Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. The Twilight Zone is arguably one of the best and most influential shows in television history. The reason in the doors, and is still being washed and talked about more than 60 years after its debut, can not only be traced to its superior storytelling and innovations in the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, but the fact that each episode is embedded with the lesson on how to grapple with life's moral and existential dilemmas. Here to impact those life lessons is Mark de Wiedziak, author of Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in the Twilight Zone.
Today on the show, Mark and I discuss the parable-like morals from a selection of Twilight Zone episodes drawn from those that are my favorites, Mark's favorites, and simply classic. And since Halloween is coming up, Mark and I both offer our picks for the just plain scariest episodes to watch. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash Twilight Zone.
All right, Mark Dweedsiak, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me. So you wrote a book a few years ago called Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in the Twilight Zone. And this book grew out of, I mean, you had been, you had introduced your daughter to the classic television shows you loved. And when she was a teenager, you decided it was time for her to watch your very favorite television show, which is also one of the favorite shows in my family. And that's the Twilight Zone.
And as you watch the show together, you found yourself discussing life lessons that were embedded in the episodes and realized the Twilight Zone really offers a good guide for life. There are parables and morality plays in the episodes. And so you wrote a book about those lessons.
And I think it's interesting you watch this with your daughter she loved it. You mentioned in the book that you've taught classes, college classes, and when you mention classic television, right, kids are not, they don't know what the honeymooners are anymore. The Andy Griffith Show has fallen out of the collective pop culture consciousness. But when you mentioned Twilight Zone,
The kids still know about Twilight Zone. My kids, they're 11 and they're nine. They're low to watch anything in black and white. And I'm like, I want to watch this classic movies of black and white. No, I don't want to watch that. But Twilight Zone, they're all over. They love the Twilight Zone. So what is it about the Twilight Zone that gives it such timeless cross generational appeal? The Twilight Zone was is and forever will be.
great storytelling and you're not asking somebody who is young when you introduce this to them you're not asking them to watch a ninety minute two-hour movie
You're asking them to watch a half hour episode. It's easily digested and it has the appeal of sitting around the campfire of, let me tell you a story. Well, who doesn't want to hear a story? And especially youngsters. And I discovered the Twilight Zone when I was very young. I discovered the Twilight Zone when I was not old enough to have seen it in its original run. It ended in 64.
I was about seven years old, going on eight when it ended its run. I was too young for it, but I grew up in New York and a station near WPIX channel 11 immediately started rerunning the Twilight Zone. I started watching it at about the age of 10 in reruns.
And I loved it for the reason probably most kids my age would have first loved it. I didn't know there were morality tales in these things. I didn't know there was something metaphoric going on behind this. I was watching it for the spook out factor. It had that same appeal of, you remember when you were a kid,
And you try to creep out your friends with those urban legends that everybody knew that always existed everywhere. And it always said, and the only thing that was left, they found the hook on the bumper of the car. Yeah, those kinds of stories. That was the appeal of the Twilight Zone for me, 10 years old. And I loved it, you know, because I become a horror fan at seven years old. I love the old Universal horror movies.
I loved anything that was like that, the 1950s science fiction movies about giant creatures, sacking major cities. I loved it all. And here comes the Twilight Zone. And it gave you a daily creep out and who didn't want that at 10 years old. And then when I was a teenager, I started watching them and then you start to sense there's something more going on here. There's something going on
behind all of this sort of creepiness. So the Twilight Zone can hook you when you're very young, just as it hooked me as a 10-year-old in 1966, it can hook a 10-year-old today for the very, very same reason. It has that wonderful, amazing fantasy storytelling aspect to it.
And why wouldn't it? The principal writers were Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont, and Richard Matheson, which, you know, it's like the 1927 Yankees, a fantasy storytelling that was working on the show. So that's the, I think that that's the short answer. Then you also have great performances. You had these great dialogue written by these great writers, and then they handed it to these great actors. Twilight Zone brings a lot of storytelling, hate.
