Portrait of a splintered identity: the first season of the Twilight Zone

I had the good fortune of stumbling into a "Twilight Zone" marathon this weekend. They were going in sequential order, from the first episode to the last, all five seasons, or so I think, though it's always up for debate if they are going to show the 4th season with the hour long episodes, but we'll see. I should add that I had Marc Scott Zicree's "Twilight Zone Companion" as a 13 or 14 year old, and it was my favorite book. I all but treated it like a Bible, referencing it and re-referencing it endlessly, so that the spine was worn down, and the pages were creased. Basically, the "Companion" broke down the series episode by episode, with Serling's opening and ending narration in italics, and a brief synopsis of each episode, with commentaries after the episode, that varied in length. Some had anecdotes from the stars on the episode, the director, or the writer, and Zicree would note it for its achievments within the series, giving it some kind of rank though not categorically. I'm pretty sure I caught every episode because I'd mentally mark them off in my book and this was quite an achievment in the days before video, but KTLA did play it from noon to 1, and then from midnight to 1, for most of my childhood, and then miraculously put it on at four in the afternoon when I got home from school for a year or two, and I'd pop a quesadilla in the toaster oven, and settle in. It was my show.

Watching the series last night was like watching it for the first time, and I'm not sure I ever thought I'd have that feeling again. I rented the "Twilight Zone" from the library once or twice, but this made me feel like an archivist, or worse a pop culture guru, who lived for the "Twilight Zone." But having the series magically appear on TV like it used to for me (and for EVERYONE), added to the magic of it. I also came in early enough in the first season to watch about 10 in a row, and I was overwhelmed with a general feeling of the ambience and mood of Serling's vision as if for the first time and it was a revelation. I don't know how to say it or put it but it's almost like the kernel of Serling's immediate vision was to plumb the depths of what it mean to lose your identity and have no idea who you are, a feeling often accompanied by a nervous breakdown, or nervous exhaustion, and set in Eisenhower's America, when the Country was presumbably at the peak of its power and strength. The magical elements of the show, only gave the nervous breakdowns, accompanied by an identity crisis, a deeper feel, because the mind of someone losing their mind is slippery at best, so why not enter the "Twilight Zone" the "land between fact and fiction, shadow and substance, that lies at the pit of man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge."

The question of blending identities has never been more lucidly explored in American pop culture, and seeing episode after episode really made this clear like seeing a one man show of Rothko, DeKooning, Bacon, or Pollock, and just being swarmed by the paintings. It made me think that almost the entire oeuvure of David Lynch was an afterthought after the "Twilight Zonce" cracked America's consciousness, two years before J.F.K. This is not to put David Lynch down, but I saw him more clearly as part of a chain, or an evolution, that is often missed. Most aesthetes see Lynch as the beginning and the end about people mysteriously switching identies ("Mulholland Drive," "Lost Highway"), and while Lynch may be the end, he is not the beginningh, not by a long shot. The great victory of the "Twilight Zone" is that through the conceit Serling was able to make clear sense of impossible to describe phenomena in a way a Fifties man could understand, even if the show was for kids and weirdos. They made narrative sense, whereas Lynch asks the audience to make sense of his movies for him, so he must be the necessary link from Serling, but the point shouldn't be lost. I'd almost tell anyone interested in the subject of the mind and how blurry one's sense of reality is to watch the first season of "The Twilight Zone" and stop there, because the show was never more sublime, or haunting. Serling really said all he had to say, I think, in about 30 episodes, but the show went on sometimes majestically, and sometimes forgettably, for four more seasons.

An irony to the beauty and wonder of the first season is that the opening didn't use the iconic guitar lick that will be repeated forever to signify the weird, nor did Serling appear in any of the episodes like he did for the next four seasons with an opening scene and then a camera pan to the narrator, Serling, usually smoking a cigarette, and dressed sharply. Serling's body or face didn't appear at all in the first season, and the murky music that opened the show, was more of a lush background to an opening poem (quoted above), that they took out a lot of the poetry from in the following seasons, even if the song was great. Don't get me wrong, I love the branding of the "Twilight Zone" and think they did a great job, and yet it is inferior to the initial magic of the show that could never be recaptured.

