Post by drystyx on Feb 27, 2019 20:30:38 GMT
IT'S OFFICIAL!
Worst 20 episodes of the Twilight Zone:
20. SHOWDOWN WITH RANCE MCGREW-Too often, we get this same old "bad guys are okay" theme, as we're forced to accept Jesse James outlaw as a hero, easily one of the biggest clichés in TV and movies.
19. DEAD MAN'S SHOES where a vagrant puts on a dead mobster's shoes and magically becomes the mobster. These stories are "bubble boy" oriented in their preaching of "if you're evil enough, you can survive anything", which doesn't really work in real life and doesn't make for interesting stories to anyone but Beavis and Butthead clones.
18. THE FOUR OF US ARE DYING is strange as a man can reshape his face, and every person he becomes is some fantastic character who is in big trouble. Just too contrived.
17. THE JUNGLE is Hollywood predictable, and one of the "hate for the sake of hate" episodes, in which innocent people are hurt for no reason, and yet we're told it's "good." One of the sicker episodes.
16. THE BEWITCHIN' POOL is a sort of Peter Pan episode where kids stay underwater long enough to visit a great dream world. Not a good idea. And the motivations just don't cut it, as these are very rich kids.
15. ON THURSDAY WE LEAVE FOR HOME-The problem here is that it's too clever in what amounts to detrimental propaganda. The characters are well motivated, true. But the entire script is formatted to try to make us sympathize with the militaristic leader who performs the rescue of a desolate space colony. The script makes it look like he is "moderate", but I don't buy it. And that's why it's dangerous propaganda.
14. THE NEW EXHIBIT is pretty much just "hate for the sake of hate", just mindless and unmotivated, which probably makes the Beavis and Butthead crew of IMDB happy, but not the rest of us.
13. QUEEN OF THE NILE-Even in 1963, the SHE style story was old, and no way fresh enough for this kind of TV series.
12. DEATH SHIP-The dullest, most Hollywood, and least strategic of the outer space episodes.
11. A GAME OF POOL-Regular Jack Klugman in his usual "not too bad of a bad boy" character is a pool player in a supernatural game. The trouble with this one is that even in 1961 it's too predictable, and the characters aren't interesting enough.
10. THE THING ABOUT MACHINES-Totally Satanic the way an innocent man is harassed, and for some reason Serling allows that the harassment is justified. One of the "self righteous judging" episodes that one would think would be out of character for a show based on being open minded.
9. EXECUTION-Just a boring ordeal, altTHE hough it at least makes the claim that it is a boring ordeal, but it is a boring ordeal.
8. THE HOWLING MAN-This 1960 episode shows how the Devil can be captured, but released as well, all with ease. The logic is so flailing that whatever drama was intended falls dead flat.
7. STEEL-Lee Marvin is wasted in this predictable bit about a future with mechanical boxers. He is an ex boxer who trains a mechanical boxer that is damaged and can't function, so we know way ahead of time exactly what will happen. An ordeal.
6. MR GARRITY AND THE GRAVES-One of those sick episodes in which the writer wants to sanctify the actions of criminals, in this case one of the worst of criminals, a scam artist. Like most such stories, the allegations about the victims don't come across as credible, at least not for most of them, and yet we're told the hateful con artist is "cool" and deserves the right to abuse the weak and helpless.
5. THE LAST NIGHT OF A JOCKEY-One of those "judgmental" pieces that is as predictable as everything else on this list. A jockey gets a wish to grown in stature, so we know what that means. Everything is contrived, and the allegations against him are not credible, considering his dilemma.
4. A NICE PLACE TO VISIT-A completely idiotic and yet popular assumption about Hell. This is the episode to make the ignorant masses happy, the loud obnoxious people who seem to be in a majority, who claim Hell is fun. It's the "toothless red neck pleaser" episode.
3. TWENTY TWO-Along with the number 2, two episodes designed to make women happy over whom Fate, Nature, God, or angels chooses to survive plane disasters, with total Hollywood Nazi ideology preached, a propaganda that has brainwashed Americans since the early sixties. According to this feminist ideology, blond women are "chosen" by God or Nature, which is something that isn't natural, but Americans are brainwashed to think it is. This is feminism at its peak.
2. RING A DING GIRL -A totally Hollywood episode, a chick flick episode if you will, in which Hollywood Nazi ideology is preached. Combine this one with its mirror image of #3, and you'll see both were made for women, to depress men, as both simply preached the ideology.
1. THE VERY WORST EPISODE EVER OF THE TWILIGHT ZONE!!!-THE MASKS, a 1964 "judgment" piece in which a self righteous dying man plays God with some simpleton people. They're not likable, but nothing suggests they deserve the hate the old man has for them, and it's evident that he was the problem all along. A real sicko episode, directed by someone who was usually more open minded to reality. This one was one that Hitler would have enjoyed. It was that demonic.
