With some TV shows, you’ve got to start at the beginning. If you’ve never watched Breaking Bad, then randomly tuned into the season 4 episode “End Times” is a terrible idea. You’re going to have a lot of questions, not the least of which would be why everyone seems to love the guy who just poisoned a little kid.
But when it comes to anthology shows, you’re free to skip around, which is a perfect way to watch the highly influential 1960s sci-fi series The Twilight Zone (currently free to stream on Tubi). The Twilight Zone has no continuity, so it truly doesn’t matter what order you watch the episodes in.
However, if you’re entirely new to The Twilight Zone and only know it by its reputation as a landmark TV show, I don’t think totally random selection is wise, either. There are plenty of mediocre episodes of The Twilight Zone and even some outright clunkers (“The Bard,” for example, was a very unfunny attempt at comedy). Hit a few bad ones in a row and you may give up on the show entirely without giving it a fair shot.
My suggestion is to stack the deck with a handful of episodes across a few different genres that are widely recognized as some of the best of the series. From there, you should be hooked and you can feel free to bounce around as you please. That way, you can put up with the occasional bad episode because you’ll know just how good the show can be.
Here are what I consider to be the five best episodes of the whole series.
5
“The Dummy”
I’m a sucker for stories where dolls come to life and, while “Living Doll,” which is about a living baby doll, is scarier, “The Dummy” is just slightly better.
The episode is about an alcoholic ventriloquist named Jerry Etherson (Cliff Robertson) who is convinced his ventriloquist dummy, Willie, is alive. While onstage, Willie doesn’t exactly comply with the act (he even bites Jerry). And when they’re alone in the dressing room, Willie mocks Jerry. But when Jerry’s manager comes in, Willie is silent, leading the manager to think Jerry is delusional and drinking too much.
Ventriloquist dummies are naturally pretty creepy, which is used to great effect in The Dummy. But there’s more to this creepy doll tale. It’s really a story about a man struggling with his own failings, and for most of it, you’re really not sure if Jerry is delusional or not — until the surprise ending makes it incredibly conclusive.
4
“He’s Alive”
While right-wing extremism is on the rise across the world, including America, the season 4 episode, “He’s Alive,” is the most relevant it’s been since it debuted in 1963. In it, Dennis Hopper plays Peter Vollmer, an American neo-Nazi being visited by the ghost of Adolf Hitler (Curt Conway), who teaches Vollmer how to spread a more effective message of hate. This propels the struggling Vollmer to new heights as the leader of a real movement.
“He’s Alive” works because it’s all about the complexities of both hate and compassion. Aside from his relationship with Hitler’s ghost, which is creepy and interesting all on its own, Vollmer has a friendship with a Jewish man named Ernst (Ludwig Donath), who Vollmer sees as a father figure thanks to the care Ernst has shown towards him for years. While many people may associate The Twilight Zone with aliens and other, more otherworldly stuff, some of its best episodes are like this one, which has a minor supernatural element to complement a more layered human drama.
3
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”
This might be the most famous episode of The Twilight Zone, and for good reason. “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” stars William Shatner as a man named Robert Wilson, who recently experienced a nervous breakdown and is taking his first flight since leaving a sanatorium. He’s on the plane with his wife Julia (Christine White), who assures him he’s better now, but once the flight starts, Wilson looks out the window and sees a gremlin on the wing of the plane who mocks him and tears apart some of the plane’s mechanics.
By today’s standards, the gremlin itself is not an effectively scary creature, though I could see people getting a kick out of it from a “so bad it’s good” perspective. Regardless, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” is a tight, intense story about paranoia.
2
“To Serve Man”
“To Serve Man” is widely considered to have one of the greatest twist endings in the history of television, which makes it a bit difficult to write about without spoiling anything. To hopefully not say too much, I’ll share that this is the show’s best-ever episode about aliens and, like “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” it was good enough to warrant a really fantastic parody in the early days of The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episodes.
1
“Time Enough at Last”
“Time Enough at Last” tells the story of a bookish bank teller named Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) who is constantly interrupted while reading. All he wants is to be alone with his books and he eventually gets his wish. During his lunch break one day, he goes to his normal quiet spot to read his book, inside the bank vault. During that time, a nuclear bomb goes off, killing everyone except him.
There’s more to the story than that ironic twist, as most of the episode takes place after the destruction. The story deals with big questions of loneliness and solitude, as well as a big dose of “be careful what you wish for.” The story is deep and engrossing and Meredith — who played the Penguin on the old Batman TV show — is a really entertaining actor to watch, which is important when there’s only one person on screen. The Twilight Zone creator, host, and writer Rod Serling once said “Time Enough at Last” was his favorite episode and it’s also a favorite among fans of the series, which means it just might be the show’s best-ever episode.
