Grave doubts about the Golden Age of Television

[Scott]

I loved Perry Mason. I thought I had seen every episode. But I recently started watching the show again and they're showing a lot of episodes I've never seen before. BAD episodes. Terrible episodes. They're just awful. It turns out that only the cream of the crop had been in syndication all these years. I don't know how many of these terrible episodes there are.

And, on the same channel, I'm seeing bad episodes of The Twilight Zone I've never seen before. One started with a couple waking up in bed fully clothed.

"They're dolls in a doll house," I thought after about ten seconds. I didn't bother watching it to the end, but I'm pretty sure I was right.

It was written by Earl Hamner, Jr. The name was familiar but I couldn't think of who he was so I googled him. It was the guy who created The Waltons.

You know how The Waltons had a narrator who was supposed to be John Boy, but he had a completely different voice and spoke in a different accent? I learned that that was Earl Hamner, Jr.

[JD]

I knew that Earl Hamner did the intros to the TV show, but didn't know he wrote episodes for The Twilight Zone.  Maybe not very good ones, huh?

[Scott]

Well, that particular one wasn't terribly good. He also wrote several episodes of Nanny and the Professor, Gentle Ben and Falcon Crest. And there was Apple's Way. 

All I ever knew about was The Waltons and Spencer's Mountain which was exactly like The Waltons, so I assumed that was the only sort of thing the guy ever wrote.

But it's the bad Perry Masons I'm most in shock over.

[Scott]

They seem to be showing all the Earl Hamner episodes together. Watched another one. Had the girl who played Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird playing a girl named "Sport" with a brother, Jeb. It was supposed to be anti-divorce, but I can't see how their parents splitting up could be anything but a boon to those kids.

Girl and her brother swim underwater in their swimming pool and when they come up, find that they're in some fantasy world for children with lousy parents run by an elderly woman. Another episode I've never seen before.

The dialog was dubbed. According to the internet, Mary Badham had flown back to Alabama and her voice had to be dubbed by June Foray, the voice of Rocky the flying squirrel.