11 Life Lessons from The Twilight Zone

In addition to copious champagne consumption, silly hats and watching the ball drop, New Year’s is about cutting off contact with the outside world so you can lose yourself in the annual Twilight Zone marathon on Syfy. This year, the programming gods outdid themselves and aired every single episode of the original series in chronological order. As I made a fortress of pillows and blankets and camped in front of the TV, it occurred to me how many life lessons can be gleaned from the series.

1. Don’t be a jackass. The anthology’s creator and dapper narrator Rod Serling was a BAMF who took a dim view of jackasses. There are 156 episodes that ran from 1959 to 1964 and most—if not all—of them warned against jackassery. Serling gave side-eye to nags, complainers, conformists, egomaniacs, bigots and being boring, overbearing or unadventurous.
2. Be careful what you wish for—especially if you are an entitled jackass. Getting everything you want whenever you want it in every situation sounds like a great idea until you consider how monumentally boring life would be without challenges. In “A Nice Place to Visit,” hoodlum Rocky Valentine’s dreams come true when he goes to a place where he can have it all: a posh pad, fawning beauties and everything a hedonist could want. Sounds heavenly, right? In reality, it could be hellish. Sorry, Rocky but you were an entitled jackass. Go to Hell, go directly to Hell. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
3. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The episode name “Eye of the Beholder” was a little too on the nose, but still made a point. Freak show candidate, Janet Tyler, went through numerous failed facial surgeries. After her final chance, the bandages are removed, and it turns out that she’s pretty. That’s too bad because Janet’s in a world that values pig snouts and she has to live with the fact that she’s as out-of-place as a Real Housewife without botox. The issue comes up again in “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You” about a girl who resists a state-mandated cosmetic transformation. Don’t be limited by some jackass view of conventional beauty.
4.  Keep calm and carry on. In “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” a few odd events convince the neighbors that there is an alien in their midst. Paranoia leads to chaos and things turn deadly. None of the residents are from outer space. There are however aliens smugly watching the whole mess. Come to think of it, the aliens are kind of jackasses, but the neighbors didn’t have to work themselves up into a J’accuse frenzy.
5. Respect your elders. In “The Masks” Jason Foster, who is at death’s door, invites his family to a Mardi Gras party. They obviously only want to be there so they can get their grasping hands on the rich man’s dough. He insists that they wear some creepy masks and then goes all Se7en on them calling out their greed, entitlement, stupidity and self-absorption. At midnight when it’s time to take off their masks, it turns out they are stuck with their ugly faces to match their ugly personalities. Of course, condemning them to a life of deformity was a little harsh. The moral of the story: Don’t be a jackass because you’ll go up against someone who is an even bigger jackass and nobody will feel sorry for you.
6. Don’t be a scardey-cat. In “Kick the Can” a group of senior citizens spend their time waiting to shuffle off this mortal coil. One of them, Charles Whitley, figures out how to recapture youth, but there’s always gotta be that pain who says it can’t be done. Ben Conroy is an old coot, who is cynical, critical, rigid, pessimistic and a tattletale, so he gets left behind. Heed the words of Charles, who says: “Maybe, the fountain of youth isn’t a fountain at all. Maybe, it’s a way of looking at things—a way of thinking.” If you’re fearful and set in your ways, you’re going to be sitting by yourself in God’s waiting room thumbing through old issues of Cat Fancy when you could be living it up to the very end. Don’t be that guy, don’t be a jackass.
7. Don’t be a jackass to kids. Telly Savalas’ character is a mean stepdad to sweet little Christie. He’s angry, sarcastic and stingy. Christie has a new friend, Talky Tina, who is a “Living Doll.” She does not like to see sweet little girls toyed with and unlike Barbie, she has a bit of a temper. In “The Bewitchin’ Pool” bickering self-involved parents end up driving their kids off the deep end. The kids are better off; if they stayed with those jackasses, they’d probably end up contracting “affluenza.”
8. Kids can be jackasses. Don’t be fooled by cuteness. Anthony Fremont in “It’s a Good Life” is a 6-year-old telepathic tyrant who banishes you to “the cornfield” if think for yourself. Anyone who tells you how to think and needs to control everything is a jackass. It’s an election year, so bear that in mind.
9. Don’t be a jackass to dolls. Before Toy Story, there was, “Five Characters in Search of an Exit.” Be nice to toys and don’t just toss them away, they have feelings and existential angst you know. Hopefully, things turned out well for the ballerina and the Army major. And as we know from Talky Tina, you don’t want to piss them off too much because they will get revenge.
10. Don’t be a jackass to dogs.  Mr. and Mrs. TV Recaps live with eight pounds of fur-covered crazy. Our pooch thinks the world is his fire hydrant and tends to hog the sheets, but he is as sweet as can be, delights us with his antics and we are firmly in the “love me, love my dog” camp. That’s how Hyder Simpson feels about his best friend Rip. In “The Hunt” Hyder gets a tempting offer from someone who does not love Rip. Rod Serling issues this advisory. “Travelers to unknown regions would be well-advised to take along the family dog. He could just save you from entering the wrong gate.” If someone doesn’t like your dog, that person is obviously a jackass.
11. It’s all there in the manual. The Kanamits come to Earth and take care of all of our problems. All they want to do can be found in a book titled “To Serve the Man.” Let’s just say careful reading can keep you out of hot water and prevent you from feeling like a jackass.

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