And that's very, very appealing to all ages. And you can age up with the Twilight Zone. So you can be watching it at 10 and just saying, well, this is a creepy show. I love it. Then at 1314, you can start to watch it and realize there's something more. And then as an adult, you realize these are life lessons that you can carry with you all the way through. So
It's just got a tremendous amount of appeal to it. And time, you know, the proof is in the pudding because we're talking about a black and white show that started in 1959. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Good storytelling is transcendent. It's like fairy tales. We all know these fairy tales. And I think people will still talk about the Twilight Zone a hundred years from now. I agree. You know, and I think one of the things that gives it that sort of
intellectual grit is exactly that is you know rotserling figured something out with the twilight zone you know i tell this in the book this is this is and it's no secret anybody who writes about the twilight zone can't get away from the fact that when rotserling started his career in broadcasting radio and television in the late forties and early fifties television in particular was still the wild west it was a new medium
there were no rules they were making it up as they went along you could do just about anything if you could figure out how to do it with no money no budget and no special effects and no stars if you could figure all that out you could do anything and as the fifties progressed television grew up and by the end of the decade when there were no rules at the beginning of the decade by the end of the decade it was nothing but rules
and all of a sudden it was getting harder and harder for rott serling who had made his name as one of the angry young men of television paddy shayevsky were probably the two leading writers in the era what was then called the the golden age of of live drama and by the end of the decade he was getting almost near impossible to get the message out everybody which to be was now it was like well that the sponsor won't like that
The stations in this area of the country won't like that or the sensor won't like that. And it was, it was becoming very, very frustrating. So Rod Serling took a calculated risk. He fled into the Twilight Zone and he took a gamble. And the gamble was basically, I can write about the very same themes I've been writing about realistically, all this time, all of the great themes of Rod Serling's career.
prejudice, how we treat children, how we treat old people. I can write about all of that. And the sponsors and the sensors will not lift an eyebrow as long as it's couched in fantasy.
And he was right. The Twilight Zone addresses all of those things. And he didn't have any problem getting the message across anymore. And in the book, I call Rod a moralist in disguise. And that is actually an expression that comes from Mark Twain. And it actually comes from a letter that a little French girl sent to Mark Twain in the last decade of his life, a very perceptive
young woman named Helene Picard, who wrote him essentially a note saying, I know the world knows you as a funny man, but I detect that behind all of the laughter and the humor is a very serious person who's trying to teach us something. And Mark Twain wrote back to this amazing young woman in France, a letter which basically said, you've got it. You're on it. You're 100% correct.
don't tell anybody, but I am a moralist in disguise. Now, is there a better description for Rod Serling than that? Basically, what Mark Twain did with humor, which was Mark Twain once said that, for humor to live, it must not professively teach, and it must not professively preach, but it must do both if it will live. In other words, the moral had to be hidden. The moral had to be hidden behind the laughter.
And so what Rod Serling did was Rod Serling used fantasy, the way Mark Twain used humor. He hid the message in fantasy. He was like Mark Twain, a moralist in disguise. And so each Twilight Zone, especially rods, contained what I would call a parable. Now parables are storytelling. And it's a great way to teach somebody a lesson
while entertaining them. And you want to say to yourself, now, where have I heard that before? Where have I heard this whole notion of parables being moral lessons? And you might say, oh, oh, oh, you mean the New Testament. You're talking about about Christ. Well, actually, you can go all the way back to the Greeks and Esau.
You know, it actually even goes back farther than that. The best way to sort of get every ESOP's fable ended with the unsaid words, and the moral of the story is, and you could say the same thing about the Twilight Zone. Right. He has ears to hear. Let him hear. That's what Rod was trying to do.
I think that's a good point you make about the Twilight Zone. He was a moralist in disguise, and what I love about the Twilight Zone. I'll watch some other TV shows or movies where it's obvious there's some sort of moral message or philosophical message they're trying to convey, but it always feels hamfisted, feels like they're just beating you over the head with it, and it doesn't land as much.
And when I watch the Twilight Zone, I always, when I'm done with it, like a good episode of the Twilight Zone, not all of them are great, but like a really great episode. You're left kind of disturbed and disoriented and like you stew on it for days, weeks, sometimes there's like episodes I think about just years after I've seen it, I'm still thinking about it. And I think that's the talent, the talent and the expertise of Rod Serling, those other writers.
Oh, let's dig in some of these lessons from the Twilight Zone. There were 156 episodes during its five season run. So there's a lot to choose from. So I thought to narrow it down, I'm going to focus on the episodes that have had the greatest impact on me and my family. So there are two episodes that Kate and I, my wife, we reference quite a bit to each other. And it's walking distance and a stop at Willoughby.
And you make the case that these two episodes are part of a character progression and a theme development that certainly began even before Twilight Zone. But let's talk about these two episodes first. Let's talk about walking distance. Readers die just a version of this story. What is this? Oh, I guess we gotta do the spoiler alert. If you haven't seen the Twilight Zone, you should probably stop listening right now and go watch it and then come back and listen to this. So there we go. You got your spoiler alert. So walking distance, what's the reader's die just version of this story?
Kig Young plays a businessman in his 30s, a burned out businessman who is being driven into the ground by the rat race and the New York lifestyle. And he is driving and his car breaks down. And it happens to break down just about a mile or two from the town where he grew up.
And so he leaves the car with the mechanic to be fixed. And since he has some time on his hands, he decides, hey, that's walking distance. I can walk back to my hometown, see what it looks like now. And he indeed walks not only back to his hometown, he walks into his own past and encounters himself as a little boy and the hometown that he knew then.