Watching the marathon I could literally see the "Twilight Zone" moving from something indefinable and artistically eternal to something iconic. I should add that the "Twilight Zone" has always lent itself well to marathons, and they were famous when I was a kid, and me and my friends would talk about all the episodes we saw. I partly think this is because the shows don't rely on the same cast, or set, so there is enough variety to keep you interested or like they kept plugging on the Countdown to Decades station it was on (a new station on my TV), 'you wouldn't want to stop binging, you might miss your favorite episode. "The "Twilight Zone" has always been great nostalgia and trivia for people to sit around and remember their favorite episodes, and what they meant to them. I missed most of the second season (probably sleeping and walking), so I should hold my judgment, but I came in to season 3 and little of the magic was there. "The Twilight Zone" ceased being so personal, and relied more on the gimmickry of the conceit than the actual characters or story.

I always knew the first season was the best because Marc Scott Zicree made a case for it, and going through the episodes it was hard to disagree with him. I'm not sure Zicree linked Serling's anxiety up with PTSD from his service in WWII as a paratrooper, but watching the episodes I couldn't help but think that was the case. It was a similar point a recent Salinger biographer made about "The Catcher in the Rye" another story about a nervous breakdown, and the biographer made the claim that Salinger never got over D-Day and that Holden's "Lost Weekend" in New York City, where he loses his mind, was a metaphor for Salinger's return to the States. In the first season of the "Twilight Zone" there was sensitive episode after sensitive episode of a seemingly successful Fifties men absolutely cracking, and either going back to a sweet soft place in their mind, or going off on flights of fancy to take them away from the pressures and strains of the world, where no one understood them.

I know the pop historians would say that the "Twilight Zone" was showing the cracks in the veneer of a seemingly perfect culture, that was actually inhabited by wounded men from the war, knowing everything was not quite right, but I'm not even sure this gets at how subtle Serling was able to show HIS OWN identity crises/nervous breakdown, through a host of different characters or personalities, male and female, week after week, confronting their minds, and finding almost no solution. Sure, Serling as the narrator would watch over these helpless tragic victims, commenting on their story, but he really may as well have been commenting on his own story, for at the least he was like a Mr. Roark of the "Twilight Zone," running his own "Fantasy Island," but at the most was actually living through the breakdowns his characters were suffering in beautiful black and white thirty minute vignettes. (Mr. Roark of "Fantasy Island" was living through the idol worship of his dwarf servant Tattoo.)

I should also add there are plenty of good episodes in the next four seasons, so I don't want this essay to discourage anyone from watching them, but they don't have the same flavor as the early ones. They tended to be morality plays more than mini portraits of identity confusion, and had a staunch very post War message about the rights and needs of justice and law for everyone. They are very noble, but in some ways you could almost argue that these episodes show the split that happens to many artists who start off with a purely aesthetic vision, reach an audience, and then feel they have to say something, or do something, to better the race. I can't blame Serling for this, or Bono for that matter, or Michael Stipe, but usually this phase of an artist's career is not his best, because politics and art don't easily mix. In the artist's defense, I'm not sure Serling could have done much more artistically than the first season, but I fear that he missed this and thought he let everyone down. I know Serling lamented in his later years that he hadn't done enough, or wasn't a good enough writer, but that's not true, and yet I see what he was saying. The brand of "The Twilight Zone" is not the "Twilight Zone," or rather Serling's very personal vision, and the brand took over. It is hard for an artist to admit his best work is behind him, or that he achieved what he set out to do, but Rod Serling may have entered his very own "Twilight Zone" around 1959, and never returned even if he did write the screenplay for the "Planet of the Apes." (ha!) Serling became a sci-fi joke but that too is an afterthought to a brilliant career.