THE TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODES SERIES

This episode, for instance, locked Jonathan Winters and Jack Klugman in a surprisingly high-stakes pool game with Klugman’s life on the line. Man has always wrestled with his mortality, and The Twilight Zone offered up plenty of chances for its characters to meet their makers – or bargain for their lives. Dingle, the Strong,” “A World of His Own”ĭANCE WITH THE DEVIL “A Game of Pool” (Season 3, Episode 5) There’s a bit of the other lessons on this list in Ol’ Archimedes Frisby’s adventures, but it’s worth noting that The Twilight Zone played with tone as freely as it did its subjects.Īlso Consider, If You Will: “Mr. Take this delightful farce about a gas station attendant ( Andy Devine) prone to tall tales, who suddenly gets more than he bargained for when aliens abduct him, believing his boasts to be true.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODES SERIES

The Twilight Zone wasn’t all doom and gloom though – the series frequently took the time to let loose with some goofier fare. LAUGHING AT THE UNIVERSE “Hocus-Pocus and Frisby” (Season 3, Episode 30) A harrowing reflection of Red Scare paranoia and the fragility of our communities, Serling’s allegories have rarely been more pointed.Īlso Consider, If You Will: “It’s a Good Life”, “The Masks” Oftentimes, the destruction of mankind in The Twilight Zone came by our own hand, and never is that clearer than in this classic episode, in which a small suburban town turns on each other at the mere implication of infiltration by extraterrestrial forces. WE CAN’T BE TRUSTED “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” (Season 1, Episode 22) Take this classic episode, in which the benevolent Kanamits arrive to solve all our problems – but extract a deadly gastronomic cost we discover only too late from a deciphered Kanamit text: “It’s a cookbook!” Serling loved to explore the tenuous status of man’s power, implying that it wouldn’t take much to knock us off the head of the totem pole.Īlso Consider, If You Will: “Stopover in a Quiet Town”, “Black Leather Jackets” The xenophobia of the Cold War was often a concern for Serling’s series (see below), but even when outsiders came in peace, it almost always came with an asterisk. WE’RE NOT THE TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN “To Serve Man” (Season 3, Episode 24) It’s a perfect showcase for the terrifying paranoia of not being able to stop your inevitable fate, a recurring concern for Twilight Zone protagonists (and one Peele recently remade for the new show).Īlso Consider, If You Will: “The Fear”, “The Dummy”

“There’s a man on the wing of the plane!” cries William Shatner in another one of Serling’s classics, a claustrophobic tale of a man driven to madness either by the stresses of their job or the real specter of a monster trapping you where you can’t escape. IT’S COMING FOR YOU “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (Season 5, Episode 3) Even when he’s given exactly what he wanted, fate intervenes to punish him for his presumption.Īlso Consider, If You Will: “A Kind of a Stopwatch”, “A Nice Place to Visit” “Time” is maybe one of the most well-known episodes of Twilight Zone, and for good reason – it’s a scintillating parable about an antisocial man who would rather see the world go away than adjust to live in it. Of course, when the nuclear apocalypse hits and takes out everyone but him (having hidden in a bank vault), he’s momentarily thrilled at the prospect of having all the time in the world to sink into his favorite books, only to tragically break his glasses. Henry Bemis ( Burgess Meredith) is a bookish man who loves the written word, but everyone from his wife to his boss derides his love of reading. Just don’t lose your footing, as you step into…īE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR “Time Enough at Last” (Season 1, Episode 8) So, allow us to stalk in from the corner of the screen, cigarette in hand, to break down some of the most familiar and intriguing parables the series had to offer – and the most iconic episodes to serve up those lessons. Though, seeing how there are 156 episodes to sort through, we thought we’d offer a light. Be it Jordan Peele’s reboot, our current political climate, October being spooky season, or the show’s 60th anniversary, there are plenty of reasons to revisit the iconic series.

The twilight zone episodes