The Twilight Zone is my all time favorite television show. I’ve seen all 156 episodes. NYNM is right: the show was essentially Rod Serling’s take on the human condition. When the show debuted in 1959, television censors were sensitive when it came to political statements being made. Rod Serling was a genius, he devised a show steeped in science fiction, while in essence masking the plot lines with thinly veiled references to political topics relevant to the day. It was his way of sidestepping the censors. The Monsters are Due On Maple Street is an obvious example of railing against McCarthyism that the nation, and Hollywood had just experienced. In this episode, aliens make objects such as cars and streetlights turn on and off. This draws the suspicions of neighborhood residents and eventually turns the entire neighbhorhood into a riot scene. The Shelter, an episode about a false nuclear attack on the US, turns a birthday party into a mob scene as everyone flees to the one house that has a bomb shelter. The residents break into the bomb shelter, then it is announced the missiles were in fact satellites. The Obsolete Man, with Burgess Meredith as a librarian in a future society where books are banned, is one of my favorite episodes. The librarian, Woodsworth, requests to the state that he have an audience for his execution, and that he might have a word with the Chancellor. The Chancellor arrives at his apartment, where he is to be executed, and Wordsworth announces that he has locked the doors, and there will be a bomb deteonated within the hour. Instead of help arriving to remove the Chancellor, the TV broadcast is played out on national television while the Chancellor sweats. With the bomb scheduled to go off at midnight, the Chancellor can bear no more. As Wordsworth reads the 23rd Psalm in the bible, the Chancellor yells out: "In the name of God, let me out". Wordsworth obliges, and gives him the key to unlock the door, and escapes just as the bomb explodes. When the Chancellor returns, the state declares him obsolete, and the jury descends upon him and rips him to pieces.