The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

Sure.

Why don't we-- why don't-- Uh, I feel like I'm eager to talk about "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." That's one of my favorites, and it's one of the ones in this top 10 that you mentioned.

You wanna, you wanna delve into, into that one?

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

And I think the first one, if we go chronologically, the monsters are due on Maple Street is often declared either the best episode of Twilight Zone or in the top five.

So where does it rank for you?

It's my number one.

does.

Yeah, that's a really great point.

And actually, I'm so glad you brought up Stephen King, because now I remember the other thing that felt very much influenced by The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, which is The Mist.

Yes.

Ooh

... and I believe we are gonna be talking about, uh, an episode that I think, again, forgotten to time, uh, Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.

Yes, from The Twilight Zone, uh, late in season one, and you can find Twilight Zone on Paramount Plus, on Pluto, on Tubi.

Again, like Lonesome Dove, it's sort of everywhere.

We'll be talking like more wide-ranging discussion than that, but we will at least be looking at Monsters Are Due on Maple Street as sort of like an example of what Serling was trying to do with The Twilight Zone.

And, you know, you've still got a little over a week to pre-order the book if you want to, and I...

And also, you can come see us at Words next Wednesday.

I think it was so ahead of its time in so many ways, but there's an episode.

It's like, I would say it's like one of the more popular-ish ones, but it's called The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.

I have seen that one.

Yes.

He was in the episode with the Martian.

Monsters on Maple Street.

Yeah.

Oh, and that one, too.

horribly yeah again

his staff probably misled him it'll never be his fault specifically directly it'll be in the end somebody failed him some way Because to quote the late, great Rod Serling, at the very end of The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own.

And that's all these MAGA deserters are looking for.

The same thing they were looking for that attracted them to the GOP long before Trump showed up.

What was kind of the, was there an overwhelming... statement that you thought that everybody was inspired by by him I

mean I think people really appreciated the fact that he was trying to ask big questions about humanity who we are why do we do the things we do are we fundamentally good are we fundamentally bad is there hope for us and he was doing that in this genre context because in the 50s he was writing to straightforward here's a story about a senator here's a story about corruption here's a story about these issues and i'm just going to say it here's stories about racism and he kept running into problems with the censors with the sponsors who said you can't do that you know he did a play called the arena about a senator and was told by cbs you cannot mention any contemporary political issue in this he just rolled his eyes and he said something like you know if i'd set this play on mars stories in Twilight Zone that still feel relevant today and he was able to get away with it because it's you know Monsters Are Due on Maple Street is about you know paranoia and tribalism and misinformation and at the time McCarthyism but because it's manipulating a suburban block you know CBS couldn't complain the viewers couldn't complain that sort of thing

it's amazing how you have to kind of work outside the lines in order to get a message across

Yes, and it's not that CBS didn't know what he was doing.