And the "dishonorable mentions" of other "worst episodes".
Escape Claus
What You Need
The Last Flight
A World of Difference
Long Live Walter Jameson
The Big Tall Wish
A Passage For Trumpet
Nick of Time
Dust
The Hunt
A Piano in the House
Four O'clock
The Dummy
He's Alive
Jes Belle
Printer's Devil
Uncle Simon
Ninety Years Without Slumbering
Black Leather Jackets
The Encounter
What's in the Box
I Am the Night
Come Wander With Me
Now for the BEST EPISODES
20. HOCUS POCUS AND FRISBY-Andy Devine in good form as the tall tale teller in one of the funnier episodes
19. LITTLE GIRL LOST-Charles Aidman's charisma helps in this story of a little girl trapped in another dimension
18. THE 7TH IS MADE OF PHANTOMS with Warren Oates and Randy Boone being modern day tank crew members who get to die with Custer. Oops, not the best idea, but this is well done, and interesting, with a good link to the supernatural
17. THE LITTLE PEOPLE-Two astronauts are in trouble, isolated on a rocky world, and one of them is insane. The way he pays the piper is interesting.
16. WHERE IS EVERYBODY-By my research, the first episode. An astronaut goes through a series of bewildering observations in a deserted town. The end is a good payoff.
15. THE JEOPARDY ROOM is one where a man is fleeing two evil executioners from a totalitarian government. One of them is a very arrogant man who makes the hunt a "game of death".
14. I SHOT AN ARROW INTO THE AIR is perhaps the most haunting episode. It's one of the "astronaut episodes", one in which one of the astronauts is deranged, though here he is motivated much more than the one from THE LITTLE PEOPLE. Still, he turns into an evil force. The payoff isn't exactly enough for his evil, but it is a payoff.
13. THE PURPLE TESTAMENT-Okay, so we know how this will end, but it's still dramatic, because even the soldier who sees death coming on the faces of those about to die, he even knows how it will end. It is only then that he accepts it for what it is.
12. NIGHTMARE AS A CHILD. This one isn't that predictable until close to the end. A little girl visits a woman in a very status quo way, only something very scary is happening very soon.
11. A STOP AT WILLOUGHBY-A man finds a very charming town named Willoughby is an uncharted train stop. The ending caught me off guard.
10. THE OBSOLETE MAN-I think we know how this will end, but it's still a great story about a very evil society that is very close to happening in America.
9. THE GRAVE-Lee Marvin is a coward? Come on! Lee Van Cleef is a likable guy? Come on! Well, this supernatural Western has elements of Nature, or is it supernatural? We're left to wonder.
8. A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS-Sort of a semi-comedy as a man finds he has mental telepathy after a penny stands on edge. A funny, likable episode.
7. A MOST UNUSUAL CAMERA-Ever hear the saying, "so dumb it's funny"? Well, this dumb story about a camera that takes pictures of the future is helped along by some great comic acting.
6. IT'S A GOOD LIFE-has the added value of "iconic stature". One of my favorite lines I use when someone asks me how I met someone else, I say, "well, at my birthday party, I wanted to play my record, and he pointed at me and said 'you're a bad man, you're a very bad man', and then he turned me into a jack in the box and wished me into a cornfield. That's how I met him." An eerie story of an eerie "god".
5. THE HITCH-HIKER one of the more haunting ones, as a woman drives cross country and keeps seeing the same raggedy hitch hiker. I think most of us figured it out near half way through, but it's still mesmerizing.
4. THE PARALLEL-later a movie was made with this theme, of an astronaut returning from a journey, only the world wasn't exactly the same one.
3. FIVE CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN EXIT-kind of a "landmark" episode. Five remarkable characters are trapped in a room, and they can't find a way out. There is an antagonistic clown who greets the newest arrival, a major, and they present the major conflict. A beautiful dancing girl provides the romantic interest. And a bagpipe player and a hobo provide the moderating forces.
2. TO SERVE MAN is a famous, iconic episode. An alien visits Earth and promises to help Earthlings, but what is he really up to?
1. THE VERY BEST EPISODE EVER. WILL THE REAL MARTIAN PLEASE STAND UP. An iconic one with a semi-comic quality to it. So, I ask whichever one of you is the real Martian, will you please stand up? Because I've already found your friends.
Honorable mention of other "best episodes".
The Lonely
Judgment Night
And When the Sky Has Opened
Elegy
The Monsters are Due on Maple Street
Third From the Sun
People Are Alike All Over
A Most Unusual Camera
Back There
The Whole Truth
The Silence
Death's Head Revisited
One More Pallbearer
One For the Angels
Mute
I Dream of Genie
Probe 7, Over and Out
Spur of the Moment
Stopover in a Quiet Town
The Rip Van Winkle Caper
Worst 20 episodes of the Twilight Zone:
20. SHOWDOWN WITH RANCE MCGREW-Too often, we get this same old "bad guys are okay" theme, as we're forced to accept Jesse James outlaw as a hero, easily one of the biggest clichés in TV and movies.
