write much of my fiction along the same lines.
About ten years ago, I was able to finally buy The Twilight Zone complete series on
DVD. It took about two months for me to get through all 150 episodes. I found
that eighty-five percent of the episodes were great, ten percent were good, and
five percent were bad. Most of the bad ones came from season four once the show
extended to an hour. I think when you invest that much time to be tricked at
the end, you feel cheated. You know, the feeling you get when you watch a M.
Night Shyamalan movie.
Thanks to The Simpsons
Treehouse of Horrors, and the yearly Twilight
Zone marathon on SyFy, The Twilight
Zone has remained present in the world of pop culture. Sadly, the love
seems to be restricted to those ten or twelve episodes that are so commonly
aired. In a series that has over 150 episodes, I find it frustrating that more
attention is not given to some of the lesser known episodes.
In order to make up for this, I am listing a few of my
favorite episodes that aren't very popular. I will spoil the endings, so just
read the titles in bold, if you want to experience them for yourself. Amazon
Prime is currently streaming all of the episodes, and Netflix has most of the
episodes, with the exception of season four.
Probe 7, Over and Out
Time Enough at Last
may have been my gateway episode, but Probe
7, Over and Out is the episode that cultivated my love. Probe 7, Over and Out tells the story of
an astronaut, Adam, who crash lands on a planet seemingly alone. His home world
is unable to send help and is on the brink of war.
Adam exits his craft in search of help when he runs into a
young woman. They are unable to communicate verbally, but find a way to use
crude sketches to get their ideas across.
Adam’s commander sends him a final transmission informing him that no help will ever come and it is likely that everyone will be dead because of the war. With this knowledge, Adam finds the woman in search of a garden to find apples. The woman’s name is Eve. So Adam and Eve went looking for a garden and were the start of a new species.
The Whole Truth
Taken from the short list of episodes that were filmed on
video, The Whole Truth is about a
greedy, corrupt used car salesmen, who has mastered the art of ripping off his
customers. When a gentlemen arrives in an older vehicle to sell, he immediately
leaps into action, downplaying the value of the car and assuring the gentlemen
he is getting a sympathy deal. Once the transaction is complete, the gentlemen
explains to the salesmen that the car is haunted. Whomever owns it cannot tell
a lie. Of course, the car salesmen doesn't believe it, but within seconds he
finds out its true.
His inability to lie, starts to destroy his life. He can’t sell cars, he can't lie to his wife, and his employee quits after learning of some of his lies. Finally, a politician arrives and wants to buy a classic car to show people that he is just like them, part of the working class. Throughout the sales pitch, he catches on that the car is indeed haunted. After some discussion, the salesmen and politician decided that they needed to find someone whom the haunting could really benefit. The Soviet leader arrives shortly thereafter, looking for a classic American automobile for cheap. Once the transaction is complete, the salesmen gets on the phone to contact John F. Kennedy.
Static
This episode is probably one of the most fitting for us
retro lovers. It just goes to show that our grandparent’s weren't too unlike
us.
Ed is a senior citizen who lives in a house full of other
elderly people. Television is the new popular thing, and all of the residents
sit around and watch the TV like zombies. Ed sees this, and hates it. He hates
that the world has changed, and desires the simpler time of radio. He tries to
get others interested, but no one can escape the allure of the newfangled
television.
Ed retrieves an old radio from the basement in hopes of
capturing the magic of the past. He is thrilled to hear radio programs by some
of his favorite hosts from over twenty years ago. Strangely, all of the people
that he is listening to are dead. He gets some of the residents to come up and
hear these twenty year old broadcasts, but only Ed can hear them. To everyone
else it’s just static. Ed discovers that the radio station he is listening to
no longer airs and went out of business fifteen years earlier.
The other residents are concerned about Ed and his unhealthy
addiction to the radio. One of the female residents, Vinnie, goes up to talk to
Ed about this. We learn that Ed and Vinnie were once to be married, but Ed
could not stop letting things interfere in his life. Eventually their
relationship dissolved and Vinnie feels that Ed’s obsession with the radio is
his futile attempt at reliving the past, and that he needed to let it go. This
only infuriated Ed and fueled his obsession.
The residents have the radio hauled off to protect Ed from
himself. Ed loses it and rebuys the radio, hoping that his old programs can
still be found. He’s relieved when he finds one of his shows, and slowly loses himself
in an old love song. Suddenly, the door to his room opens and in walks Vinnie,
twenty years younger. We see that Ed has also become younger, and they both
begin to dance. The radio had given Ed a new chance to make up for the mistakes
of his youth.
A Stop at Willoughby
Willoughby is arguably my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone. Gart Williams is a
workaholic, who is overworked and is not appreciated by his boss and his wife.
Every day he takes a long train ride to and from work, and one day he notices a
strange stop called Willoughby. In Willoughby it’s July 1888, a time when
things were simpler, and a good sixty years prior to current year. The town is
wholesome with kids riding old bicycles, and everyone seems incredibly
friendly. He looks at the simplicity of life in Willoughby, the same way we
look back at Mayberry from The Andy
Griffith Show.
Gart wakes up and ask the train attendant to see if Willoughby
is an actual stop, but unfortunately for Gart it is not. When Gart arrives home
anxious to tell his wife of his desire to live a more simple life, she mocks
him and ridicules him. She makes fun of him by saying that he was, “born too
late” and that his dream was “to be Huckleberry Finn.”
The following week, the train stops at Willoughby again.
