Zoning Out

Twilight Zone episodes have a simple formula.  You can't get too fancy with an anthology series, where every story creates a new world.  So each half hour has a basic premise where there's a certain amount of mystery, then a twist at the end where things are often explained in an unsettling way: the woman is a mannequin, the guy is in hell, they're all going to be eaten.

The show lasted five seasons, and had a fair amount of successful stories.  However, in its fourth season, CBS declared the episodes would be an hour.  Even at half an hour they often felt padded, with the writers (usually Rod Serling) hitting the basic theme over and over so you can't miss the point.  At twice as long, the shows are so slack that all you can do is speculate about the "twist" and usually figure it out well before it happens.

The show switched back to half an hour for the final season, and a good thing, too.  I love "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" but seeing William Shatner having a nervous breakdown for a full hour would be too much.  Though, come to think of it, we saw that a few times on Star Trek.

(Okay, I'm not the first to note the weakness of the hour episodes.  In fact, the people who ran the show knew it was a bad idea back in 1963.  But I just watched a mini-marathon of hourlongs and felt I had to say something.)

PS  This post holds the Pajama Guy record for the longest wait to be published.  I wrote it about a year ago and postponed it over and over.  It's time to put it up. It deserves its moment.  Besides, I watched some of a Twilight Zone marathon on July 4th so it feels timely again.