19. DEAD MAN'S SHOES where a vagrant puts on a dead mobster's shoes and magically becomes the mobster. These stories are "bubble boy" oriented in their preaching of "if you're evil enough, you can survive anything", which doesn't really work in real life and doesn't make for interesting stories to anyone but Beavis and Butthead clones.
18. THE FOUR OF US ARE DYING is strange as a man can reshape his face, and every person he becomes is some fantastic character who is in big trouble. Just too contrived.
17. THE JUNGLE is Hollywood predictable, and one of the "hate for the sake of hate" episodes, in which innocent people are hurt for no reason, and yet we're told it's "good." One of the sicker episodes.
16. THE BEWITCHIN' POOL is a sort of Peter Pan episode where kids stay underwater long enough to visit a great dream world. Not a good idea. And the motivations just don't cut it, as these are very rich kids.
15. ON THURSDAY WE LEAVE FOR HOME-The problem here is that it's too clever in what amounts to detrimental propaganda. The characters are well motivated, true. But the entire script is formatted to try to make us sympathize with the militaristic leader who performs the rescue of a desolate space colony. The script makes it look like he is "moderate", but I don't buy it. And that's why it's dangerous propaganda.
14. THE NEW EXHIBIT is pretty much just "hate for the sake of hate", just mindless and unmotivated, which probably makes the Beavis and Butthead crew of IMDB happy, but not the rest of us.
13. QUEEN OF THE NILE-Even in 1963, the SHE style story was old, and no way fresh enough for this kind of TV series.
12. DEATH SHIP-The dullest, most Hollywood, and least strategic of the outer space episodes.
11. A GAME OF POOL-Regular Jack Klugman in his usual "not too bad of a bad boy" character is a pool player in a supernatural game. The trouble with this one is that even in 1961 it's too predictable, and the characters aren't interesting enough.
10. THE THING ABOUT MACHINES-Totally Satanic the way an innocent man is harassed, and for some reason Serling allows that the harassment is justified. One of the "self righteous judging" episodes that one would think would be out of character for a show based on being open minded.
9. EXECUTION-Just a boring ordeal, altTHE hough it at least makes the claim that it is a boring ordeal, but it is a boring ordeal.
8. THE HOWLING MAN-This 1960 episode shows how the Devil can be captured, but released as well, all with ease. The logic is so flailing that whatever drama was intended falls dead flat.
7. STEEL-Lee Marvin is wasted in this predictable bit about a future with mechanical boxers. He is an ex boxer who trains a mechanical boxer that is damaged and can't function, so we know way ahead of time exactly what will happen. An ordeal.
6. MR GARRITY AND THE GRAVES-One of those sick episodes in which the writer wants to sanctify the actions of criminals, in this case one of the worst of criminals, a scam artist. Like most such stories, the allegations about the victims don't come across as credible, at least not for most of them, and yet we're told the hateful con artist is "cool" and deserves the right to abuse the weak and helpless.
5. THE LAST NIGHT OF A JOCKEY-One of those "judgmental" pieces that is as predictable as everything else on this list. A jockey gets a wish to grown in stature, so we know what that means. Everything is contrived, and the allegations against him are not credible, considering his dilemma.
4. A NICE PLACE TO VISIT-A completely idiotic and yet popular assumption about Hell. This is the episode to make the ignorant masses happy, the loud obnoxious people who seem to be in a majority, who claim Hell is fun. It's the "toothless red neck pleaser" episode.
3. TWENTY TWO-Along with the number 2, two episodes designed to make women happy over whom Fate, Nature, God, or angels chooses to survive plane disasters, with total Hollywood Nazi ideology preached, a propaganda that has brainwashed Americans since the early sixties. According to this feminist ideology, blond women are "chosen" by God or Nature, which is something that isn't natural, but Americans are brainwashed to think it is. This is feminism at its peak.
2. RING A DING GIRL -A totally Hollywood episode, a chick flick episode if you will, in which Hollywood Nazi ideology is preached. Combine this one with its mirror image of #3, and you'll see both were made for women, to depress men, as both simply preached the ideology.
1. THE VERY WORST EPISODE EVER OF THE TWILIGHT ZONE!!!-THE MASKS, a 1964 "judgment" piece in which a self righteous dying man plays God with some simpleton people. They're not likable, but nothing suggests they deserve the hate the old man has for them, and it's evident that he was the problem all along. A real sicko episode, directed by someone who was usually more open minded to reality. This one was one that Hitler would have enjoyed. It was that demonic.
