Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2017 17:40:16 GMT
One of my favorites. It spoke to something in the human psyche that knows there is something beyond this 3rd dimension. It also showcased the uglier side of human nature. Just wanted to say how much I love your avatar. Thank you. I love kittens and play the guitar.
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Post by WarrenPeace on Mar 11, 2017 22:24:03 GMT
Last night was The Masks. One of the very first TZs I ever watched. First time it was on the MeTV loop, I didn't bother since I've seen it before and it is a bit slow in places. This time around, I watched it and loved it all over again! And now I realize the old man gave them masks to match their inner personalities and that he was being full of sarcasm and telling them the opposite of who they really are when he handed them out. A classic.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2017 1:19:25 GMT
My favourite episode - "To Serve Man". Surely has one of the most fun wham-lines ever. "That book - to serve man! It's a cookbook!"
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2017 1:39:40 GMT
Favorite episode: The Hunt. "A man will walk into hell with both eyes wide open, but not even the devil can fool a dog."
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fatpaul
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Post by fatpaul on Mar 13, 2017 14:07:49 GMT
Feel free to post anything TZ related. Here's a tune by Rush that mentions two good stories...
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Post by telegonus on Mar 16, 2017 7:12:27 GMT
It's good to see all the love for The Twilight Zone, a favorite of mine when I was growing up and the show was new. I watch it fairly regularly on MeTV now, and am glad to see that they're continuing to air it, as it's one of the last black and white series to still be broadcast regularly on digital channels, which all seem to be lowering the boom on everything black and white, but I digress.
One of the many things that keeps me watching, which is by no means all about nostalgia, is how good it looks. The production values were superb, and excellent use was made of the MGM back lot. The noir look was just right for the TZ, and while they could drop or alter it for a rural or western episode the show always plays well, to my eyes. It's seldom ugly or difficult to look at even when the setting is skid row. Something about it draws me in if only visually.
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Post by telegonus on Mar 16, 2017 19:16:07 GMT
I liked the sadder, more sentimental episodes...like the one starring Gig Young, where he ended up mysteriously going back in time to his childhood days and town. Can't recall the name, but that was a familiar theme for Serling, who obviously have an affection for his boyhood. What gets me now is how "old" the main characters are! In this case, I believe Young's character was 36, certainly not "old" by today's standards. I can understand being disillusioned at 50, but 36? Most 36 year olds I know still act like teenagers! I know, Naterdawg. That "aging" of younger men on television was by no mean limited to the TZ back then, though the show seemed to do it more than most. In the case of the Gig Young episode ( Walking Distance) I think that to put it in the context of the time, Young's character was likely a world war or Korean war vet, a child of the Depression (even as he grew up in comfortable circumstances), was old enough to remember Prohibition. That's a lot of water under the bridge from an historical perspective. My sense is that back then,--that was my parents generation more or less--that history, real life history, functioned almost like a biomarker, and that events marked people for life, in good and bad ways, which enabled them to share their lives with others maybe better than we do today, in some respects, but also limited them. You were either horse and buggy or Model T, grew up with vaudeville or radio (often both). People were less likely to move around and didn't travel so much. In Walking Distance Gig Young wanted to revisit to the long ago and far away era of his childhood. Nowadays I think we're more likely to, if anything, use one's home town or old neighborhood, and the distance between the then and now, as something to feel good about ("you've come a long way, baby"). You can sort of see in Walking Distance that Young's life was sort of like his novel. He was living in chapter 10 and wanted to go back to chapters three and four and rewrite the narrative. That was a very different time from today (needless to say). In that sense he sort of was old.
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Post by naterdawg on Mar 16, 2017 19:22:21 GMT
That's true, and certainly what you said about his character's experiences speak volumes. Our parents generation did go through quite a bit, from the Depression, World War II, the dawning of the atomic age and Korea. Still, whenever I watch Walking Distance, I'm struck by his being ONLY 36 years old and so desperately longing for his past. Think about it this way: if someone in 2017 was 36 and longing for the time when he was 12, it would be 1993!
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Post by telegonus on Mar 16, 2017 20:10:21 GMT
I know. That is weird. The good old days,--1993! For me it would be 1964, but as I've thought back on this, and it's sort of strange in a Twilight Zoney way: we had an amusement park not too far from where I grew up, complete with fun rides, cotton candy, a "midget" railroad for kids to take little trips around the riverbank and see the bears in a cage up on a hill! It was paradise, and I loved it. Nothing in even Walking Distance could equal that. I have to wonder where, as the saying goes, Rod Serling's head was at in 1959. Was he even looking around? It was there, all of it. Maybe not in L.A. county but somewhere; and yes, even in California. I was grew up back east, and believe me those merry-go-rounds and cotton candy were all there.
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Post by naterdawg on Mar 16, 2017 21:30:01 GMT
My 12th birthday was also in 1964, November to be exact. I remember the era as relatively innocent, though there were signs of strife in our world. My older sister graduated from high school the next year, and all her male friends were in the military. Meanwhile, I was blithely living the life of a kid, with a nice bike, the latest issues of Famous Monsters and Castle of Frankenstein, and dancing to "These Boots are Made for Walking!" That Christmas I received two big Aurora monsters: Godzilla and King Kong, and I also remember watching The Munsters on Christmas Eve and even what episode it was!
