Most mediocre episode?
Dead Man's Shoes
shareDead Man's Shoes plays well for me. Not a great story, it's at least well done. Or do you mean the worst episode? As I think about it, they're really two different things. I think that Queen Of The Nile is worse than Dead Man's Shoes. It's beneath even mediocre. There are, sad to say, quite a few like that, including, for my money, the Peter Falk episode, The Mirror. Four O'Clock is bottom of the barrel in my book, too. The Talking Tina one is another, though it has, inexplicably, as I see it, a fair number of fans. Maybe, for some people, Telly Savalas sells it. Not for me, and I like Telly.
shareFor all its genius "The Twilight Zone" had more than its fair share of clunkers. I don't believe "Dead Man's Shoes" deserves to be lumped in with the execrable likes of "The Mirror." "Shoes", on the other hand, occupies that middle ground between great and awful about as indelibly as anything the show produced. It's unremarkable in every way (though if any one component of "Shoes" flirts with rising above the merely serviceable it's Warren Stevens). It has no profound truth or iconic set piece. The story moves along predictably. Nothing surprises other than the pacing (more dire episodes like "Cavender is Coming" move about as swiftly as a city council meeting). It's a competently made, middle-brow piece of lukewarm early '60s American pop. Nothing more. Nothing less. It's great feat is you don't feel taken. You just feel like you've had an experience you won't seek out again; but if it presents itself in the years to come during one of the marathons you wont' feel a panic attack coming on as you consider sacrificing to it another twenty-five minutes of your time.
shareGot it, AT. Another one like that is the somewhat similar, earlier The Four Of Us Are Dying, also a big city crime episode about a "transformed man", in this case a man who can transform his looks. I rate it somewhat higher than Shoes due to the excellent cast and the bright lights/big city ambiance, an early Zone trope that sadly seemed to decline, as in the number of episodes with similar settings, with each passing year.
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