And the "dishonorable mentions" of other "worst episodes".
Escape Claus
What You Need
The Last Flight
A World of Difference
Long Live Walter Jameson
The Big Tall Wish
A Passage For Trumpet
Nick of Time
Dust
The Hunt
A Piano in the House
Four O'clock
The Dummy
He's Alive
Jes Belle
Printer's Devil
Uncle Simon
Ninety Years Without Slumbering
Black Leather Jackets
The Encounter
What's in the Box
I Am the Night
Come Wander With Me
Now for the BEST EPISODES
20. HOCUS POCUS AND FRISBY-Andy Devine in good form as the tall tale teller in one of the funnier episodes
19. LITTLE GIRL LOST-Charles Aidman's charisma helps in this story of a little girl trapped in another dimension
18. THE 7TH IS MADE OF PHANTOMS with Warren Oates and Randy Boone being modern day tank crew members who get to die with Custer. Oops, not the best idea, but this is well done, and interesting, with a good link to the supernatural
17. THE LITTLE PEOPLE-Two astronauts are in trouble, isolated on a rocky world, and one of them is insane. The way he pays the piper is interesting.
16. WHERE IS EVERYBODY-By my research, the first episode. An astronaut goes through a series of bewildering observations in a deserted town. The end is a good payoff.
15. THE JEOPARDY ROOM is one where a man is fleeing two evil executioners from a totalitarian government. One of them is a very arrogant man who makes the hunt a "game of death".
14. I SHOT AN ARROW INTO THE AIR is perhaps the most haunting episode. It's one of the "astronaut episodes", one in which one of the astronauts is deranged, though here he is motivated much more than the one from THE LITTLE PEOPLE. Still, he turns into an evil force. The payoff isn't exactly enough for his evil, but it is a payoff.
13. THE PURPLE TESTAMENT-Okay, so we know how this will end, but it's still dramatic, because even the soldier who sees death coming on the faces of those about to die, he even knows how it will end. It is only then that he accepts it for what it is.
12. NIGHTMARE AS A CHILD. This one isn't that predictable until close to the end. A little girl visits a woman in a very status quo way, only something very scary is happening very soon.
11. A STOP AT WILLOUGHBY-A man finds a very charming town named Willoughby is an uncharted train stop. The ending caught me off guard.
10. THE OBSOLETE MAN-I think we know how this will end, but it's still a great story about a very evil society that is very close to happening in America.
9. THE GRAVE-Lee Marvin is a coward? Come on! Lee Van Cleef is a likable guy? Come on! Well, this supernatural Western has elements of Nature, or is it supernatural? We're left to wonder.
8. A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS-Sort of a semi-comedy as a man finds he has mental telepathy after a penny stands on edge. A funny, likable episode.
7. A MOST UNUSUAL CAMERA-Ever hear the saying, "so dumb it's funny"? Well, this dumb story about a camera that takes pictures of the future is helped along by some great comic acting.
6. IT'S A GOOD LIFE-has the added value of "iconic stature". One of my favorite lines I use when someone asks me how I met someone else, I say, "well, at my birthday party, I wanted to play my record, and he pointed at me and said 'you're a bad man, you're a very bad man', and then he turned me into a jack in the box and wished me into a cornfield. That's how I met him." An eerie story of an eerie "god".
5. THE HITCH-HIKER one of the more haunting ones, as a woman drives cross country and keeps seeing the same raggedy hitch hiker. I think most of us figured it out near half way through, but it's still mesmerizing.
4. THE PARALLEL-later a movie was made with this theme, of an astronaut returning from a journey, only the world wasn't exactly the same one.
3. FIVE CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN EXIT-kind of a "landmark" episode. Five remarkable characters are trapped in a room, and they can't find a way out. There is an antagonistic clown who greets the newest arrival, a major, and they present the major conflict. A beautiful dancing girl provides the romantic interest. And a bagpipe player and a hobo provide the moderating forces.
2. TO SERVE MAN is a famous, iconic episode. An alien visits Earth and promises to help Earthlings, but what is he really up to?
1. THE VERY BEST EPISODE EVER. WILL THE REAL MARTIAN PLEASE STAND UP. An iconic one with a semi-comic quality to it. So, I ask whichever one of you is the real Martian, will you please stand up? Because I've already found your friends.
Honorable mention of other "best episodes".
The Lonely
Judgment Night
And When the Sky Has Opened
Elegy
The Monsters are Due on Maple Street
Third From the Sun
People Are Alike All Over
A Most Unusual Camera
Back There
The Whole Truth
The Silence
Death's Head Revisited
One More Pallbearer
One For the Angels
Mute
I Dream of Genie
Probe 7, Over and Out
Spur of the Moment
Stopover in a Quiet Town
The Rip Van Winkle Caper
