THE CITIZEN KANE OF TELEVISION airs tonight on ME-TV at 12:35am EST: "WALKING DISTANCE" (written by Rod Serling, directed by Robert Stevens, originally broadcast October 30, 1959) If time travel was a cornerstone of The Twilight Zone, a dimension creator Serling described as “timeless as infinity,” a strong case can be made for his first-season “Walking Distance” being not only the best time-travel episode of the series, but the best episode of The Twilight Zone, period. Everything about it is literally note-perfect: Gig Young’s sensitive performance for the ages as Serling’s stand-in, a thirtysomething ad man burned out from years in the Madison Avenue rat race, looking for some kind of respite and finding it in a literal return to his childhood home (”Homewood”), photographed for posterity by Twilight Zone Director of Photography George T. Clemens in a series of arresting, character-revealing close-ups; Serling’s beautifully-worded script, full of an aching, nostalgic longing for his own childhood... “I had been living in a dead run, and one day I knew I had to come back here. I had to come back and get on a merry-go-round and eat cotton candy and listen to band concerts. I had to stop and breathe and close my eyes and smell and listen.” ...the subtle direction by Robert Stevens (whose only other Twilight Zone episode was the equally-brilliant pilot, “Where is Everybody?”), featuring a special effects-free through-the-looking-glass entry back in time, and an incredibly stylized carousel climax (even better than Hitchcock's in Strangers on a Train); and finally, Bernard Herrmann’s truly haunting and evocative score, a wistful whine of strings that underscores all the yearning and melancholy associated with the futile quest to recapture youth. “Walking Distance” has subsequently become the benchmark against which all such time-travel episodes, TV shows and films—The Time Machine, Somewhere in Time, Back to the Future, Big, Peggy Sue Gets Married, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Midnight in Paris—are measured. But never bettered. #rodserling #twilightzone #thetwilightzone #walkingdistance #tv #television #tvhistory #televisionhistory @dgareps @dbbushman https://www.instagram.com/p/Ciczmi1L9ij/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=