Taking lessons from the timelessly relevant Twilight Zone
As author Mark Dawidziak points out in his latest book, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in The Twilight Zone, black and white TV shows might as well be cave paintings to millennials.
Mention bus driver Ralph Kramden from The Honeymooners to college students, as Dawidziak does as an adjunct professor at Kent State, and you get blank stares. Deputy Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show? What’s an Andy Griffith?
This is painful to veteran TV columnists like me and Dawidziak (who covers TV for the Cleveland Plain Dealer).
Today’s 30-somethings pine for Season1 of The O.C. Boomer TV heroes have gone bam, pow — to the moon (confused by that? See The Honeymooners).
One exception, however, is The Twilight Zone, the 1959-64 anthology series creat- ed by Rod Serling. While it may be, to younger generations, but a ride at Disney World or a punchline on The Simpsons,
The Twilight Zone is still a brand that resonates. Look for it not on the sign post up ahead, but on your iPhone.
Savvy Dawidziak therefore has written a “fifth dimension self-help book,” breaking down 100 of the shows’ 156 original episodes into 50 parables and lessons.
Here are five things I learned from reading Everything I Need to Know I Learned from The Twilight Zone: 1. Divided we fall. Dawidziak cites the Season One classic “The Monsters are on Maple Street” — meant as a Cold War parable — as a cautionary tale about America today. Launched in the Eisenhower era, The Twilight Zone seems frighteningly relevant in the age of Donald Trump. The terms “fake news” or “alternative facts” could easily be episode titles. Today’s “Divided States of America” seem lost in the Twilight Zone, stuck, as narrator Serling used to intone, “between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.” 2. Don’t live in the past. Dawidziak points to five episodes, including “Walking Distance.” Actor Gig Young’s character (reference?), a New York ad executive, longs for his idyllic hometown. “Maybe when you go back,” a key character tells him, “you’ll find there are merry-gorounds and band concerts where you are.” The lesson: “You’ve been looking behind you, Martin. Try looking ahead.” 3. Respect your elders. Especially Rod Serling, still the model for today’s visionary showrunners. Dawidziak suggests Serling, who died in 1975, was really — like Mark Twain — a “moralist in disguise.” His work was a big influence on David Chase (creator of The Sopranos), Vince Gilligan ( Breaking Bad) and Matthew Weiner ( Mad Men). 4. Nobody lives forever. I’ll take issue with this one. Thanks to this anthology series, viewers can still enjoy great performances from Jack Klugman, Art Carney, Burgess Meredith, Peter Falk, Elizabeth Montgomery, Jack Warden, Agnes Moorehead and Buster Keaton. Future generations will discover William Shatner, Robert Redford, Carol Burnett, Robert Duvall, Burt Reynolds and Cloris Leachman. 5. Read every contract carefully. The episode cited is “Escape Clause,” where a poor soul, played by David Wayne, sells his soul to the devil. Me, I should not have agreed to review this delightful and original take on a TV classic in just 500 words. (Editor’s note: it’s actually 522, but who’s counting.)