2020 has been the craziest year in recent memory, and hopefully things get better in the second half and into the rest of the decade. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday highlights the best episodes of The Twilight Zone that can be directly related to what’s been going on in the world 50 years after the groundbreaking Rod Serling-led series ended. These aren’t all the best episodes and they don’t have all the best life lessons, but they are the episodes everyone should try to watch in 2020. Each episode includes Serling’s great closing narration to help give an overview on the lesson that can be taken from each of them.
10. “On Thursday We Leave for Home”
Closing Narration: “William Benteen, who had prerogatives: he could lead, he could direct, dictate, judge, legislate. It became a habit, then a pattern and finally a necessity. William Benteen, once a god, now a population of one.”
A number of Twilight Zone episodes underscore the perils of power, and “On Thursday We Leave For Home” might best exemplify the danger of a selfish, power-hungry mindset. It’s relatable to today with the politicians that are in it for power over helping citizens.
9. “No Time Like the Past”
Closing Narration: “Incident on a July afternoon, 1881. A man named Driscoll who came and went and, in the process, learned a simple lesson, perhaps best said by a poet named Lathbury, who wrote, ‘Children of yesterday, heirs of tomorrow, what are you weaving? Labor and sorrow? Look to your looms again, faster and faster fly the great shuttles prepared by the master. Life’s in the loom, room for it. Room.’ Tonight’s tale of clocks and calendars in the Twilight Zone.”
Even if time travel were possible, you can’t change the past—but you can always do something about the future and impact it in a positive way.
8. “Printer’s Devil”
Closing Narration: “Exit the infernal machine, and with it his satanic majesty, Lucifer, prince of darkness—otherwise known as Mr. Smith. He’s gone, but not for good; that wouldn’t be like him—he’s gone for bad. And he might be back, with another ticket….to The Twilight Zone.”
Two present-day takeaways here. One, don’t sell your soul. And two, news—from both sides—is certainly misleading today.
7. “He’s Alive”
Closing Narration: “Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare – Chicago? Los Angeles? Miami, Florida? Vincennes, Indiana? Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there’s hate, where there’s prejudice, where there’s bigotry. He’s alive. He’s alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He’s alive because through these things we keep him alive.”
The vast majority of people in the world are not bad, but there are still harsh people out there. The worst of our history lives on in them.
6. “The Shelter”
Closing Narration: “No moral, no message, no prophetic tract, just a simple statement of fact: for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized. Tonight’s very small exercise in logic from the Twilight Zone.”
Serling says it extremely well in his simple closing narration. Especially when the chips are down, we must stay together as a civilization.
5. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”
Closing Narration: “The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices…to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill…and suspicion can destroy…and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own – for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.”
Very similar to “The Shelter”. Be careful looking for a scapegoat—particularly without reason or evidence—in an uncertain situation. Perhaps more important, “the mob” typically has a way of doing more harm than good.
4. “Eye of the Beholder”
Closing Narration: “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. Lesson to be learned in the Twilight Zone.”
Arguably the greatest all-time Twilight Zone episode, “Eye of the Beholder” gives a lesson that everyone can follow. “Normal” isn’t always a good thing, and there is beauty in being different. You don’t have to try to be different for the sake of being different, but it’s an overwhelming positive that not everyone is the same and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
3. “Four O’Clock”
Closing Narration: “At four o’clock, an evil man made his bed and lay in it, a pot called a kettle black, a stone-thrower broke the windows of his glass house. You look for this one under ‘F’ for fanatic and ‘J’ for justice in the Twilight Zone.”
You see it all the time on social media. Today, too many people are quick to throw stones, judging and categorizing others. Often times, those people should take a look in the mirror within their glass house.
2. “Number 12 Looks Just Like You”
Closing Narration: “Portrait of a young lady in love – with herself. Improbable? Perhaps. But in an age of plastic surgery, body building and an infinity of cosmetics, let us hesitate to say impossible. These, and other strange blessings, may be waiting in the future, which, after all, IS The Twilight Zone.”
It’s scary how true this has become 50 years following its originally airing. Plastic surgery and cosmetics—along with social pressure—has unfortunately gotten to the point where some attempt to totally change their look to fit with a fake, unrealistic, and misguided notion of beauty. Again, like “Eye of the Beholder”, this goes back to what it means to be like everyone else or “normal”. Individual distinction and imperfections are a big part what make us human.
1. “The Obsolete Man”
Closing Narration: “The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshiped. Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man…that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under ‘M’ for ‘Mankind’ – in The Twilight Zone.”
As relatable as No. 2 has become today, the No. 1 choice for The Twilight Zone episode most relatable to today is pretty clear. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to people being told what is “essential” and what is not, and many people have lost their jobs, salaries, and worse in a shut-down economy that gave them no choice—no right—to even attempt to responsibly leave their place of business open. “The Obsolete Man” takes it to another level in a State-controlled society that has eliminated books and God. Overall, it’s a must-watch episode and gives you something to think about.
Burgess Meredith the legend
Great show. I need to rewatch these.
Desean Jackson in the role of Dennis Hopper.
Good article. They’re trying to remake the TZ again with Jordan Peele, doesn’t come remotely close to as sensational as the original series.
The Obsolete Man. Spot. On. Number 12 and Eye of the Beholder both amazing too.
MUST watch for all.
Wow.
Death’s Head Revisited:
There is an answer to the doctor’s question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes — all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s Earth.
Telling today when people want to forget history.