Posts tagged the twilight zone.
Favorite Episodes of The Twilight Zone // 3x08 It’s A Good Life
Rod Serling: No comment here, no comment at all. We only wanted to introduce you to one of our very special citizens — little Anthony Fremont, age six, who lives in a village called Peaksville, in a place that used to be Ohio. And if by some strange chance you should run across him you had best think only good thoughts. Anything less than that is handled at your own risk. Because if you do meet Anthony you can be sure of one thing — you have entered the Twilight Zone.
“Clown. Hobo. Ballet Dancer. Bagpiper. And an Army Major. A collection of question marks. Five improbable entities stuck together into a pit of darkness. No logic, no reason, no explanation. Just a prolonged nightmare in which fear, loneliness, and the unexplainable walk hand in hand through the shadows. In a moment, we’ll start collecting clues as to the whys, the what’s, and the where’s. We will not end the nightmare; we’ll only explain it, because this is the Twilight Zone.”
(via fuckyeahtwilightzone)
The Twilight Zone’s crew looks on as Rod Serling performs his on-camera narration for the episode Static (1961) (via)
“As I grow older, the urge to write gets less and less. I’ve pretty much spewed out everything I have to say, none of which has been particularly monumental. I’ve written articulate stuff, reasonably bright stuff over the years, but nothing that will stand the test of time. The good writing, like wine, has to age well with the years, and my stuff is momentarily adequate.”
-Serling, 1972 (via)
(via bananaleaves)
“Now the questions that come to mind. Where is this place and when is it? What kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm? You want an answer? The answer is, it doesn’t make any difference.
Because the old saying happens to be true: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence, on this planet or wherever there is human life, perhaps out amongst the stars. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A lesson to be learned— in The Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling, “Eye of the Beholder”, The Twilight Zone (1960)
It’s that time again - ride out your hangover with the New Year’s Eve/Day Syfy TZ marathon (schedule here)
(via bananaleaves)
We know that a dream can be real, but who ever thought that reality could be a dream? We exist, of course, but how, in what way? As we believe, as flesh-and-blood human beings, or are we simply parts of someone’s feverish, complicated nightmare? Think about it and then ask yourself, do you live here, in this country, in this world, or do you live instead in the Twilight Zone?
silentwilight asked: THAT POST! FEEEEELINGS ALL OVER THE PLACE
LOL I DON’T THINK ANYBODY KNOWS HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS SHOW OR ITS CREATOR. A MAN WHOSE SOCIAL COMMENTARY ON THE ROLE OF TELEVISION CONTINUES TO BE RELEVANT. A MAN WHO ONCE SAID THAT YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING GREAT WITH TELEVISION IF THEY INSIST ON INTERRUPTING YOUR NARRATIVE EVERY TWELVE MINUTES WITH DANCING BUNNIES PEDDLING TOILET PAPER.
And like I’m not super satisfied with that post because it doesn’t address all that the twilight zone is about - it’s also about the place between childhood and adulthood where you’re at one place and look back at the other and I love those and it’s not about cautionary tales and it’s not fucking about Aesop fables and shit because honestly the universe does not give a shit whether or not you learn your lesson because the universe - like the casino - always wins. IT JUST MAKES ME SO UPSET WHEN PEOPLE WATCH IT WRONG OKAY.
THIS ENTIRE SHOW IS BASICALLY SUBTITLED: OH HEY SOMETIMES PEOPLE DO STUPID SHIT AND DON’T LEARN BECAUSE THEY ARE HUMAN BEINGS AND THEY’RE FALLIBLE AND HAVE GOD COMPLEXES AND MAKE MISTAKES AND SOMETIMES THOSE MISTAKES BITE YOU IN THE ASS
IF ANYTHING, RANDOM TV TROPES REVIEWER, I’D SAY THE TWILIGHT ZONE IS LESS ABOUT LEARNING FROM YOUR MISTAKES THAN THE MESSAGE THAT ACTUALLY NO ONE REALLY LEARNS FROM THEIR MISTAKES
IF I GOOGLED HARD ENOUGH I’M SURE I COULD FIND A CORRESPONDING QUOTE FROM ONE OF THE SHOW MONOLOGUES THAT BASICALLY SAYS ALL THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE AND WILL HAPPEN AGAIN
maybe one of the thirty-thousand episodes about nuclear war
maybe.
Okay, say what you will about the bad acting and the bad one-offs - but I am always a little forgiving because styles have changed since the ’50s/’60s - but as for the preachiness of this show - it wouldn’t be The Twilight Zone without it.
Because the entire premise of this show is that the twilight zone - as an area, as a dimension, whatever, within the space of the narrative universe - is a place that is about justice.
And not justice in any sense of the legal or retribution, but it’s a place full of stories where what you did and who you are get weighed against something, and you get what you get. And maybe it’s cruel (Time Enough at Last), maybe it’s unfair (Shadow Play, The Silence), maybe it’s someone else’s sense of vindictiveness (The Masks), but it’s the universe’s sense of justice. It’s nonsensical and it’s random and sometimes you win (The Nick of Time, A Passage for Trumpet), sometimes you lose (The Lateness of the Hour, A Piano in the House), but you always had your chance at playing.
And it isn’t about fatedness or predetermined events; it’s about how the way you view the world and your place in it determines the way that these things fall into place and the way that these things happen. (And if you doubt it: The Last Night of a Jockey.)
In the twilight zone, bad people can do good things (In Praise of Pip), “good” people can do awful things (The Monsters are Due on Maple Street), but it’s all about the kind of person that you are or the person that you aspire to be. And that’s why the episodes that are centered around trying to figure that out and negotiate that identity are always the greatest to me, because in a place like the twilight zone, if you don’t know who you are, if you’re still trying to figure that out, the universe doesn’t have anything for you yet. Until you figure that out, you’re just groping around in the dark and hoping that something will come and answer you soon.
#feelings #and this is not even touching upon what the twilight zone as a show does for television #what it attempted to do within the television medium #i don’t care if you like or hate this show (but if you hate it don’t tell me) but at the end of the day you have to respect it for what i… #*it is
This is my annual reminder about The Twilight Zone New Year’s marathon on Syfy! Best show ever, ahead of its time, Rod Serling was a mofo genius, my New Year’s is not the same without it, etc.
It starts December 31st (today!) at 9AM ET.
My personal recs are- gosh, too many to list, but off the top of my head- The Masks; It’s A Good Life; People Are Alike All Over; The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street; The Hitchhiker; I Shot An Arrow Into The Air; Number Twelve Looks Just Like You; The Midnight Sun; Time Enough At Last; Eye Of The Beholder; and a whole bunch of others I’m surely forgetting. It always feels like there’s an endless amount of episodes to watch and that there’s always a new one to discover.
You can check out the full schedule here.
I hope everyone enjoys! And Happy New Year!
Happy Holidays from Rod Serling
This has been a love story about two lonely people who found each other in the Twilight Zone.
The Twilight Zone, Episode 66
(via formerlyrhera)