Everything looks exactly the same as it was the week before. Gart slowly gets
up to gather his things, but before he can get off the train it begins moving
and he is jerked back into the present.
After experiencing a breakdown at work, Gart gets on the
train to come home again. This time when the Willoughby stop comes, Gart
quickly gets off the train and is greeted by all the friendly inhabitants
welcoming him into their utopian world.
The next shot in the show is of the conductor standing over
Gart’s lifeless body outside the train. He mentions that he was shouting about
Willoughby before jumping off the moving train. After his body is loaded into
the hearse, we see that the name of the funeral home is Willoughby and Sons.
Walking Distance
One of the greatest stories about nostalgia that I've ever
seen is Walking Distance. In Walking Distance, Martin, a successful
businessman whose life is consumed with work, is trapped at a gas station while
his car is repaired. He sees a sign for the town he grew up in, just a few
miles away. As he walks into town he’s amazed to see his old hometown hasn't
changed any. He is even more surprised when the soda jerk charges him the same
price for a float that he paid as a kid.
Martin sees himself as a ten year old boy in the park and
realizes that he is in the past. He follows himself to his old childhood home
and attempts to convince his parents that he is their son, just from twenty
years in the future. They refuse to listen to the nonsense and turn him away.
He drops his wallet in the process.
Martin find his child self on a carousel and tells him to
enjoy this time while he has it. It’s the most important time and should be
cherished. Martin has realized how troublesome and unhappy he has become in
adulthood and wants him to enjoy his childhood as much as he can. He inadvertently
causes his child self to hurt his leg while falling off the carousel.
His father found adult Martin’s wallet, and shows up shortly
after the fall from the carousel. He believes that Martin is indeed who he says
he is. He sits Martin down and explains that everyone has a time and place.
Instead of looking to the past for happiness, he should look ahead. It might be
hiding in a place he hadn’t looked at yet.
Content with that answer, Martin walks back to the gas
station to retrieve his car. He passes the drug store where he got his float
earlier and suddenly time becomes present. Martin now walks with a limp from
the accident on the carousel, but is happy and content to live his own life in
the present.
The Man in the Bottle
A couple owns a small antiques shop in what seems to be
downtown New York. Times are hard, and the entire neighborhood is struggling.
Arthur Castle, the shop owner, buys a worthless wine bottle, because he feels
sorry for the poor lady who was selling it. He ends up with this seeming
useless wine bottle, that just so happens to contain a genie who will grant him
four wishes.
The first wish is used on fixing the glass display case in
the shop. Obviously, The Castles were skeptical that the genie was real, and this
was a way for the genie to prove his ability.
The next thing they ask for is a million dollars. Money
falls from the sky and they get their wish. They distribute a large amount of
the money to the community and everyone is thrilled until the IRS shows up.
They end up taking all the remaining cash except for a single $5 bill.
Frustrated by the events of the previous wish, Mr. Castle
then asks to be the leader of a modern, powerful country, in which he cannot be voted
out of office. He lifts his head to see Nazi officers bringing him cyanide
tablets. He realizes he is Hitler in the bunker, moments before the Russians
break in. He screams that he wants things back to normal, and using his final
wish he ends up back in the shop where the bottle comes crashing down to the
floor and shatters.
The couple ends up with nothing more than a fixed glass case, but they are content with that. As Mr. Arthur is cleaning up the broken bottle, the glass in the case cracks again. Once Mr. Arthur dumps the broken bottle into the trash can, it reforms into a wine bottle, waiting for its next victim.
I could probably write summaries of seventy-five episodes
that are rarely seen or talked about. The show had so many classic moments, and
shocking twists, it would take days to recount them all. I realize that this
short list may not cover very much, but I hope that it opens some eyes to the
episodes of The Twilight Zone that
aren’t commonly spoofed or discussed. If you turn off the lights late at night,
sit in the dark, and pick random episodes, I can promise you will feel like
you’ve entered The Twilight Zone.
Especially when you have no idea what is to come.
90schick Posted on Mar 26, 2015 at 12:55 PM
Love some twilight zone...constantly toying with your emotions.
Vaporman87 Posted on Mar 23, 2015 at 03:38 PM
I would say that if they haven't already, this would be a great persuader.
massreality Posted on Mar 23, 2015 at 05:53 AM
You are certainly welcome. I hope I can nudge a few people into giving the show a shot.
echidna64 Posted on Mar 23, 2015 at 02:02 AM
The Twilight Zone is one of the greatest t.v. shows of all-time, period. The writing and production values for the time are incredible. Some episodes are a little too slow but overall each entry is fantastic in its own right. Thank you Mass!
pikachulover Posted on Mar 20, 2015 at 11:36 PM
My family loves the Twilight Zone. We even have the companion book. Once I impressed my best friend's at the time family with my knowledge of the show. We were watching and talking about "Eye of the Beholder". It was a great ice breaker with her family.
One of the episodes I like is "The Incredible World of Horace Ford". I also like "It's a Good Life".
Vaporman87 Posted on Mar 20, 2015 at 07:26 PM
Wow. This is a heaping helping of Twilight Zone awesomeness. I never really had the chance to watch but just a few of the episodes of the old show, but what I did see always creeped me out. I think the fact that the show was in black and white added to that creepiness. I always feared that, as I watched an episode unfold, I would be tricked into thinking the ending was going to be a happy one. Then have that notion flipped on it's head when a final twist arrived. The show would do that from time to time, like someone handing you a piece of candy and then pulling it away and laughing maniacally. LOL
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