Sunday, July 4, 2010

Wait, There's NO Twilight Zone Marathon?!?

Wait, There's NO Twilight Zone Marathon?!?

It's the 4th of July and the one single thing that is embedded in my mind besides the searing pain from my leg catching on fire is that today is the day we all gathered around and watched the Twilight Zone non stop.

We're talking Rod Serling, boys and girls. The big cigar himself. The Fourth of July Twilight Zone marathon was something you just didn't fuck with. it was the shit! First it was on KTLA Channel 5. It was like clockwork to have it on and viewing episodes my family has seen a million times. Then they lost the rights and SciFi picked it up. So we all moved to that. But this year.. this year it's different...

Well, with the change from Sci-Fi to "SyFy", the hipper and more youth accessible moniker, they've also decided to drop the annual marathon in lieu of a new yearly tradition: twenty-four spine-tingling hours of The Greatest American Hero, a superhero "dramedy" running from 1981 to 1983.

I'll let you digest that for a minute.



Now look at this and pray your stomach is empty from digestion. Gross

To be honest with you, I never even cared for this show and I'm a pretty devout comic book reader and after looking into it further, holy shit I would have preferred twenty-four hour blocks of sweaty wrestling if they were just going to put whatever the fuck on on Rod's holy fucking day.

Well you see, it's Independence Day and he's the Greatest American Hero, maybe you just aren't edgy enough for SyFy? They rebrand the station and want to show less Sci Fi so it can be more accessible and "hip" and then show a 24 hour marathon that literally no one in their alleged target demo would give one shit about.



Nothing says "hip and "accessible" like a show that was canceled nearly thirty years ago and is remembered mostly for its theme song. Remove the SyFy channel completely and replace it with a twilight zone only channel. That's the only way to bring back credibility to that shitheap of a channel.

I still miss the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day marathon. When I was a kid I had a two or three VHS tapes set up to record it.

Some young bravado made a Facebook group pleading SyFy to change their minds and I'm assuming that's going to be about as successful as an online petition to eek three more rough draft script remnant Firefly episodes out of the ether. Here's an article that explains it more eloquently than I can, because I can't think straight. It was going to be so great again.



But all hope is not lost, my friends. You see, CBS has a total of 49 full episodes on their website with pretty good picture quality. You can find them by clicking this sentence.

While it may not be a marathon, I guess it'll do. But on this day of celebrating the birth of the nation, I somehow feel like it's the death of one...

No comments: