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madali
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« on: December 12, 2010, 01:20:PM » |
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Episode 1: In Praise of Pip
"Submitted for your approval, one Max Phillips, a slightly-the-worse-for-wear maker of book, whose life has been as drab and undistinguished as a bundle of dirty clothes. And, though it's very late in his day, he has an errant wish that the rest of his life might be sent out to a laundry to come back shiny and clean, this to be a gift of love to a son named Pip. Mr. Max Phillips, Homo sapiens, who is soon to discover that man is not as wise as he thinks - said lesson to be learned in the Twilight Zone."
Jack Klugman is one of my favorite "The Twilight Zone" actors. I've liked him in every role he has played in the show, but it is here that he is at his absolute best. His character, Max, is a conman, and the sort of man that loves his son, but his memories are bittersweet. He fondly remembers taking his son to the park, but also regrets the days where he would come home drunk.
Now his son is too old to take the park and instead lies dying in a hospital bed in Vietnam. And Max pleads with God to allow him to see his son one last time.
It's a sweet, touching episode and a great way to start the season.
4/5
Episode 02: Steel
"Sports item, circa 1974: Battling Maxo, B2, heavyweight, accompanied by his manager and handler, arrives in Maynard, Kansas, for a scheduled six-round bout. Battling Maxo is a robot, or, to be exact, an android, definition: 'an automaton resembling a human being.' Only these automatons have been permitted in the ring since prizefighting was legally abolished in 1968. This is the story of that scheduled six-round bout, more specifically the story of two men shortly to face that remorseless truth: that no law can be passed which will abolish cruelty or desperate need - nor, for that matter, blind animal courage. Location for the facing of said truth a small, smoke-filled arena just this side of the Twilight Zone."
It’s the future (the 70s) and boxing has been banned. Well, sort of, it's been considered inhumane, but humans like violence, so boxing matches are still held, but the human boxers are replaced by androids.
Steel is the manager of one of these boxer androids, but his boxer is an old model, barely able to remain in the sport, Steel struggling to use the money he earns to just fix it enough to be able to run in the next round. But as his mechanic insists, it's almost all over now. The robot is too old, too broken, and too useless to keep running. But Steel knows that there is still life in his mechanical fighter. We learn that he used to be a boxer himself, back when he was younger and boxing was legal, so maybe his stubbornness at refusing to let his boxer rust in peace is his hold on to his own past. And when the match is about to start and his machine can't seem to run at all, what choice does he have, aside from pretending HE is the android, and facing the opponent's robot boxer?
4/5
Episode 03: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
"Portrait of a frightened man: Mr. Robert Wilson, thirty-seven, husband, father, and salesman on sick leave. Mr. Wilson has just been discharged from a sanitarium where he spent the last six months recovering from a nervous breakdown, the onset of which took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home - the difference being that, on that evening half a year ago, Mr. Wilson's flight was terminated by the onslaught of his mental breakdown. Tonight, he's travelling all the way to his appointed destination which, contrary to Mr. Wilson's plans, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone."
One of the most famous episodes of the show, to me mostly familiar as a parody episode from "The Simpsons".
The simplest form of the idea is generic. Person sees something supernatural, no one else sees it, so they don't believe him. But its everything else about the episode that makes it such a classic. The person in question is a man (played by William Shatner) who has been released from the hospital for having a nervous breakdown. He is with his wife, flying back to their home. There is already concerns for his mental state and the man himself knows it. To make it even more difficult for him, he had his nervous breakdown on a plane and this is the first time he is back on it, since then.
So, when he sees something on the plane's wing, a furry creature, he knows how unrealistic it is, and he is fully aware that how it will make him look. But as he keeps seeing it, and as the furry creature tries to rip apart the parts of the plane wing, he starts to panic.
It is this setting that makes it so amazing. The man acts rationally. He sees something that can't be, BUT HE SEES IT. What would YOU do?
4/5
Episode 4: A Kind of a Stopwatch
"Submitted for your approval or at least your analysis: one Patrick Thomas McNulty, who at age forty-one is the biggest bore on Earth. He holds a ten-year record for the most meaningless words spewed out during a coffee break. And it's very likely that, as of this moment, he would have gone through life in precisely this manner, a dull, argumentative bigmouth who sets back the art of conversation a thousand years. I say he very likely would have, except for something that will soon happen to him, something that will considerably alter his existence - and ours. Now you think about that now, because this is the Twilight Zone."
I remember seeing a remake of this in the 80s version of the show. And I remember it always sort of stuck with me. The idea is having a device that makes you stop time! I was fascinated with the idea since the first time I saw it but in my highly active imagination, I tried to figure out the internal logic of the idea and it wouldn't work for me. Everything alive would freeze, such as people and animals, but then I could not understand to what extent this would go. Would tiny living organisms also freeze?
Anyway, this device is randomly discovered by a man, who talks so much and is such a bore, that he can empty a full bar just by being in it for a few minutes. The device is cool, but the episode does not really do much with it. Neat Twilight Twist though.
3/5
Episode 5: The Last Night of a Jockey
"The name is Grady, five-feet short in stockings and boots, a slightly distorted offshoot of a good breed of humans who race horses. He happens to be one of the rotten apples, bruised and yellowed by dealing in dirt, a short man with a short memory who's forgotten that he's worked for the sport of kings and helped turn it into a cesspool, used and misused by the two-legged animals who've hung around sporting events since the days of the Coliseum. So this is Grady, on his last night as a jockey. Behind him are Hialeah, Hollywood Park and Saratoga. Rounding the far turn and coming up fast on the rail - is the Twilight Zone."
A jockey is having a bad day and a bad life. He has just been temporary suspended for charges of cheating. He lies in bed angry at the world and himself, when he hears a voice, claiming to be inside his head. After some internal fights against his own ego, he is asked that he can get any wish he wants. Well, I guess a jockey hates being so small, so he wishes to be bigger, and he does. He starts to grow, giving him confidence, but is being a BIG MAN in one's actual size or his personality?
4/5
Episode 6: Living Doll
"Talky Tina, a doll that does everything, a lifelike creation of plastic and springs and painted smile. To Erich Streator, she is a most unwelcome addition to his household - but without her he'd never enter the Twilight Zone."
A dad that looks like Mulder and Scully's boss is not a nice guy. He is cold towards his wife and even colder towards his step-daughter. And when the wife buys her daughter a doll called Talky Tina (that repeats the same pre-recorded line about loving you), the dad dislikes the doll too.
But the doll starts talking to the dad. And threatens to kill him. Oooooooooooh. Creepy.
3/5
Episode 07: The Old Man in the Cave
"What you're looking at is a legacy that man left to himself. A decade previous he pushed his buttons and, a nightmarish moment later, woke up to find that he had set the clock back a thousand years. His engines, his medicines, his science were buried in a mass tomb, covered over by the biggest gravedigger of them all: a bomb. And this is the Earth ten years later, a fragment of what was once a whole, a remnant of what was once a race. The year is 1974, and this is the Twilight Zone."
The world has been destroyed by THE BOMB and in a small town, there are a few survivors that have been surviving for the last several years. The sort-of leader of the community brings a message from the mysterious old man in the cave about what to eat, where to farm, and so far.
Then their peaceful co-existence is disturbed when a group of kinda-soldiers come in the town and start shaking things up and when told of the old man in the cave, they are skeptic and cynical. They disbelief the story and ask people to eat what they want, such as the cans of food that the leader claims the old man in the cave said was contaminated. I sort of guessed the ending but what I really didn’t like about the episode was that it was recommending blind faith. One of the character even talks about faithlessness being a fault of society as a sobering tale of the episode, which does not sit well with me.
2/5
Episode 8: Uncle Simon
“Dramatis personae: Mr. Simon Polk, a gentleman who has lived out his life in a gleeful rage; and the young lady who's just beat the hasty retreat is Mr. Polk's niece, Barbara. She's lived her life as if during each ensuing hour she had a dentist appointment. There's yet a third member of the company soon to be seen. He now resides in the laboratory and he is the kind of character to be found only in the Twilight Zone.”
Barbara has a frosty relationship with her uncle. She lives in his house, taking care of him, and he she angrily tolerates all the insults he levies on her. The uncle knows why his niece takes care of him and has been taking care of him for the last two decades. She has been waiting for him to die, so she can take over his properties, but the uncle just seems to stubbornly live on. Until one day, he has an “accident” and dies.
In his will, he lives his niece a robot, with the condition that she owes all his money and property, as long as the robot is taken care of. And get this, boys and girls, the robot takes the characteristics of the uncle, so Barbara is back into taking care of her uncle through a robot!
3/5
Episode 9: Probe 7, Over and Out
"One Colonel Cook, a traveller in space. He's landed on a remote planet several million miles from his point of departure. He can make an inventory of his plight by just one 360 degree movement of head and eyes. Colonel Cook has been set adrift in an ocean of space in a metal lifeboat that has been scorched and destroyed and will never fly again. He survived the crash but his ordeal is yet to begin. Now he must give battle to loneliness. Now Colonel Cook must meet the unknown. It's a small planet set deep in space, but for Colonel Cook it's the Twilight Zone."
A man is stranded on a planet and meets a woman from a different planet. They are both the only people left on this new planet with their respective races completely wiped out due to war. The two people are left to get to know each. The whole point of the episode is the final twist. Here is the spoiler, they introduce themselves, and one is called Adam and the other Eve. Oooh.
2/5
Episode 10: The 7th Is Made up of Phantoms
"June 25th, 1964, or, if you prefer, June 25th, 1876. The cast of characters in order of their appearance: a patrol of General Custer's cavalry and a patrol of National Guardsmen on a maneuver. Past and present are about to collide head-on, as they are wont to do in a very special bivouac area known as the Twilight Zone."
A current generation military brigade sort of slips through time and space and go back to a previous era, where Americans were fighting the Indians, and they lose. These new soldiers go back to help them, which is, I guess a patriotic act, but to me, is distasteful. Am I supposed to watch this and cheer on the Americans going on the kill the Native-Americans? Am I on the side of the conquerors?
1/5
Episode 11: A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain
"Picture of an aging man who leads his life, as Thoreau said, 'in quiet desperation.' Because Harmon Gordon is enslaved by a love affair with a wife forty years his junior. Because of this, he runs when he should walk. He surrenders when simple pride dictates a stand. He pines away for the lost morning of his life when he should be enjoying the evening. In short, Mr. Harmon Gordon seeks a fountain of youth, and who's to say he won't find it? This happens to be the Twilight Zone."
An old man is in love with a young woman decades younger than himself, who berates and mocks him, but who is still hopelessly in love with her. He begs his scientist brother to inject him with an experimental drug , something that is supposed to make people younger, but has only been tested on animals.
He becomes younger, but the process of de-aging does not stop…
3/5
Episode 12: Ninety Years Without Slumbering
"Each man measures his time; some with hope, some with joy, some with fear. But Sam Forstmann measures his alotted time by a grandfather's clock, a unique mechanism whose pendulum swings between life and death, a very special clock that keeps a special kind of time in the Twilight Zone."
An old man is obsessed with a grandfather clock and tunes it every two days, because it might stop. The old man’s father got the clock when the man himself was born, so he, in his old age, believes that if the clock stops, he will die. But will he or is it just an obsession? An interesting episode about man’s fear of death, a staple idea of the show.
3/5
Episode 13: Ring-A-Ding Girl
"Introduction to Bunny Blake. Occupation: film actress. Residence: Hollywood, California, or anywhere in the world that cameras happen to be grinding. Bunny Blake is a public figure; what she wears, eats, thinks, says is news. But underneath the glamour, the makeup, the publicity, the build-up, the costuming, is a flesh-and-blood person, a beautiful girl about to take a long and bizarre journey into the Twilight Zone."
Actress goes back to her hometown because of a ring she gets from her friends back home, which seems to talk to her about a possible doom approaching the town and asking for her help. Throughout the episode, we exactly don’t know what the problem that is coming to the town is and what is she supposed to do. But I have to admit, this is one of the few “The Twilight Zone” episodes that the final twist was not predictable.
3/5
Episode 14: You Drive
"Portrait of a nervous man: Oliver Pope by name, office manager by profession. A man beset by life's problems: his job, his salary, the competition to get ahead. Obviously, Mr. Pope's mind is not on his driving ... Oliver Pope, businessman-turned-killer on a rain-soaked street in the early evening of just another day during just another drive home from the office. The victim, a kid on a bicycle, lying injured, near death. But Mr. Pope hasn't time for the victim, his only concern is for himself. Oliver Pope, hit-and-run driver, just arrived at a crossroad in his life, and he's chosen the wrong turn. The hit occurred in the world he knows, but the run will lead him straight into - the Twilight Zone."
A cautionary tale on hit-and-run incidents. A man that gets away with killing a child is harassed by his own car by horning by itself a lot, turning its flash off and on, and so on.
Crap episode, I don't care about such banal cautionary tales.
1/5
Episode 15: The Long Morrow
"It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears. Case in point: the scene you're watching. This is not a hospital, not a morgue, not a mausoleum, not an undertaker's parlor of the future. What it is the belly of a spaceship. It is en route to another planetary system an incredible distance from the Earth. This is the crux of our story, a flight into space. It is also the story of the things that might happen to human beings who take a step beyond, unable to anticipate everything that might await them out there ... Commander Douglas Stansfield, astronaut, a man about to embark on one of history's longest journeys - forty years out into endless space and hopefully back again. This is the beginning, the first step toward man's longest leap into the unknown. Science has solved the mechanical details, and now it's up to one human being to breathe life into blueprints and computers, to prove once and for all that man can live half a lifetime in the total void of outer space, forty years alone in the unknown. This is Earth. Ahead lies a planetary system. The vast region in between is the Twilight Zone."
It seemed good at first, but I can't get into episodes that rely on people being such morons. A man is travelling to a far planet and because of the distance, he has to be in suspended animation for the 40 year trip, so time passes quickly for him. Before going he meets a woman and falls in love. This is not a 10 year relationship, but barely a month relationship.
And here is my spoiler. Without telling him, she puts herself in a 40 year suspended animation so that when he comes back, she is young too, like him. So far, two stupid things. One, why not tell him, and two, who makes such a drastic decision for someone she has only known for a month. She's leaving behind her WHOLE LIFE, friends, family, and so on. She's also not some stupid teenager, she's an employee in the space program, so I figure, she has some brains.
But the action of the astronaut takes the cake. He comes back and we see he is OLD now. He loved her so much that he decided to remove himself from the suspended animation, so that when he comes back, he is as old as she is, and their love can remain. If the girl's decision had a few problems, his has millions. 40 years in a space station all alone must probably drive a person INSANE. Why would anyone allow themselves to lose 40 years of their life doing nothing, learning nothing, experiencing nothing, for a girl he met only a month? And what did he expect, that she would leave her life and love him again? In 40 years, she could have been married and had two dozen grandchildren.
1/5
Episode 16: The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross
"Confidential personnel file on Salvadore Ross. Personality: a volatile mixture of fury and frustration. Distinguishing physical characteristic: a badly-broken hand which will require emergency treatment at the nearest hospital. Ambition: shows great determination toward self-improvement. Estimate of potential success: a sure bet for a listing in Who's Who - in the Twilight Zone."
Salvadore is a low-class member of society and has the hots for a girl on a higher social level them him, but it's not working out. But he realizes he has a gift. He is able to exchange aspects of himself with others, such as a broken hand for a cold, his years, or aspects of his personalities. Too much power with too many rules in a short episode, that it does not allow you to have a sense of wonder about it.
2/5
Episode 17: Number 12 Looks Just Like You
"Given the chance, what young girl wouldn't happily exchange a plain face for a lovely one? What girl could refuse the opportunity to be beautiful? For want of a better estimate, let's call it the year 2000. At any rate, imagine a time in the future when science has developed a means of giving everyone the face and body he dreams of. It may not happen tomorrow - but it happens now in the Twilight Zone."
The thing that annoys me about a lot of science-fiction is how much they are anti-science. This episode shows us a future where everyone chooses the look they want, so everyone is beautiful with a great bod.
Simplistic look into the future.
2/5
Episode 18: Black Leather Jackets
"Three strangers arrive in a small town, three men in black leather jackets in an empty rented house. We'll call them Steve and Scott and Fred, but their names are not important; their mission is, as three men on motorcycles lead us into the Twilight Zone."
