Writing an anthology series is no easy task, especially when you're working with scripts that run no more than 25 minutes. You have to introduce your characters and the situation they're experiencing, engage the audience in it, create uncertainty over the outcome, and then deliver a pay-off. That's a lot of targets to try and hit, even before you factor in that you need to try and do it twenty or thirty times a season.
Sad to say, season two of The Twilight Zone misses those targets more often that it hits. The twenty nine offerings here fall well short of the average entry from the first season. There are occasional bright spots, of course, but they are few and often still undermined by a flaw or two.
The writing is on the wall early when episode 2 "The Man in the Bottle" is nothing more than a lightly re-skinned version of "The Monkey's Paw". Other low-lights include"The Eye of the Beholder", which stretches a four minute plot to over five times its natural length, and "The Rip Van Winkle Caper", which is so dedicated to its obvious and uninteresting conclusion that it seemingly never stops to consider how incredibly stupid its whole setup actually is.
As I said, even the better episodes are at least somewhat flawed. "The Invaders" is probably the best of the bunch, with its one weak point being that it cheats a bit by how it structures Rod Serling's introduction. "A Most Unusual Camera" probably ranks second for the season, for all that it's more or less another of the multiple 'be wary of miraculous gifts' plots the show has run by now. It does suffer from a rather forced ending, though.
Overall, the miss to hit ratio is several levels too high for me to give this season even a qualified recommendation. Here's hoping for a better batting average in season three.
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