Friday, March 29, 2019

Head Back into The Twilight Zone

You’re traveling through another dimension—“a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination.” Next stop: The Twilight Zone, which returns in reimagined form to CBS All Access on April 1. Before taking in Jordan Peele’s revamped version, take a tour through the original series’s greatest hits—courtesy of contributor Donald Liebenson, who has compiled a list of the 26 Twilight Zone 1.0 episodes that best define the weird, wonderfully twisted world of creator Rod Serling. His top choice? “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” a stone-cold classic which posits that we may very well be our own worst enemies: “An idyllic suburban street runs riot from a creeping paranoia that pits neighbor against neighbor,” Liebenson writes, summarizing the episode, before quoting Serling’s sobering closing narration: “For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy . . . and the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the ‘Twilight Zone.’”
Elsewhere in HWD, the Little Gold Men team goes deep on the true meaning of Dumbo; Julie Miller compares real life to the latest episode of The Act; Laura Bradleydisentangles years of The View feuds, so you don’t have to; and we preview the new posters for the upcoming Downton Abbey movie, which looks like a glamorous return to form.