Submitted For Your Approval

I've always loved the Twilight Zone.  I first started watching it as a kid because my mom loved it. When the Sci-Fi Channel began airing an annual TZ Marathon every New Years, it became a staple at our house.  Just keep the TV on and enter the Twilight Zone until about midnight when they'd flip over for the dumb ball drop, and then back to the Zone until people began to head home. Then you'd just watch some ore on New Years Day because the show had so many great episodes.

When I was older and Netflix had the whole show in HD (the remasters CBS did are excellent by the way), I went through and watched the whole run of the original show, or at least just made sure I saw all the episodes I may have missed over the years. I also briefly watched the 2002 reboot hosted by Forrest Whitaker when it originally launched on UPN. I didn't stick with it though.  Some the few episodes I have seen from the 80s reboot were actually not too bad...and I actually like the Spielberg produced movie despite some issues in the film itself and the obvious depressing backstory of the filmmaking.  And I also watched the first season of Night Gallery once too. 

So I've been hyped about the new show from Jordan Peele. I liked Peele as a comedian and cohort of Keegan Michael-Key...but man "Get Out" was a fantastic horror film.  It wasn't just well made by a first time director, but it had this clear strong voice that shined through...with a moral at the center of it's fantasy horror veneer.  So when they said that a guy like that was going to be the creative head and host of the new show? I felt this franchise, within it's many incarnations has lacked for so long...an actual successor for Serling.  The Spielberg movie was more of a tribute to the show than an actual continuation, and the other reboots always seemed like lesser anthology shows with the Twilight Zone branding on it.  They lacked that singular voice.  At least that is my current impression.  

I don't know if the new show will be great (though man the trailers make me think it will be), but if anything it has made me want to revisit this original show and it's other incarnations, right up to the new show.  My goal is to review every episode of the original show, just as I have with my other Review blogs, then continue on with Night Gallery, the 80s show, the 2002 show, and the new show...as well as any other little oddities like the 83 film or the 94 TV movie "Rod Serling's Lost Classics."  When it comes to the original show, I have already watched it all and I plan to revisit them for the blog...for all the other shows there is a lot I will be experiencing for the first time.  

So, come with me on this journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of the imagination.  There's the signpost up ahead...next stop: The Twilight Zone!

NEXT TIME: The Concept