The Twilight Zone aired more
episodes in season 3 than any other season (37; seasons 1 and 5 each had 36);
however, two of those episodes were actually produced during season 2 (“The Grave” and “Nothing in the Dark”). Unfortunately,
quantity didn’t always equal quality…
Readers of this blog are aware
that I don’t typically rate and rank the episodes as I review them. However, for retrospective purposes, I am
willing to categorize them in three general ballparks: Decent-to-excellent, mediocre, and
lousy. Season 3 breaks down as follows:
Good-to-excellent: 32
Mediocre: 2
Lousy: 5
This means that 81.08% of season
3 was good-to-excellent. That’s not bad,
but it’s a step down from season 2’s 82.76%, and it’s a dramatic drop from
season 1’s 91.67%.
The mediocre entries were
“Showdown with Rance McGrew” and “Hocus-Pocus and Frisby.” Neither were terrible and they had their
moments, but I’d be fine if I never crossed paths with them again.
The lousy entries were “The Mirror,”
“Once Upon a Time,” “Four O’clock,” “The Gift,” and “Cavender is Coming.” All five are offensively bad in some way
(actually several ways, in most cases), and all five should’ve been aborted
before production ever started. They
could’ve (and should’ve) produced five less episodes and ran some of the season
1 gems that never got encores instead.
Here are some screenshots that I held back during the weekly episode spotlights (usually to avoid spoilers.) Enjoy!
The fact this is the season that almost killed Twilight Zone (which is why we wont be discussing Season 4 until January) kinda throws a wet blanket on any enthusiasm for this year.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's the problem that most of Serling's original material this year were stale retreads of scripts that were done better in Seasons one and two (hell I'd argue that Bevis was slightly better, emphasis on slightly, than Cavender) with a few exceptions.
Yeah I don't like 3 that much. Never have, never will.