The show is really running out of ideas. Girl falls in love with a motorcycle riding bad boy with a soft interior. So bad he is from out of space and is part of a race to demolish earth. So soft inside that he is ready to be a traitor to his whole race for the love of the nice girl next door.
2/5
Episode 19: Night Call
"Miss Elva Keene lives alone on the outskirts of London Flats, a tiny rural community in Maine. Up until now, the pattern of Miss Keene's existence has been that of lying in her bed or sitting in her wheelchair reading books, listening to a radio, eating, napping, taking medication - and waiting for something different to happen. Miss Keene doesn't know it yet, but her period of waiting has just ended, for something different is about to happen to her, has in fact already begun to happen, via two most unaccountable telephone calls in the middle of a stormy night, telephone calls routed directly through - the Twilight Zone."
Old woman gets mysterious phone calls. Conclusion, it's her dead fiancé. The end.
2/5
Episode 20: From Agnes - with Love
" "James Elwood, master programmer, in charge of Mark 502-741, commonly known as 'Agnes,' the world's most advanced electronic computer. Machines are made by men for man's benefit and progress, but when man ceases to control the products of his ingenuity and imagination he not only risks losing the benefit, but he takes a long and unpredictable step into - the Twilight Zone."
A nerdy computer technician is assigned to be in charge of Agnes, the most advanced computer ever. A computer so advanced that it falls in love with the technician and gives him bad love advice to screw up his relationship with a girl the technician likes.
You know, interestingly, we don't really have that many female names for computers in real life. Maybe that's why. We don't trust women!
2/5
Episode 21: Spur of the Moment
"This is the face of terror: Anne Marie Henderson, eighteen years of age, her young existence suddenly marred by a savage and wholly unanticipated pursuit by a strange, nightmarish figure of a woman in black, who has appeared as if from nowhere and now at driving gallop chases the terrified girl across the countryside, as if she means to ride her down and kill her - and then suddenly and inexplicably stops, to watch in malignant silence as her prey takes flight. Miss Henderson has no idea whatever as to the motive for this pursuit; worse, not the vaguest notion regarding the identity of her pursuer. Soon enough, she will be given the solution to this twofold mystery, but in a manner far beyond her present capacity to understand, a manner enigmatically bizarre in terms of time and space - which is to say, an answer from the Twilight Zone."
A young woman is on a white horse la-dee-dading and suddenly she meets another woman on a black horse, screaming, and chasing after her. She gallops away in fear. And the story after that is her engagement to a handsome banker her father wants her to marry while a young riff-raff is also in love with her. In the future, we realize the woman on a black horse is her in the future and trying to warn her from the bad decision she made.
The only interesting thing is that the bad decision she made was go against her father and marry the guy she actually loved, because that turned out to be a shitty life. Usually, in movies and TV, it’s the opposite!
2/5
Episode 22: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
"Tonight a presentation so special and unique that, for the first time in the five years we've been presenting The Twilight Zone, we're offering a film shot in France by others. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival of 1962, as well as other international awards, here is a haunting study of the incredible, from the past master of the incredible, Ambrose Bierce. Here is the French production of 'An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge."
The background of this episode is interesting. Its unique in the "The Twilight Zone" portfolio, because this episode was not originally made for the show. It was a stand-alone short film that the Twilight guys bought the rights of. It was originally a French production.
A guy is about to be hang, but escapes, and tries to get away. There is almost no dialogues and it won the 1963 Academy Award for Live Action Short Film and Best Short Subject at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, but I wasn't impressed by it.
2/5
Episode 23: Queen of the Nile
"Jordan Herrick, syndicated columnist whose work appears in more than a hundred newspapers. By nature a cynic, a disbeliever, caught for the moment by a lovely vision. He knows the vision he's seen is no dream; she is Pamela Morris, renowned movie star, whose name is a household word and whose face is known to millions. What Mr. Herrick does not know is that he has also just looked into the face - of the Twilight Zone."
If you are immortal, I'd guess that being an actress would be the hardest way to get away with it. There will be all kinds of records, but I guess, not in this episode. Another shitty episode in a row of shitty episodes.
2/5
Episode 24: What's in the Box
"Portrait of a TV fan. Name: Joe Britt. Occupation: cab driver. Tonight, Mr. Britt is going to watch 'a really big show,' something special for the cabbie who's seen everything. Joe Britt doesn't know it, but his flag is down and his meter's running and he's in high gear - on his way to the Twilight Zone."