This, you know, one of the inspirations for this is that every summer, Rod Serling would pack up everything and his family, his wife and two daughters, and he would spend the summer on Kayoga Lake at the family cottage on the lake, and they would spend these idyllic summers. He actually got a great deal of writing done during that time.
And he would always take one day during every summer to go back to Binghamton, which is where he grew up. And that episode is basically about Binghamton, where he grew up in the park, where you can go to today. If you ever get to Binghamton, go to Recreation Park. Recreation Park, Rod Sarling was born on December 25th, 1924. Recreation Park was opened a few months later. They grew up together. And he had had a carousel.
It had a bandstand. It was the idyllic place of summer recollection for Rod Surling. So that episode is extraordinarily autobiographical. The character was about Rod's age when he was writing it, and he was feeling burned out by... He had accomplished a lot. He had done a lot since the end of the war as a writer. And he always had this... felt this pull
on the past, the nostalgia of his childhood. And that's what that episode is about. And it is an amazing event. I would venture to guess that if you could have asked Rod what his favorite episodes were, he might have named walking distance and stop at Willoughby. They are certainly Rod's daughter, who is also a very fine writer and serving and wrote the forward for my book. I think those are two of Anne's very, very favorite episodes too as well.
Yeah, in walking distance, so Martin Sloan, he goes back to his childhood. And it seems like he gets frustrated because he wants to go back there and kind of recreate it. And then everyone there is like, who's this weirdo, you know, this 36 year old man saying that he's this my son who's actually 12 or whatever, nine. And then his dad, finally, the Martin Sloan's dad finally realizes, okay, I think you actually are my son from the future.
And his dad said, look, you know, I know you're having, it might be hard, you know, you're having a hard time in your life, but you can't go back, you can't live in the past. Like you have to, you have to create those good memories for yourself in your life. Like this is, this is done. You have to move on. There's an amazing exchange. The dad says, is it so bad where you are? And Martin says, I thought so. And the dad says, look around. You know, you might find
you know, summers there too. And I think that's an amazing thing. You have to live in the moment. You have to live. You can't live in the past. You can't, you know, it's one of the great episodes, the lessons of that episode is you, you can't, you can love the past. You can appreciate the past, but you can't live in the past. You know, we're doing this interview. That was one of my mother's favorite lessons to us when we were growing up. But you know, as we were getting older, she always,
talk about living in your time and living in your moment and not, you know, living in the past. And, you know, today is my, is actually my parents wedding anniversary. So it has a sort of a pull for me too.
And then in a stop at Willow B, same sort of thing. You have this guy in his 30s, late 30s, super successful, but he's just getting beaten down by the rat race. And my wife, whenever we feel like really busy, we always, you know, we got work and then there's kids, we got to be out and we're like, push, push, push, like the boss in that episode. Push, push, push all the way. Push, push, push. And to escape this, this guy,
goes to this idyllic past that he never actually lived while sleeping on a train on his commute. Yeah, he falls asleep on the train. He wakes up and the train is an old-fashioned train and that the conductor is your old-fashioned conductor and he's yelling out, Willoughby, next stop, Willoughby, and he train pulls in and then, you know, he wakes and he thinks, was it a dream? Was it not?
And as things get worse and worse for me, he's determined to get off at Willoughby. He's determined to find that idyllic place. And it's a very, very bittersweet episode as we both know because it ends.
It like a lot of Twilight Zone, it ends in a way that's sort of open to interpretation. Is what happened? What exactly happens? Is that a happy ending to Willoughby or isn't it? Yeah, no. Right. Sometimes you're having those moves like, I want to get off at Willoughby. You're like, wait a minute. No, maybe I don't want to get off at Willoughby.
Yeah, it's a really interesting, or is he in a better place? Do we end remark? You know, the last thing we see of Martin is he's in this other realm. He's in this other place and he's having this sort of huckleberry fin existence that he's dreamed of. And again, I'm not so sure it is as downbeat and ending as a lot of people think, but it is, you know, he did.
You know, one of Rod's recurring themes was how people get used up and we cast them aside. And, you know, he basically talked about business doing that and he'll talk about it again. His first great piece for television was patterns, you know, which was about, aired about five years before the Twilight Zone premiered. And patterns sort of addresses this issue of
when you've taken all the talents somebody's had, and you've pushed them to their extremes, and they've given you everything they have. How do we treat them at that point? Do we just cast them aside as Arthur Miller says, in death of a salesman, like a piece of fruit, like a dried up thing? Do we just cast that aside then? And, you know, Ron is always sort of talking about that. He talks about, you know, I don't know how many writers in the 1950s and the 60s, and even today sort of talk about how we treat
of people as they get older, and maybe they lose a step. And the Twilight Zone was always sort of talking. That recurs in a lot of episodes of how we treat aging parents, how we treat older people, and how we treat the most vulnerable people in our society, how we treat children. That's another theme of the Twilight Zone that comes back a few times. And I think it's something we all can relate to.
because we are, we pushed into careers, we all get pushed hard. There's always a lot of stress. And there is this kind of, wow, wouldn't it be nice to escape? Wouldn't it be nice to go to a place like Willoughby, where you can live your life to the full measure, as they say in the episode? And I think it's a beautifully crafted episode.
