Original Series Episodes You Dislike

[Guttersnipe]

I have a feeling that this thread won't be very popular, but I feel the need to post it to see whether I'm alone when I think some episodes of TOS are just baaaaad. Thankfully, I don't think there are many.

"The Mighty Casey": I always thought baseball was boring. Take that and the cheesy acting and sound effects. I don't think The Twilight Zone really ever got comedy right. Then there's the ending: the robot gets a human heart that makes him more compassionate. It went from goofy sci-fi to preachy magic realism at the end.
Maybe I'm not the biggest fan of the artificial intelligence episodes in general: "The Lateness of the Hour" was predictable (I accept that some are, but they tend to have more to offer); "Uncle Simon" was as well; and "From Agnes--With Love" was schmaltzy. "The Lonely" and all the rest were much better.

But no episode is quite as predictable, I think, than "Four O'Clock," in which a misanthrope's random plan backfires on him. Sure, the acting was okay, but I knew it was over for me when we were let in on his plan. One Price Day wrote the story on which it's based. From what I've read, it seems the radio version has the main character getting eaten by his bird after he shrinks; maybe that would've satisfied me more.

The ending of "The Fever," in which the gambler is chased out the window by a living/imaginary slot machine, seemed like kind of a non-sequitur to me. Surely a better comeuppance could've been written. "Gambling = Death" makes no sense.

"The Bewitchin' Pool" stood out like a sore thumb for me, and perhaps the series stopped here for a reason. It just seemed a little mean-spirited in its depiction of divorced adults. The parents seem to hate their children, when that simply isn't usually a factor of getting divorced--at least my parents weren't like that.

Anyone else?

 

[Toby Frost]

I think some of the comedy Twilight Zone episodes have dated pretty badly, where the more frightening ones often continue to hit the nail on the head. But I wonder if that's a more general comment about comedy itself, which can be quite changeable, compared to the reliable concepts behind horror. The Twilight Zone could get pretty schmaltzy at times, and there are a few episodes that boil down to "evil man is punished in an apt fashion".

In Danse Macabre, Stephen King says that the Twilight Zone episodes divide about equally into "really good", "quite good" and "not good" and suggests that, for a TV of its time, that was a pretty decent hit rate.

 

[Jeffbert]

I really disliked THE INVADERS, not because it was bad, but because it was sad. Perhaps it does not fit the theme of this thread. So sue me.

THE MIGHTY CASEY was bad because of the confusion between a heart that pumps blood, and the figurative use of 'heart,' more like the Japanese KOKORO The one does not necessarily include the other. Weak.

 

[KGeo777]

I rewatched The Dummy--the one with Cliff Robertson as Jerry and Willy the dummy-and realized the story does a poor job of setting up the ending. It isn't very eventful in terms of action. He has this angst and identity crisis and voila--the dummy tells him that they need to change the act. I think they could have had a better build up. Maybe if they had a romantic interest instead of the agent, and he goes missing. She searches for him (like Svengali in reverse)and finds the act "Willy and Jerry" in some other city and then enters the club and we see her horrified to discover them on stage.
It definitely could have been made more shocking and creepy.