I don't know why in all the recent episodes I am seeing everyone is acting stupid. A man sees his life on TV and in one of them he has a fight with his wife and accidently kills her, then gets sentenced to death. So, the same day, he obviously forgets that, and kills his wife. What a moron.
2/5
Episode 25: The Masks
"Mr. Jason Foster, a tired ancient who on this particular Mardi Gras evening will leave the earth. But before departing he has some things to do, some services to perform, some debts to pay - and some justice to mete out. This is New Orleans, Mardi Gras time. It is also the Twilight Zone."
A rich old man is nearing his death and he is visited by his daughter, her husband, and their two kids, all sorry excuses for human beings. The old man knows they are after his money and can't wait for him to die, so he promises them everything after his death, but with the condition they wear ugly, deformed masks until midnight. A creepy episode, better than the previous couples of ones.
3/5
Episode 26: I am the Night - Color Me Black
"Sheriff Charlie Koch on the morning of an execution. As a matter of fact, it's seven-thirty in the morning. Logic and natural laws dictate that at this hour there should be daylight. It is a simple rule of physical science that the sun should rise at a certain moment and supercede the darkness. But at this given moment, Sheriff Charlie Koch, a deputy named Pierce, a condemned man named Jagger and a small, inconsequential village will shortly find out that there are causes and effects that have no precedent. Such is usually the case - in the Twilight Zone."
Another social message episode. Man is being hanged and it such an injustice that the town is being covered in darkness. Okay.
2/5
Episode 27: Sounds and Silences
"This is Roswell G. Flemington, two hundred and seventeen pounds of gristle, lung tissue and sound decibels. He is, as you have perceived, a noisy man, one of a breed who substitutes volume for substance, sound for significance, and shouting to cover up the readily apparent phenomenon that he is nothing more than an overweight and aging perennial Sea Scout whose noise-making is in inverse ratio to his competence and his character. But soon our would-be admiral of the fleet will embark on another voyage. This one is an uncharted and twisting stream that heads for a distant port called... the Twilight Zone."
Man is a loud person, always shouting and making noise and everyone's sick of him. So one day something happens to him where all the sounds he hears is exaggerated, so he wants things to be quiet. Then that gets resolved and instead it goes the opposite way, every sound is reduced.
So, the show tells you to stop talking so much.
2/5
Episode 28: Caesar and Me
"Jonathan West, ventriloquist, a master of voice manipulation. A man late of Ireland, with a talent for putting words into other people's mouths. In this case, the other person is a dummy, aptly named Caesar, a small splinter with large ideas, a wooden tyrant with a mind and a voice of his own, who is about to talk Jonathan West into the Twilight Zone."
Season 5 is like a remake of all older episodes. Most of the episodes you can find a similar episode in the previous seasons. This one has to do with a ventriloquist again and its live dummy again. Maybe it was okay.
3/5
Episode 29: The Jeopardy Room
"The cast of characters: a cat and a mouse. This is the latter, the intended victim who may or may not know that he is to die, be it by butchery or ballet. His name is Major Ivan Kuchenko. He has, if events go according to certain plans, perhaps three or four more hours of living. But an ignorance shared by both himself an his executioners is of the fact that both of them have taken a first step into the Twilight Zone."
The tension of the episode is good, but it has a cheap ending. Man is in a room and is going to be assassinated by hitmen. One of the hitmen is so into his job that he doesn't just like shooting someone. He wants to make a game out of it. He tells the man that there is a bomb in the room. If he tries to get out, he'll be shot. He has to find the bomb. There is a deadline, if he doesn't, it will go off. But he has to be careful, because he might also trigger it. Bam bam baaaaam.
3/5
Episode 30: Stopover in a Quiet Town
"Bob and Millie Frazier, average young New Yorkers who attended a party in the country last night and on the way home took a detour. Most of us on waking in the morning know exactly where we are; the rooster or the alarm clock brings us out of sleep into the familiar sights, sounds, aromas of home and the comfort of a routine day ahead. Not so with our young friends. This will be a day like none they've ever spent - and they'll spend it in the Twilight Zone."