But you know what? I bet, if I could go back in time, that I could convince my mom and dad that it really was me, their son. Facially, there's still quite a resemblance. My parents were always very open minded!
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shangel
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Post by shangel on Mar 24, 2017 19:13:54 GMT
My favourite episode - "To Serve Man". Surely has one of the most fun wham-lines ever. "That book - to serve man! It's a cookbook!" Hi graham. I'm pleased to see a TZ thread and hope more people will join in. Kudos to the o.p. for starting it. I agree that wham-line from "To Serve Man" was a shocker of a moment. Rod Serling was an expert at that. I like a lot of episodes, but will admit I found some slow and not interesting. The one episode that absolutely freaked me out was "It's a Good Life." That one gave me nightmares. Serling was very good at getting inside your head. Almost as good as David Lynch. Just my opinion.
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Post by telegonus on Oct 25, 2017 14:25:01 GMT
The first season Elegy was on last night and I enjoyed it, as always. Hint: it's the one abut the three astronauts trapped on an asteroid on which a twinkly twee Cecil Kellaway, their host as well as, things end up, their guardian, and much more besides. Great use of the MGM back lot, lots of people standing still; an air of the surreal throughout, yet still not frightening somehow. I'm coming to like the first season the best, though I like them all.
By the third season one can sense the show winding down somewhat, though in my opinion, after the half-season of a fourth year the series rallied, not to quite the same heights as before, it moved on, and for my money went out a winner. The final (filmed) episode, The Fear has grown on me, and the Big Reveal at the end was a nice way to end the series even as there was an episode or two to go, this was the actual farewell as to the production side of things.
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Post by telegonus on Nov 7, 2017 8:59:31 GMT
That's true, and certainly what you said about his character's experiences speak volumes. Our parents generation did go through quite a bit, from the Depression, World War II, the dawning of the atomic age and Korea. Still, whenever I watch Walking Distance, I'm struck by his being ONLY 36 years old and so desperately longing for his past. Think about it this way: if someone in 2017 was 36 and longing for the time when he was 12, it would be 1993! Ain't dat da truth, Naterdawg. Let me see: if, when I was Gig Young's character's age, I was yearning for a period of time comparable in actual years to the time he was yearning for, it would be the final year of the Kennedy administration, thus just before the demise of Camelot. Actually, that's not too shabby, as a lot happened in the intervening quarter century, including the civil rights era, riots in the inner city, the rise of the Counterculture, folk, rock and then folk rock music, followed by acid rock and a whole bunch of other things. The Summer Of Love, the Vietnam war it was in part a response to, all culminating in Woodstock. Then the fall from grace, starting with Manson, then Kent State, then Watergate. The dazed and confused Seventies, with its disco music alternating with singer songriters; and Elton John and Bruce Springsteen's music all over the airwaves. After that came Reagan and the, in retrospect, very Big Chill of the Eighties; Michael Jackson, the Talking Heads, Whitney Houston, Indiana Jones and Rambo and Terminators movies. That's a whole lotta history. We maybe underestimate just how much we, those of us of the (so-called) Boomer generation have actually seen and been through.
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Post by novastar6 on Sept 23, 2020 22:41:51 GMT
Am I the only one who thinks "A World of His Own" would've worked better as the series finale instead of season 1?
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maxwellperfect
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Post by maxwellperfect on Sept 24, 2020 1:15:37 GMT
One of my favorite classic t.v. series, no doubt. It was best when putting characters in bizarre and frightening situations and showing how they unraveled or coped....though mostly they unraveled. I tend to like the episodes with overt moralizing somewhat less, and some of the twist endings seem a bit silly to me, but overall it still holds up remarkably well.
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Post by Ass_E9 on Sept 24, 2020 1:36:24 GMT
I liked the sadder, more sentimental episodes...like the one starring Gig Young, where he ended up mysteriously going back in time to his childhood days and town. Can't recall the name, but that was a familiar theme for Serling, who obviously have an affection for his boyhood. What gets me now is how "old" the main characters are! In this case, I believe Young's character was 36, certainly not "old" by today's standards. I can understand being disillusioned at 50, but 36? Most 36 year olds I know still act like teenagers!
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Post by marianne48 on Sept 24, 2020 1:46:10 GMT
Several episodes referred to their burned-out main characters as 35 or 36, implying that this was middle age and it was all downhill from there. Although by today's standards this doesn't seem like such an advanced age, it's sad to remember that for Serling, who died at 50, his life was more than half over by 36.
A sad irony about Charles Beaumont, who wrote several great episodes for the show: One of his episodes, "Long Live Walter Jameson," centered on a man who never seemed to age and was much older than he seemed. Beaumont, at the height of his career, began to suffer from memory loss and physical ailments. He passed away at the age of 38 from Alzheimer's disease.
One of the best things about TZ was watching episodes as a kid and just thinking they were weird for weirdness' sake, then re-watching them years, even decades later and seeing them with a better understanding of what they were really about.
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