And what's interesting about those episodes, you're not left with solutions about the problem, but you're less thinking about and stewing on it. I think Willoughby will come up throughout my life where I'm having a busy moment. I'll think about Willoughby is like, what does Willoughby got to teach me? So I think that's one of the geniuses of Rod Sterling. Another iconic Twilight Zone episode is time enough at last. Give us a summary of the show and then talk about,
Why in the book you said this is like one of your least favorite episodes, even though it's iconic. So you got to talk about why. I don't want that to sort of color that because it's not one of my least favorite because I really like almost everything about it. I like the way it's shot. I like the glee performance. I think it's Burgess Meredith plays a fellow who loves to read. He is a teller in a bank and his boss, his wife, everybody is he's very unpleasant people. Basically.
want him not to read. They're always trying to stop him from, from reading. So he spends his lunch break in the bank vault. And when he does, there is a nuclear exchange. The world is destroyed and he is saved. He is the last man on earth. And he walks through the rubble and he realizes everybody's gone. And he even contemplates suicide until he sees the library. And he realizes
This can be his survival. He can go through eternity. There's books forever. He can read, and he now has time to read. There's time enough at last. And as he is stacking the books up on the steps of the library, the glasses slit his reading glasses slip from his face and shatter. And he picks the glasses up and says, that's not fair. There was time. There was time enough at last. Now, it is probably the most iconic.
Twilight Zone episode, as far as Oh Henry type of ironic endings go, it is probably the most powerful. And it has probably the most powerful visual image of the Twilight Zone, the broken glasses. So I appreciate it on all those levels, but it is an outlier. And when I say that is the Twilight Zone worked according to a certain set of rules. And one of the rules was that you were rewarded and punished by what you brought into the Twilight Zone.
If you brought in kindness, mercy, empathy, a caring for children and older people, if generosity, if you brought all of that into the Twilight Zone, you were rewarded for it. On the other hand, if you brought in greed, if you were mean, if you were a bully, if you brought in all of the nasty aspects of the human existence, you were punished for it.
The fellow in time enough at last, to me, to my mind, did nothing to merit that awful ending. You know, what is his crime? You know, he wants to read. Well, how dare he? So it's an outlier. It's a powerful episode and I don't want people to understand that I don't like it. But I do think it stands out because it's one of the episodes that does not really play according to the rules of the Twilight Zone.
having said all that i had i could not ignore that episode when i wrote the book and i could not not come up with a life lesson for it and the life lesson was again was was supplied by my mother and the life lesson i put on it which i think is a valid life lesson when we were kids and we would there would be squabbles among us as we were five kids growing up and as there were squabbles if if
It was not settled to one of us our satisfaction. We would say, but that's not fair. And my mother's favorite expression was nobody said life was fair. I hated that when I was a kid. I don't really like it in the Twilight Zone either, but I acknowledge it as the truth.
life isn't fair and nobody said life was fair and that's what Burgess Meredith's character says at the end he says that isn't fair and we agree with him it isn't fair so that's you know that's my take on that episode and by the way answering agrees with that a hundred percent here's another one who who just feels like the you know the payoff is not it does not fit any crime he's not he does not really
Commit a crime now. I've heard people say it's really about the fact that You know, he is so absorbed in books. He's cut himself off from other people and that is a legitimate interpretation of the story And if that's your interpretation, no, you can't be wrong in your interpretation I don't happen to agree with it because of how the characters are played The wife may be the most evil person in the whole history of the twilight zone and that's saying something
that awful unpleasant who commits one of the worst crimes when she takes his book of poetry and says to him, here, read some poems from this for me. And he's delighted because he thinks, oh, she finally gets it. She finally understands my love of the written word and poetry. And he opens the book to see she has defaced every page. She has gone to the extent of making every page unreadable.
I don't know if there is a more despicable act in the history of the Twilight Zone than that. That goes beyond mean. So no, I don't buy that as far as the explanation. But again, it's my life lesson, and I think it's a valid life lesson. We're going to take a quick break for you, Words More Sponsors.
And now back to the show. Well, another episode that Kate and I referenced again and again to our kids and to each other is a nice place to visit. What's that show about? What do you think is the lesson from the show? Well, let me back up on that one on a nice place to visit. Why is that one particularly resonant to you? Okay. So I guess we got to talk about what's through the summary of the show, right? Okay. So you give us, you're the expert. So give us the summary of the show and then we'll talk about why it resonates with me.
