watching twilight zone with sharon

Great news! Sharon has discovered The Twilight Zone. I'm not quite sure what the catalyst was, but she was asking about it a week or so ago. I explained the basic idea behind the show, and suggested she watch a couple of episodes on Netflix.

Ethan, of course, thinks she should watch Tales of Tomorrow. He says it was a better show with better-written stories and better stars. He's probably right -- my experience with this kind of thing is that he has good judgement. Except for Carnival of Souls. That's a great movie that seems like a long episode of TZ, yet he doesn't care for it. Anyway, it's not as easy to see ToT. TZ  is on  Netflix -- at least seasons 1,2,3 and  are. What's with that?

So last night, when I was just sitting down to write a blogpost -- yes, I have a bajillion ideas for posts that I need to write -- she asked me to watch TZ with her. Guess what won.

She asked me to suggest the best episodes to watch. Nothing wrong with that, except that I feel the pressure. What if I pick episodes that she doesn't like? Then she'll decide she doesn't like the show, and it'll be all my fault. So, to a degree, I punted and asked Blair to suggest episodes.

One thing I found interesting is that Sharon asked me if the "twilight zone" is a real thing. I explained that it isn't, but Rod Serling chose the name because it 's ill-defined but sounds serious and spooky. The main reason I find this interesting is that I remember having the same conversation with my mother decades ago when I first watched the show. With any luck we'll be watching some more on Friday.

It's been a long time since I'd watched the show. I remember most episodes well enough, but even so there are generally a lot of details that I'd forgotten. These are the ones we watched (not in order):

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

A neighborhood runs amok, and friends are at each others' throats as weird things are going on and they're convinced that it has to be space aliens and that one among them is a space alien.

Blair suggested this, because it reminds her of today's political scene, with the aliens in the role of the Russians, who are busy trying to create havoc and distrust in each other. I waspleasantly surprised to see Claude Akins in the lead. I remember him as Sherrif Lobo from BJ and the Bear (and its spinoff, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo). 

I have always felt that everyone is too quick to accept the teenager's suggestion that his comic books are a blueprint for what's ocurring, but I suppose that is necessary in order to fit the story in a half-hour show. And the explanatory coda is kind of goofy, but not bad.

The Eye of the Beholder

A woman is in a hospital, her face all bandaged up, because she's ugly. This is the eleventh attempt to make her less ugly, and she is anxiously waiting for the bandages to come off. Will she get to join society as a pretty woman? Or will she be banished to a community of ugly people?

This was my idea. It's not one of my favorite episodes, but my impression is that it's one of the better-known episodes, and gets referenced a lot in pop culture, so it's good for it to be part of her TZ education. As we were watching, I was noting how all the hospital personnel are shown in shadow so you never get to see their faces. That's necessary, of course, to make the whole episode work. But I was wondering if Sharon would pick up on it. She says she didn't think much about it, though in one scene she wondered, if it wouldnt be easier to just show the faces.

At the end, when you see close-ups of the staff's faces, she noted that they looked so fake. I pointed out that budgeting was probably very tight. Also, this was made for black and white TV, which had lower resolution than what she's watching now -- a remastered version on a high-definition TV. Given the technology of the time, the effect was probably adequate. That's something I wouldn't have thought of if not for the cinema history class I take with Keith Crocker.

And, as I was writing this post, Sharon came into the room with a rubber band around her head holding her nose up. 'I look like one of the pig people from "Eye of the Beholder.'"

The Silence

A loudmouth will not shut his yap, much to the annoyance of a fellow member of his aristocratic social club. So they bet -- $500,000 for a year of silence.

I suggested this episode. I believe it's one of the lesser known ones, but I have always found it haunting. It's also interesting because there's nothing supernatural or otherworldly about it. The twist ending is purely natural. 

One detail I'd forgotten (assuming I'd ever noticed it) is that Jonathan Harris (Doctor Smith in Lost in Space) played the lawyer. The final scene is still as powerful, all these years later. And it elicited a "whoa" from Sharon.

The episode also gave me a chance to talk to her about inflation -- the $500,000 bet was worth a lot more then than it would be now.

It's a Good Life

Life is good in Peaksville. And you'd better believe it, or little Anthony will kill you with his mind.

This one was Blair's idea, because it seems almost as if it was written as an allegory for life in North Korea. But even aside from that this is one of the best, one of the creepiest, episodes of the show. Also, like a couple other episodes on this list, it's one of the iconic installments, and gets frequently referenced in pop culture. Billy Mumy, in his second of three appearances on the show, is great. I sat there with Sharon, pointing out to her how Dan was sitting in the back of the room, getting drunk and angry.

Living Doll
Annabelle has bought her daughter a doll named Talky Tina. But her husband doesn't approve of the purchase. Tina, in turn, doesn't approve of the husband.

This is another one of the iconic episodes that should be a part of anyone's basic Twilight Zone education. What's amazing about this episode is that it's so good. Seriously, a man is having a feud with his stepdaughter's doll. WTF? But it works; the suspense is palpable. And Sharon really liked this one.

I was curious about who voiced Tina. Since she sounded a lot like the girl, I was wondering if it was the same actress. That would have lent an extra creep factor to the show -- the notion that maybe Tina is really just some kind of manifestation of the daughter's latent ESP, and acting out her anger. Alas, she was voiced by June Foray. That's kind of interesting to me; three months ago, I wouldn't have recognized the name. But Foray died in July, and we talked about her in the cinema history class -- she was one of the great voice actors in cartoondom, and that's an area that Joe (from class) is really interested in. The only question left is whether Foray was purposely trying to sound like the daughter.