Twilight Zone - SYFY New Year's Marathon line-up

Rod Serling presents Piano in the House

"...we will not end the nightmare, only explain it. In the Twilight Zone" -- Rod Serling, looking down into the "cylinder prison" in the episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit"

I'll do some analysis on and off today and tomorrow, Episode titles in bold I watched but did not comment.

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

3:00am – The Chaser (hilariously the Syfy cut dispenses with Roger/Leila conversation to a point to just get on with it...but there is a distaste this leaves behind now that might not have been as distinct then)

3:30am – The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross (definitely a fifth season episode fit for 2:30 in the morning of the New Year's Eve portion of the marathon. Salvatore buys compassion and dies because it wasn't part of his personality. The sociopath is traded in a barter for money but the woman he wanted in this contest of his own making cost him his life thanks to a father he couldn't impress or compete with)

4:00am – King Nine Will Not Return (what a final transition from the dust out of Embry's shoes while resting in his hospital bed to the dust hit by the wind from the final resting place of the plane he was supposed to be on 17 years before...was he there for a moment thanks to The Twilight Zone?)

4:30am – The Man in the Bottle (back where he started, Arthur Castle had three wishes that provided him nothing but what might have been)

5:00am – A Kind of Stopwatch (of all the people to have a stopwatch that stops time, it winds up with McNulty, a chatty guy who sucks up all the oxygen in the room. At least the Twilight Zone cut everyone else some slack and had him break the watch)

5:30am – Steel (not sure how I feel about this one. Marvin's refusal to just quit on being behind a broken down lower boxer robot model, putting his own wellbeing on the line in a stupid form of self sacrifice to earn money to get his B model much needed parts and oil just seems ill advised and foolhardy. Not an episode I watch very often at all. There's just not enough intriguing elements besides Marvin appearing to lure me back to it)

6:00am – Black Leather Jackets (Marlon Brando could have been of help to make the alien biker trio less dull, and this invasion story has no juice at all. It feels tired and cliched. And once it's over, I never gave it a second thought. It's sadly occupying space better suited for a season four episode often slighted marathon time)

6:30am – Stopover in a Quiet Town (the kind of episode around marathon time I look forward to. It's like Probe, over and out in that it's been part of this time of year so long, when they don't appear I feel a bit bummed. I hate that it was shown on New Year's Eve so early but since I've been watching these episodes on New Year's Day, this mix of elements from Where is Everybody? and Little People hits the right spot.) @

7:00am – Twenty-Two

7:30am – What’s in the Box

8:00am – Mr. Dingle, the Strong

8:30am – The Prime Mover

9:00am – An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

9:30am – The Last Night of a Jockey

9:55am – The Mind and the Matter

10:20am – The Obsolete Man

10:45am – The Passersby

11:10am – The Mirror

11:35pm – The Grave

12:00pm – I Am The Night—Color Me Black

12:25pm – The Midnight Sun

12:50pm – The Jungle

1:15pm – Number 12 Looks Just Like You

1:40pm – Dead Man’s Shoes

2:05pm – Two

2:30pm – Showdown With Rance McGrew (Jesse getting Rance to go through the window (but the actor playing Rance doesn't so is that double irony?)

2:55pm – Kick the Can (Charlie bids adieu to Ben, leaving behind old age and his dead soul. I just wonder where Charlie went to, being a child and all...)

3:20pm – A Piano in the House (Fitzgerald Fortune isn't much different than a lot of corrosive personalities who use their power and influence to hurt people, delighting in the piano, a tool of unavoidable open conscience, but when turned on himself, he finally reveals to those within his company exactly what he feels inside)

3:45pm – Four O’Clock (brutal episode, following Piano especially, with Crangle's conspiracy theory lunatic stuck in one room causing his neighbors unnecessary anxiety. Will probably do a fresh review of it next year)

4:10pm – The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank (there was that period in the middle of New Year's Eve where some of my least favorite episodes seemed thrown together. This has the country bumpkin "aesthetic" played for laughs where James Best laid it on thick, popping up out of the casket wondering why he's in a funeral. It remains watchable but just not one I go to a lot unless it's marathon time)

4:35pm – Little Girl Lost (Imagine the father being severed in two with his upper half left with his daughter and dog in the fourth or fifth dimension and his lower torso and legs left with the scientist and his wife!)

5:00pm – Person or Persons Unknown

5:25pm – The Gift

5:50pm – The Trade-Ins

6:15pm – Hocus Pocus & Frisby

6:40pm – The Masks

7:05pm – The Dummy

7:30pm – The After Hours

7:55pm – Time Enough at Last

8:20pm – Eye of the Beholder

8:45pm – Nick of Time

9:10pm – Execution

9:35pm – The Long Morrow

10:00pm – The Last Flight

10:25pm – The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms

10:50pm – Ninety Years Without Slumbering

11:15pm – Static

11:40pm – Spur of the Moment

state police in search of Martian in "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?"

