Twilight Zone Morality Tales: A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#52)

Some­thing’s strange… Is it a dream? If it’s a moral­i­ty tale with a twist end­ing, you’re prob­a­bly in the Twi­light Zone. Your hosts Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er, plus guest Ken Ger­ber (Bri­an’s broth­er) are in it this week, dis­cussing the thrice revived TV series. Does the 1959–1963 show hold up? What makes for a good TZ episode, and does Jor­dan Peele’s lat­est iter­a­tion cap­ture the spir­it? We talk about episodes new and old, the 1983 film, plus com­par­isons to Black Mir­ror and David Lynch.

The clas­sic episodes we focus most on (and might spoil, so you should go watch them) are It’s a Good Life, Will the Real Mar­t­ian Please Stand Up?, What You Need, The Howl­ing Man, Per­chance to Dream, and Nick of Time. The oth­ers Ken rec­om­mend­ed for us are The Obso­lete Man and The Masks. Mark com­plains about Walk­ing Dis­tance.

In the new series, sea­son 1, we do spoil Blur­ry Man and praise (but don’t spoil) Replay. We don’t spoil sea­son two at all, but rec­om­mend Try, Try and Meet in the Mid­dle and pan Ova­tion and 8.

Some arti­cles we looked at include:

• “Which Twi­light Zone Sea­son-Two Episodes Are Worth Your Time?” by Kei­th Phipps
• “The Twi­light Zone’s Sec­ond Attempt is a Mixed Bag” by Valerie Etten­hofer
• “The Twists and Turns of the New Twi­light Zone” by Dan Schin­del
• “The Old ‘Twi­light Zone’ Speaks to the Strange Times We’re Liv­ing in Bet­ter Than the New One” by Bri­an Lowry
• “5 Ways Black MIr­ror Is Bet­ter Than ‘The Twi­light Zone’ ” by Rich Knight
• “How the ’80s Twi­light Zone Hon­ored and Extend­ed Rod Serling’s Lega­cy” by Phil Dyess-Nugent
• “An Ear­ly Run-In With Cen­sors Led Rod Ser­ling to ‘The Twi­light Zone’ ” by Jack­ie Man­sky
• “Map­ping the Twi­light Zone’s Cul­tur­al and Mytho­log­i­cal Ter­rain” by Rod­ney Hill

A good video on the back­ground of the show is “Amer­i­can Mas­ters Rod Ser­ling: Sub­mit­ted for your Approval,” and you can find detailed dis­cus­sions of many episodes on The Twi­light Zone Pod­cast. Ken rec­om­mends The Twi­light Zone Com­pan­ion. Oh, and Chris Hard­wick real­ly likes TZ.

If you enjoyed this episodes, you might like our pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion with Ken on time trav­el.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This week, we con­tin­ue for more than half an hour, fur­ther dis­cussing the Twi­light Zone with Ken, which includes a look at the 1985–1989 series.

This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.