twilight zone

TV Review – The Best of The Twilight Zone Part 3

Person or Persons Unknown (Season Three, Episode Twenty-Seven)
Original airdate: March 23rd, 1962
Written by Charles Beaumont
Directed by John Brahm

The Twilight Zone could really delve deeply into some intimately existential fears. In this episode, we meet David Gurney, a man who wakes up after late-night drinking. His wife reacts with horror, claiming she doesn’t recognize him and has no idea who he is. David thinks she’s playing a prank on him and leaves for work. But once he arrives at the bank, he finds his coworkers are in the same boat as his wife. They have never seen or heard of him before. Eventually, David ends up in a mental hospital where his doctor tries to convince him he never had this life; he seems to remember so vividly.

TV Review – The Best of The Twilight Zone Part Two

Eye of the Beholder (Season Two, Episode Six)
Original airdate: November 11th, 1960
Written by Rod Serling
Directed by Douglas Heyes

Janet Tyler lays in a hospital bed, her face covered in bandages. When a nurse comes to check on her, the patient laments about her hideous visage, the problem that brought her here. The doctors have done plastic surgery, but everyone is worried that Janet’s disfigurement is so severe there is not much they can do. This is one of those episodes that you’ll likely know the twist for if you are pop-culture savvy, but it doesn’t diminish the impact of the story.

TV Review – The Best of The Twilight Zone Part 1

The Twilight Zone was not the first anthology of the fantastic, but it has gone down as the most memorable and best-written one. That writing was due in part to Rod Serling setting the standard. Rod Serling looked pretty “square,” but he was a political radical, virulently anti-war and firmly in support of racial equality. He made sure that his anthology told stories relevant to what was happening in the society around his viewers. Serling’s wife, Carol, remarked that he would often say, “the ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic”. So you can see that Serling felt compelled to not just entertain but educate whether audiences wanted it or not.