It's the episode where it's where the the criminal gets shot, you know, it's Larry Bliden. It's one of Larry Bliden's two performances on it. And he plays a street thug just as common a criminal as you possibly can have. And he gets gunned down during a robbery and what he assumes is an angel appears who just calls himself Pip played by Sebastian Cabot. And he is there to give him every everything he desires.
everything he wishes for. And he gets the nicest apartment, you know, women throw themselves at him. He got all of his life desires. Every time he plays a game of chance, any gambling, he wins, every slot machine pays off. And at the end, he's bored. He becomes absolutely bored with the fact that he's got everything he wants. And, you know, he says to the angel that, you know, he doesn't even understand how he ended up here, you know,
that maybe he should have been sent to the other place, and the angel starts laughing and tells him, but this is the other place. You are in hell, and this is going to be your hell. So now I am dying to know if you're part of the expression there. I am dying to know why that one. So appeals to you and your wife. It was the idea that you can't know the sweet without the bitter.
right or you and yet there has to be like an opposition in all things like if you want to know what hot is you have to know what cold is and we tell our kids when you know life just is you get whatever you want it becomes flat and I think I mean it resonates with us kind of in our this age of you know
Algorithms giving you whatever you want in terms of content, and you're going to get Amazon shipped to your door in a day. I mean, we're kind of creating worlds like this mobster of ours, right? You just get whatever you want, cater to you. And people like, my life just feels existentially flat. And I'd say, it's probably because of this, right? There's no friction in your life, and you need that.
That's that's our that's our takeaway from it. And I agree, you know, that it goes back to another Mark Twain quote, which is, you know, Mark Twain once said something that along the lines of, you know, happiness ain't a thing in itself. You know, happiness is just a comparison to something that ain't happy. You know, that you need both. How would you have any gauges to what's happy if that's all you knew that you have to have misery in your life? You have to have tragedy in your life to understand what happiness is.
there has to be a country. So yes, that is true. And I think that's one thing that's true about the whole Twilight Zone is that the Twilight Zone was very good at sort of blending light and dark. Nothing ever works. Darkness is always pierced by light in the Twilight Zone. And the flip side of it is that darkness is always lurking there, no matter how light you think something is.
And, you know, it's interesting because it's a black and white show. So the contrast works extraordinarily well in the Twilight Zone. But that's, you know, the episode, and I put one of the lessons, the more obvious lessons I put on a nice place to visit was that if something is too good to be true, it probably is. And I think that that's entirely, you know, every day, you know, and as your kids get older,
they're going to have to be even more wary of this than we are. Every day, there are scammers out there, you know, trying to find a way in by presenting something that looks too good to be true. And they become very sophisticated about this. And they're getting better and better at it. And everywhere you look, there are people who are basically
trying to present something which is too good to be true. And the Twilight Zone told us very early, be wary of anything that's too good to be true. If it looks too good, it probably is too good. And so there's sort of that too. I mean, I think that that's a sort of, because one of the great little things about the Twilight Zone is
There is always multiple lessons you can put on and interpretations on you can put on Twilight Zone. And my interpretation may not agree with your interpretation, which is good because, you know, you're bringing your life experience, your belief systems, your to the episodes that you watch. So your interpretation of a Twilight Zone
probably won't always be the same as mine. You know, that's what a great thing about metaphoric storytelling. A primary example of this is the first chapter of the book that I wrote. It's not the first chapter in the book. It's the chapter I wrote is the sample chapter to sell the book to the publishers. And it was the one on to serve man. Yes, that's another one. I think, yeah, we love the episode. Yeah. And
You know, I think I put maybe, you know, seven or eight different interpretive lessons in that chapter, you know, that it could be, you know, some of them were funny and a little flip and some of them were more profound, but they're all in there. It's not like any one of them is illegitimate as a possible interpretation of, I think, you know, the main one I put on it was never judge a book by its cover. And that was somewhat being a little humorous with it, but
It could be viewed as basically a retelling of the Trojan horse. You could very easily just watch that episode that way. But again, there's some episodes which you could look at and you could easily come up with five or six different interpretations for them.
Yeah, to serve man. So it's similar to that, if something's too good to be true, it probably is. So the story there is aliens come to earth and they basically said, humans, we're gonna give you everything you want. There's just books as to serve man on it. And we're gonna give you everything you want. You can go to this planet and you're gonna be fed, it's gonna be great. And then at the end, they find out like there's these decoders who are trying to decode the alien language and they finally realize to serve man is it's actually a cookbook.
It's a recipe book on how to serve man to these aliens to eat. Right. And the candidates is the name of the race. And again, they arrive promising peace and prosperity and an end of hunger and an end of drought and all this is like, you know, there it is. If that ain't too good to be true, I don't know what is.
