I just found out this week is the 50th anniversary of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, and I couldn’t let it go by without saying something.
As a TV show, THE TWILIGHT ZONE was unique, and I use that term with precision. There was no other show like it at the time, and there has been none like it since. There have been other anthology shows; but none of them has had the reach or the punch of TWILIGHT ZONE.
And I’ll tell you why.
Rod Serling at the height of his powers had an eye for a story that remains unmatched in televison.
Oh, I know there are some turkeys in the bunch. And I know there are some, like, “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” that I am probably the only one in the world who enjoys because I’m just like that. Some were overly sentimental, some were just bad, and if you watch long enough, you can start to see the patterns that run through them. The thing no one believes is going to turn out to be true. Making bets is a bad idea, and making wishes is an even worse one. Robots and computers are always alive. Be nice to your dying relatives, and for Petes sake, if you see Billy Mumy, RUN.
But despite the lapses, for five years and 136 episodes, Serling was able to create a one brilliant episode after another. He assembled excellent casts, drawing from a pool that included small screen up and comers like William Shatner and this minor young fellow named Robert Redford, and actors Hollywood had worn down or discarded, like Mickey Rooney and Ida Lupino magnificent character actors like Jack Klugman and Burgess Meredith.
But great actors have to have something to work with, and it was the scripts Serling helped create that made that show the unforgettable creation it was. Those stories, with their deep humanity, their dark humor, their searching morality, their faith in humanity and their fear for humanity. Serling presented people thrown into circumstances where ANYTHING, literally, could happen. You could meet the devil. You could become the devil. A toss of a coin could give you the power to read minds. The world could end by man’s hand or God’s. A sad man could become Santa Claus, a doll could take revenge, all sorts of aliens could interfere with the Earth. The people of Earth could become the aliens. But every single story was built around a strong central character. A hardened woman alone on a farm. A salesman who wants to make one good score. An old woman who just wants to live. A man who just wants time to sit and read. A small boy who just wants his own way.
But each one of them was fully and recognizeably human with human flaws and motivations. Their weaknesses sometimes opened the door, and sometimes their strengths got them through. No matter how strange or terrible the circumstances surrounding these characters became, the stories flowed directly from the characters. If there was a common thread running through the stories, it was that in each there was a moment of choice that the story turned on. A human action, a human choice, could end a life, end the world, or save us all.
So here’s to Rod Serling and THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Here’s to seeing the alien in the human and the human in the alien, to Billy Mumy being scarier than Hannibal Lechter and Freddy Krueger put together, to deals with the Devil and dangerous bets and long distance calls, coins standing on their edge and vengeful dolls, to death and life and what’s still waiting in the dimension of sight, the dimension of mind.
When I was a kid, one of the best things about New Years Eve was being able to stay up and watch the Twilight Zone marathon on WPIX (what's now the WB in NY). In a brilliant move, the station always kept the "best" episodes for around midnight--which meant I was more likely to see "To Serve Man" than the ball drop in Times Square. Between that and reading "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" in a school book called "Tomorrowland" (which I might have "borrowed" from my school--to this day), I've been hooked.