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

12:05am – The Trouble with Templeton

12:30am – Back There

12:55am – The Odyssey of Flight 33

1:20am – A Hundred Yards Over the Rim (I didn't get back home until midway through this episode, which is a bummer)

1:45am – The Rip Van Winkle Caper (still don't know why Decruz would purposely drive the vehicle over the cliff even if he runs down Brooks, but maybe he couldn't steer it in time. All that for getting rid of Brooks. It's all part of being so greedy planning on how his actions would cost him never seemed to work in Decruz's favor. And 100 years later, gold's significance would falter...I doubt that, but I digress...)

2:10am – Once Upon a Time

2:35am – Walking Distance (this classic episode sandwiched at such a "sleepy time" of the marathon is a crime. I still cannot understand why SYFY has never treated it as other classics but this early morning block this great episode lands itself is undeserved)

3:00am – Sounds and Silences (to go from such a great episode to this obnoxious and noisy episode left me ready to go to sleep. A drag after the personal favorite from the first season, and as good example of fifth season in its death throes as any)

3:25am – I Sing the Body Electric

3:50am – The Jeopardy Room

4:15am – The Encounter (the first few times I watched it, it's potency was palpable, but, I dunno, it does seem to be very in your face with it's message and while the racism and casualties of war themes are relevant still, there is something rather loud in the performances and storytelling that have maybe work best if you are new to it than multiple viewings afterwards)

4:40am – Ring-A-Ding Girl (was Bunny Blake in two places at once?)

5:05am – The Fear

5:30am – The Bewitchin’ Pool

6:00am – Mr. Denton on Doomsday

6:30am – Judgment Night

7:00am – What You Need

7:30am – The Fever

8:00am – A World of Difference

8:30am – The Big Tall Wish

9:00am – A Passage for Trumpet

9:30am – The Mighty Casey

9:55am – A World of His Own

10:20am – A Thing About Machines

10:45am – The Howling Man

11:10am – Dust

11:35am – Shadow Play

12:00pm – The Arrival

12:25pm – The Shelter

12:50pm – Deaths-Head Revisited

1:15pm – Still Valley

1:40pm – A Quality of Mercy

2:05pm – Nothing in the Dark

2:30pm – One More Pallbearer

2:55pm – The Hunt

3:20pm – The Fugitive

3:45pm – The Little People

4:10pm – Young Man’s Fancy

4:35pm – Cavender is Coming

5:00pm – In Praise of Pip

5:25pm – To Serve Man (I had watched some episodes at the beginning of the marathon for New Year's Eve-- The Chaser to Stopover in a Quiet Town -- before deciding to pick up on the SYFY selected New Year's Day primetime lineup. While this is sometimes shown early afternoons, it is one of the iconic episodes so being in primetime this go-around makes sense. I laughed when Mr. Chambers looked at To Serve Man and used altruistic to describe the name of the left-behind book. It was altruistic for humans to voluntarily hop onboard the ship as lambs to the slaughter for the Kanamits!)

5:50pm – The Monsters are Due on Maple Street (when I hear the word psyop used, I think of this episode. Manipulation by using human behavior as the ultimate weapon. We do destroy ourselves)

6:15pm – Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (episode still has me biting my nails, but it's been so heralded for so long, I do see where some might feel burned out on it. I even admit i rarely watch it outside marathons now because I've grown up with it as such a series staple; Shatner really got to evoke tangible anxiety many understand quite well)

6:40pm – The Invaders (it dawned on me...this felt like the end of a slasher film where Agnes Moorhead is being stalked by killers in space suits the size of toy robots!)

7:05pm – Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? (what cracks me up is the Martian knows the word kerplunk and not wet as part of his vocabulary, Bill Irwin, the old man you see pop up in John Hughes movies is the middle aged husband not happy with his wife suspecting him of being a Martian, and that Kipling and Jill Ellis as the young couple were in very few episodes (she only this one, him just two other eps...this is the episode I wish I could watch in a Colorado cabin as the snow falls and fireplace roars)

7:30pm – Five Characters in Search of An Exit

7:55pm – A Game of Pool

8:20pm – Living Doll

8:45pm – It’s a Good Life

9:10pm – Where is Everybody? (Rest in peace, Earl. You had the great distinction in being in the first recognized TZ episode ever, left your mark. I've watched this more times than I can count)

9:35pm – Mirror Image

10:00pm – The Four of Us are Dying

10:25pm – Perchance to Dream

10:50pm – The Hitch-Hiker

11:15pm – A Nice Place to Visit

11:40pm – A Stop at Willoughby

Thursday, January 2, 2025

12:05am – Long-Distance Call

12:30am – The Old Man in the Cave

12:55am – Escape Clause

1:20am – And When the Sky Was Opened

1:45am – Third From The Sun

2:10am – The Whole Truth

2:35am – A Penny for Your Thoughts

3:00am – The Silence

3:30am – Uncle Simon

Some passing thoughts:

Walking Distance, even at 1:30 in the morning leaves me sighing but agreeing with Rod's assessment about looking ahead but not forgetting the past. We can live there, can we?

@this kind of episode reminds me of how cool it was when I used to watch late night Twilight Zone summer Friday nights. Stopover in a Quiet Town might feel familiar especially by the end of the fifth season but it's perfect for a spooky good time.