Another episode you mentioned a lot in the book is Mr. Beavis. And when we initially watched this one, we didn't like it. Like my wife and I didn't like it. And I think it's probably because like we're probably too much of practical squares. But you know, Mr. Beavis is just as weirdness kind of annoyed me and I've kind of felt like he needed to get his life together, like get a steady job, you know, just act quite acting like an oddball. But after stewing about this episode for a while,
I've come to appreciate the lesson from the show. So talk about what is, what's the story of Mr. Beavis and what do you think the lesson is and why did you, it seems like you were, you're drawn to that one quite a bit. Yeah, I am actually. Mr. Beavis is, he is an oddball. He is an eccentric.
he played by Orson Bean. He likes all these strange stuff like Zither Music. It's odd because one of the things they say he likes is he likes the works of Charles Dickens. I was like, why is that so odd? Maybe in 1959, 1960, somebody drawn to
an author from the previous century seemed odd. I don't know. But he's out of step with the world. He's out of step with what the world is supposed to be like for a young man in around 1960. And he's out of step at work. He's considered it. But the children love him because he is this kind of grown child himself. So the children of the neighborhood love him. He's co-workers love him because he is boss hates him, but the co-workers love him because he is he is warm.
And he is funny and he is, he is an accepting down to earth person. And, and it'd be tough not to like him, you know, if you encountered him as your co-worker or such. And an angel played by Henry Jones appears and basically on the worst day of Mr. Beavis's life says you can have anything you want. He offers him whatever he wants. And of course, everything the angel gives him
makes mr. beavis more and more unhappy because it takes away the lifestyle that he was happy you know he was not successful but he was happy and he understood what it meant to be happy and that did not mean position and money and power and all of those things and at the end the angel sort of understands this and restores his life to the way it was
I think among Twilight Zone fans, this is not considered a favorite episode. This would probably come out very low. It also falls into the category of the fact that there's a general consensus that Rod's comedies were not as strong as his other types of stories on the Twilight Zone. But by and large, true, although he did write a couple of really good comedies, and Mr. Garrity in the Graves is a sterling example of how he could write comedy.
and be successful with it. But this one, you know, I think people thought it was a little bit, and I would have to say, you know, one thing I want to say is one thing I did not do in the book was I treated these episodes for the metaphor storytelling. Not so much the quality of them, you know. Would I rank Mr. Beavis among the finest Twilight Zone episodes of all time? No, I would not. Do I like the message? Oh, yeah, I like it a lot.
I do maybe because I feel like that's kind of one of my roles in life is that I've always been a little bit out of step. I have not lived my life in step. And that also does make you a bit of an outsider. And you are going to be rewarded for that. I always tell you to tell my students, I can't state this. There's a price to be paid for living life in your own way.
there are rewards for it, and hopefully the rewards will outnumber the drawbacks to living a life that is not prescribed. So yes, I do like the message of that episode a lot.
Another theme you see throughout the Twilight Zone is this idea of recapturing the magic of childhood. So I think the Mr. Beavis kind of plays on that a bit, but one episode that really captures it is, kick the can. Yes. Summarize this episode and how has this episode helped you reconnect with the magic and playfulness of childhood?
Well Ernest Truex plays who is a wonderful actor and he's also in another of what you need as the peddler who can always give people what they need out of his box of goodies. But you know he plays in the resident of an old folks home and it opens. He thinks his son is going to come and take him home and the son arrives to tell you basically there's no room. He's misunderstood him. He has to go back into the old folks home.
He sees a bunch of kids playing kick the can and it starts him thinking that maybe you get old when you start to think you're old. You get old when you stop playing. And he sort of thinks maybe the secret of life is kick the can. What if all of the residents could all play kick the can one night? Could they recapture their youth? Could they recapture the magic of youth?
And his best friend tells him, you know, you're old, you're going to break a bone. What's the matter with you? You're acting like a fool. And, you know, there's an old saying, you get old when you stop playing games and not, you know, you, you, you basically, when you, you're not in touch with your youth, you know, that you're, you, you, you know, you're no longer mentally young. And he tries to convince his friend to have an open mind and play, kick the can and the friend refuses. And of course it works. And the,
The residents are all transformed into children, except his best friend, who pleads with the children, take me with you. And they run off because they don't recognize him anymore. And I think that that is a, it's a powerful episode. It really is. And it's not a Rod Serling episode. It's a George Clayton Johnson. The writer who contributed to the Twilight Zone, who was closest to Rod's philosophy and view of life, I think, was George Clayton Johnson.
