S01E05 - Walking Distance

Before watching this episode, I found out that it was J.J. Abrams favourite of the whole series, which made me excited to see it. It's also one of the most critically acclaimed episode too.

I liked how this episode started off with an interesting plot alike with the first episode of the series - Where is Everybody? A couple of past episodes have just started with a plot and it's not very interesting until the twist happens and i'm not so keen on that type of narrative. I really enjoyed the use of mirrors too, they always make stories more interesting and sometimes a little confusing, but in a good way.

My favourite character was 'The Wilcox Boy' who was played by non other than Ron Howard. He can't have been more than 5 years old in this episode and pulled wacky facial expressions, which i'm guessing was because the sun was in his eyes but it was cute nevertheless.

I don't understand why I didn't like this episode too much, i'm guessing that the slow progression has something to do with it. I think that this would have been better if it was longer, at least an extra 20 minutes would have been good to give a little more background version of the life of 'Martin Sloane' - both as a child and an adult. The ending too isn't a happy one, but it's very nostalgic. 5/10.

S01E04 - The Sixeen-Millimeter Shrine

When I found out that this episode was centered around a female character, I wasn't very excited by the thought of it. I guess i'm just too anti-feminist to enjoy watching female leads anymore. I tried to ignore that fact when watching this episode though.

The plot wasn't too interesting - an old actress re-watching her old films and not moving on with her life. Not much happened in the first three quarters of this episode and the twist wasn't that great either. It didn't really make much sense, but I guess the thought of what happens is quite nice. None of the actors stood out for me either, this was a very below average episode. 3/10.

S01E03 - Mr. Denton on Doomsday.

This episode was one of the ones that Rod Serling mentioned in the prologue of the series and I didn't think it sounded very interesting. I really don't like the whole western setting in any film or TV show, but I tried to not let that change my opinion about this.

The plot was okay, but the characters were what I liked most about this episode. The town's bully 'Dan Hotaling' (Martin Landau) was an interesting character to watch, he really looked good and his body language was fascinating. I felt that this episode pushed to hard to get across the moral of the story - that guns don't solve anything. That's all the plot really concentrated on apart from the protagonist 'Al Denton' (Dan Durea) sobering up.

The whole potions part of this episode was very interesting and I felt like they could have done more involving them, but they didn't. 3/10.

S01E02 - One for the Angels.

Before watching this episode, I expected a slightly more sci-fi theme to it after the first one lacked it a little, but I don't think that this one was much different. In fact, the theme was more paranormal than sci-fi. I didn't mind too much though because there are still another 154 episodes to watch.

I didn't really find this episode's plot very exciting and it definitely didn't have much action in it at all. The subject of death is shown in an almost positive light at the end and makes it seem like it isn't a very big deal. This is probably because in this world, there is an afterlife and the main character - 'Lou Bookman' (Ed Wynn) was allowed to take his suitcase with the things he sells to heaven so he can carry on pitching to the angels there.

The best part of this episode was certainly the character 'Mr. Death' (Murray Hamilton), his stern looks and just overall personality was great to watch. The scene in which Lou was trying to sell Death different products was great and I especially liked the close-ups they used. Unfortunately, these were the only good things about this episode. 4/10.

S01E01 - Where is Everybody?

So I started to watch The Twilight Zone today - 01/01/12 at 4am. I wasn't expecting anything because I hadn't really heard that much about the series other that it was sci-fi/fantasy based and anthological, which are two things that i'm totally into right now.

The episode started off with a seven minute opening speech by the creator of the series - Rod Serling. It was okay, didn't really explain much about the series but it made me excited for the actual episode to start... then it did. I really liked Earl Holliman's character and think that he plays the role extremely well, it sort of reminded me of how an actor would play the role of Dr. Who, which is always a good thing. The scene in which he runs down the stairs at the cinema and then crashes into a mirror was perfect. I loved it.

I thought that the plot was great, I was trying to work out what was going on but the real ending never crossed my mind. I first thought that maybe he was in a town that the army uses to test bombs on, then when he saw the book about being the last man on earth I thought maybe he could actually be the last person on earth. When the twist happened I felt like I expected something a bit better, which isn't really good but I still liked it nevertheless. I then read that in the short story version of this episode, a cinema ticket for the film he went to see in his hallucination fell out of his pocket as he was carried away on the stretcher and wow, I wish that this episode showed that. It would have made this perfect.

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode and can't wait to start watching the rest. 8/10.