Couple wake up in a town but no one is around and everything is a prop. Another episode with an ending that feels familiar.
2/5
Episode 31: The Encounter
"Two men alone in an attic: a young Japanese-American and a seasoned veteran of yesterday's war. It's twenty-odd years since Pearl Harbor, but two ancient opponents are moving into position for a battle in an attic crammed with skeletons - souvenirs, mementoes, old uniforms and rusted medals - ghosts from the dim reaches of the past that will lead us into... the Twilight Zone."
A vet from WW2 meets a Japanese man and there is friction between them. They exchange a lot of words, their guilty conscience comes to surface, and they have to face each other and their inner demons. Good story, but Rod Sterling is putting any story he can think of in the show, even if it has nothing to do with science fiction.
3/5
Episode 32: Mr. Garrity and the Graves
"Introducing Mr. Jared Garrity, a gentleman of commerce, who in the latter half of the nineteenth century plied his trade in the wild and wooly hinterlands of the American West. And Mr. Garrity, if one can believe him, is a resurrecter of the dead - which, on the face of it, certainly sounds like the bull is off the nickel. But to the scoffers amongst you, and you ladies and gentlemen from Missouri, don't laugh this one off entirely, at least until you've seen a sample of Mr. Garrity's wares, and an example of his services. The place is Happiness, Arizona, the time about 1890. And you an I have just entered a saloon where the bar whiskey is brewed, bottled and delivered from the Twilight Zone."
A con-man goes into towns, claims he can resurrect the dead, when he "does" it, people realize they don't want the dead ones back for a reason or another, and then receives payments for putting them back. So, he doesn't actually resurrect anyone, but the con relies on each person NOT wanting their dead back. What a stupid idea.
2/5
Episode 33: The Brain Center at Whipple's
"These are the players, with or without a scorecard: in one corner, a machine; in the other, one Wallace V. Whipple, man. And the game? It happens to be the historical battle between flesh and steel, between the brain of man and the product of man's brain. We don't make book on this one, and predict no winner, but we can tell you that for this particular contest there is standing room only - in the Twilight Zone."
"The Twilight Zone" is usually very anti-science, but this one is punch in the face anti-science. A luddite episode. A factory boss is replacing humans with machines for efficiency, and every single character gives a speech about how this is a dick move. Science is good! Not bad, Rod my boy!
1/5
Episode 34: Come Wander with Me
"Mr. Floyd Burney, a gentleman songster in search of a song, is about to answer the age-old question of whether a man can be in two places at the same time. As far as his folk song is concerned, we can assure Mr. Burney he'll find everything he's looking for, although the lyrics may not be all to his liking. But that's sometimes the case - when the words and music are recorded in the Twilight Zone."
It's amazing how unmemorable and below-average this last season is. I guess before the internet and agents and big music production companies, rock and rollers wandered off into small towns to buy songs of people. This what our guy does, until he comes into some trouble. But I hardly care anymore.
2/5
Episode 35: The Fear
"The major ingredient of any recipe for fear is the unknown. And here are two characters about to partake of the meal: Miss Charlotte Scott, a fashion editor, and Mr. Robert Franklin, a state trooper. And the third member of the party: the unknown, that has just landed a few hundred yards away. This person or thing is soon to be met. This is a mountain cabin, but it is also a clearing in the shadows known as the Twilight Zone."
A woman and a policeman are being harassed by something, which they start to suspect is a giant. An interesting ending, but done in a stupid way.
2/5
Episode 36: The Bewitchin' Pool
"A swimming pool not unlike any other pool, a structure built of tile and cement and money, a backyard toy for the affluent, wet entertainment for the well-to-do. But to Jeb and Sport Sharewood, this pool holds mysteries not dreamed of by the building contractor, not guaranteed in any sales brochure. For this pool has a secret exit that leads to a never-neverland, a place designed for junior citizens who need a long voyage away from reality, into the bottomless regions of the Twilight Zone."
And we finish the show with an episode for children. Stupid children.
Two kids of bad parents escape into a pool that takes them into a fantasy world of playing children run by a kindly grandmother. Doesn't end with the grandmother boiling them alive and eating them, so stupid episode.
0/5
Season 5 Rating: 2.40/5
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