And that episode really, it's a beautifully performed. It's just a wonderful cast. And this notion that we now say, you know, you need to be in touch with your inner child. You need to be, you know, and I, I agree with that. You know, it's just, it's, it's a difference between valuing the inner child and not being childish. You know, it was not, but not living your life in a childish way, but never to lose sort of the child like wonder.
that you had. And I think that's very much what that episode is about. It's not just about how we treat the older people in our lives. That's certainly part of it. But there's another part of it which talks about, you know, the magic of retaining. In G.K. Chesterton, who is a wonderful writer, and I always love reading Chesterton, you know,
Chesterton once said that nobody achieves greatness who does not hold on to something of the nursery. I think that's a wonderful quote. I think that's just wonderful. If you really do lose all sense of that, you will never really achieve genius and greatness.
And I think that's true. So we've been talking about the philosophical life lessons from the Twilight Zone. But as you said at the beginning, the show also has a creepiness factor that can be enjoyed in and of itself. So with Halloween coming up, what do you think are the scariest Twilight Zone episodes?
Well, what scares you is an extraordinary, I'll ask you the same question, because what scares you is one of the most individual of responses anybody can have. I think this is like a Rorschach test. You know, what's the scariest episode of the Twilight Zone? For me, it comes down to two. The two episodes that I found the scariest, and I would not put these among the very, very, very best Twilight Zone episodes. If I was making a list of the very, very best, I would not put these, but I would put them at the top list of the scariest.
One is 22 about the performer in the hospital and she falls asleep and she dreams every night that she's following a nurse Down into the elevator down to the basement and there is a room that says 22 and It is the morgue and the creepy nurse comes out and says room for one more And she goes off screaming you know and she finally is
declared well, and she goes to catch a plane at the airport. And the flight number is 22. And the boarding attendant is the nurse, the creepy nurse. And as she comes up with her ticket, the creepy woman says room for one more. And she goes screaming off. And it's what saves her because the plane bursts into flames on takeoff.
I thought that was an incredibly scary episode. I did it 10 years old and I still find it pretty unnerving. The other is the ring-a-ding girl, which is an odd one to say. But again, it also has a plane crash in it. And I'm not afraid of flying. I've flown my entire life. I've never been flying. But I think that has an unnerving quality because it's about a successful actress, a star, who is flying to a next job. She's coming from Europe.
And her fan club has sent her a ring, a very ring with a large stone. And in the stone, she can see people from her hometown pleading for her to come home. And the next thing we see is that she's home. And she decides to put on a concert at the local high school auditorium where she had first appeared. And a lot of people are upset about this because there's a picnic. There's the annual picnic. And she goes ahead with the concert
And a plane crashes into where the picnic was and countless lives have been saved because of her promising to do this concert at the high school. And you later find out she was on the plane. So it's got that wonderful twist ending.
It's got that, what did we just see quality to it? But I think there's just something very, very creepy about that episode too that always got to me. So those are mine. What are yours? Okay, so to have something in common, it's the first two are the living doll with talky Tina. Sure. It's creepy. And then similar to that is the dummy.
Also terrified. I think just, I think that's a creepy thing, like inanimate objects becoming alive. Creepy. And then the other one, I would say it's a good life with the kid who can like think people dead basically. That's true. It's kind of the cornfield. Right. It's kind of the cornfield. Yeah, right.
Well, those are all good choices. And again, I think it always goes back. You're end up telling us a lot more about yourself than you do the Twilight Zone. Can you answer that quick? So this is a good episode. So if you're looking for a scare for Halloween, 22 ring a ding girl, the living doll, the dummy, and it's a good life for great ones to creep you out. I'm curious. So those are the things you're you're scariest episodes. What are you if there's someone who's ever watched the Twilight Zone before? What three episodes would you recommend starting with?
I think to this day, if you look at the Twilight Zone, there are some episodes which have not dated well, but there are some episodes which actually have grown in residence. And I think the one episode that has probably grown more in residence than any other is the monsters are doing Maple Street. First season episode about a, you know, idyllic suburban street, Maple Street, where the neighbors all know each other and
or all know each other's kids and life is good on Maple Street. And on a beautiful summer evening, just as people are getting ready to fire up the barbecues and the ice cream truck is going down the street, something flies overhead and then nothing works on Maple Street. It doesn't matter whether it's run by gasoline or electricity or whatever, the phones don't work, the cars don't work, the lights don't work,
And they start to wonder, what was it? You know, whatever would go, was it a meteor? What was it? And as a teenager, a young kid says, you know, that this is how it happens in the stories, what stories? They, you know, send ahead a family that looks like us, you know, and the, the, what went overhead was a flying saucer and that maybe
One of the families that live on the street are not who they say they are. So everybody starts to look at each other with suspicion and doubt. And all these people who were the best of neighbors just a little while ago now are sort of looking at each other with a new way. Maybe, maybe these people are not. Now, obviously, Rod Serling was writing about the 1950s and the period we had just come through, the McCarthy era, the Red Scare, when people
started to look at their neighbors as, you know, there was a communist hiding in everybody's closet and under everybody's bed. Maybe they were then at the family next door. And Rod was clearly writing about the price that we would pay as a nation if we went down this path of fearing and distrusting our neighbors and our fellow citizens.
