What's wrong with this show?
Rod Serling's Twilight Zone was one of the best or maybe even THE best TV show ever. Thought-provoking, ahead of its time, and canceled much too soon. So in 1969, Rod tried again with this new show, and where The Twilight Zone was captivating and exciting, Night Gallery fails HARD in every way TZ succeeded. It's not really scary or smart or thrilling, nine times out of ten it's nothing but a collection of WTF moments. Things that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. For example:
"Fear of Spiders", now doesn't that sound like it would be a great scary story? So this guy sees a spider in his sink, he washes it down the drain, and it keeps getting inexplicably bigger, so he locks it in his room and goes to bicker with some woman who has the hots for him, and she ends up locking him in the room where the spider may or may not be, and leaves, and then it's over. WTF was that all about? Was the spider meant to be metaphoric? If so, they sure as hell didn't elaborate on it for very long.
"Professor Peabody's Last Lecture", I mean, what were they smoking when they came up with that?
"Stop Killing Me", interesting premise, but MAN did they get crazy with that, and the ending made no freakin' sense, just like the rest of the show.
And on top of that, just WHAT is the deal with those short sketches they shoehorn in? Remember the one where this group goes to Dracula's castle, all this build-up, great environment, and then they open the coffin. Drac is in there, snoozing away. One guy raises a stake and asks something like, "should I?" and another guy says, "eh, couldn't hurt." Then it ended. WTF?! Or what about when Wally Cox plays a dad who gets up in the middle of the night to feed his little Frankenstein baby. HUH? Maybe the Raven and the Phantom ones were kind of funny, but they were sure out of place.
It's like somebody who didn't know the definition of comedy tried writing comedy. Night Gallery is just too tongue-in-cheek for its own good.
It's obvious Rod Serling had little to NO say in this show, and some mindless studio execs just did whatever they wanted, and this was the result. I don't blame Rod for disowning the show when it was canceled.
Now to be fair, there were some interesting episodes that might have made good Twilight Zone episodes. Like "Hell's Bells" or that one with the Titanic survivor. "Little Black Bag", that one was chilling, and besides, Burgess Meredith rocks the house! "The Academy", that one was quite dark, but I don't think I agree with the twist at the end. Night Gallery had potential, I'll admit it. But the fact that the producers made it so tongue-in-cheek, so limited and nonsensical, which I guess was the 1970s' view on monster movies and whatnot, that it really collapsed under its own weight. I know what I'm talking about here. I may not have been alive in the '70s, but I do know that their definition of "horror movie" was more along the lines of the world coming to an end, or the government was going to go rogue and destroy us all. The Vietnam War was in full force, and everybody was angry and terrified with the enemy, as well as our own government. That, and natural disasters were also the norm for scary movies. Fires, volcanos, earthquakes, ships sinking. In short, people were scared of reality and not fictional monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolfman anymore. They were looked upon as silly and "kids' stuff." That certainly explains the shorts, but as for the actual show, it basically just says, "this is just a silly show. Don't be afraid of THIS, be afraid of the world around you."
If you watch Night Gallery, be prepared to utter "What the F---?" every now and then.