5/10 After an uptick in overall quality for season two, season three unfortunately slips back down to where season one ended up, in the mediocre category. It seems that for every solid episode this season, there was a dud to balance it out. The scope even felt slightly smaller this season (perhaps to save money) and not that reducing the scope makes this season worse by any means but the grand scale of the previous two seasons were such impressive feats for their time that just aren’t matched this time around. There are some similar strengths that this season shares with previous seasons. For example, seeing some recognizable, big name actors make appearances such as Charles Bronson, Peter Falk, Lee Marvin, Buster Keaton, Robert Redford, Carol Burnett, etc., raised the quality level of the season. The diversity in time periods and settings ensured that this season never became stale. This season’s strongest episodes included but were not limited to “Two”, “A Game of Pool”, “A Piano in the House”, “Once Upon a Time”, “The Shelter” (which eerily mirrors the current Coronavirus pandemic and how society can crumble and turn on each other during uncertain, dangerous times) and the season ended on a high note with “The Changing of the Guard”, which was not only a strong episode to close the season on but symbolic of what would come in season four (changing the format by doubling the length of episodes and slicing the number of episodes in the season in half). As for the episodes which fell flat and brought this season down, some examples include “Deaths-Head Revisited”, “The Midnight Sun”, The Jungle”, “Four O’Clock”, “Hocus-Pocus and Frisby”, “I Sing the Body Electric”, etc. Despite the episodes only clocking in at around 24 minutes, the aforementioned bad episodes really drag on slowly and feel a lot longer than they actually are. Perhaps the writers beginning to wane on ideas of episodes is what spurred the showrunner(s) to change the formula for the following season and I look forward to watching and reviewing season four to see if the changes help or hinder the show. As for season three, if you’re just looking for a random episode to watch to kill some time, your best bet will be to go back to season two, where you have better chances of finding a high quality episode. If you will excuse me, I now must journey onto the fourth season of…”The Twilight Zone”…
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