Well, that message has just gotten bigger and bigger as we've become more and more divided as a nation. I mean, it's become a cliche to say we are more divided now than at any time since the Civil War. I don't know that that's true. There have been many times we've been very divided. People don't really know American history as well as they should, especially the people who espouse it. But it is clear we are at a point where the message of that story is very, very
profound, because what Rod was basically saying was what Lincoln tried to tell us, which is that a house divided against itself cannot stand. And Rod added to that, if we do not find a way to talk to each other, to have a discussion, real discussion, without mistrust and fear and paranoia of creeping into it, if we do not find a way to get around that, we ain't going to make it, folks. You know, at the end,
Rudd's narration comes in at the end where he says that destruction Does not always come with bombs You know that there are there are other weapons There there are weapons such as fear and mistrust and That is going to be our undoing it says, you know, so I think that that's that would be number one on my list of
episodes that people should watch if they really want to know what the Twilight Zone could do at its finest. With that, I would add an episode called The Obsolete Man, which also starts Burgess Meredith. And also, to me, is a much better episode than time enough at last, because I think the most heroic character in the Twilight Zone is the character played by Burgess Meredith in The Obsolete Man. He plays Romney Wordsworth
a librarian. Dickensian name, Wordsworth, you know, certainly is obviously trying to make a comment with this character's name. The story is set in a futuristic society and the books have become banned. The written word has become banned and the only thing that is allowed is what is prescribed by the state and Fritz Weaver plays the authoritarian symbol of the state.
And Romney Wordsworth has been declared obsolete. He is a librarian. He does not deny his love of the written word and the books. And he proudly states that he is a librarian. And since there are no more books, hence no more libraries, there is no need for Romney Wordsworth. And he is declared by the state to be obsolete. And
he can choose the method of his execution. So he asks for a bomb to be placed in his apartment to go off at a certain time and he invites the Fritz Weaver character to his apartment and he locks him in and his death is going to be televised. And we get to see how Romney Wordsworth greets death
and how the representative of the state greets death. And it's an amazing episode, the lesson which Sir Link says later, you know, that any civilization, any society that does not value the individual is obsolete. That state is obsolete. So there's a wonderful message about the worth of the individual, the worth of reading.
The worth, it's almost the opposite of time enough at last because this celebrates the importance of the written word. So I love the obsolete man. That's one of my all-time favorite episodes. Monsters are doing Maple Street. And with that, I would probably add walking distance.
as probably if I was going to say three episodes that everybody should watch, those would top my three. Okay, those are good ones. Well, Mark, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book in your work?
Well, I have a website which is marktowidsiac.com. I have a Facebook page. I'm always ready to interact with Twilight Zone fans. I'm one of the easiest people to find online and otherwise. So always welcome that. The book is available through amazon.com. It's been there and hopefully this will increase a little interest will increase a little bit because 2024 will mark the Serling Centennial.
And I'm on the board of the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation in Binghamton, New York. And one of the things we are trying to do, and hopefully we'll do either next year, but certainly hopefully in time for the centennial year, is get a statue of Rod erected in Recreation Park in Binghamton. Brett and I would just
strongly recommend to any Twilight Zone fan. If you have not been to Binghamton, it's a wonderful pilgrimage. And Recreation Park is sort of the heart of the whole thing. And Recreation Park, by the way, still has a carousel. And the carousel, you can ride the carousel for free as many times as you want. And around the top of the carousel are panels, paintings, and each one depicts a scene from the Twilight Zone.
And they were by a very wonderful artist named Cortland Hall. And so there's a bandstand and in the middle of the bandstand, there's a gold disc, which has been planted in the middle of the bandstand. And all it says is rod-surling walking distance. So get to the bandstand and get to the carousel because it is your own way of experiencing walking distance.
Mark DeWidzeak. Thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. No, my pleasure. My guess is Mark DeWidzeak. He's the author of the book, Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in the Twilight Zone. It's available at Amazon.com. You can find more information about his work at his website, MarkDeWidzeak.com. Also check out our show notes at AOM.IS slash Twilight Zone, where you can find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic.
Well, that wraps up another edition of the A1 Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at www.artofmalness.com, where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the A1 Podcast, you can do so instead of your premium, head over to www.stitchapremian.com, sign up, use code MANLY as a check out for a free month trial. Once you're signed up, download the sitter app on Android iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the A1 Podcast.
And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to get rid of your novel podcast or Spotify. Helps out a lot. If you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind you on listening on podcast, put what you've heard into action.