I was feeling nostalgic recently and began re-watching episodes of "The Night Gallery". As a kid, I loved it--and it often scared the crap out of me. But now, 40 years later, I can sure see the limitations of the show--limitations that only became more obvious the more shows you've seen. While I ADORE the idea of a horror anthology series, this one was undone by bad writing and too much re-tooling of a basically good idea.
The series is alternately called "Rod Serling's Night Gallery"--and this leads to the biggest problem with the show. While Serling's name is at the masthead, he actually only wrote a few episodes here and there--and wrote less and less as the series continued. Why the execs would NOT want Serling writing as much of the show as possible is beyond me--he was brilliant in all his previous work and you'd think a shelf full of Emmy Awards for writing would convince the high muckity-mucks to make him THE writer for the show. But, instead, it seemed like practically anyone (talented or not) could write for the show--and this became VERY obvious in season two.
This brings me to the next biggie damaging the show. It's rare to see a show's writing go downhill so fast as it did between season one and two. While season one was no masterpiece, some idiots thought the format needed retooling--and comedy shorts were added to the show in addition to the scary stuff. Some of the comedy was funny--most was not. But the big problem is that it totally disrupted the serious mood of the show and cheapened it. In effect, the series jumped the shark in season two.
The final big problem is that even if you ignore the comedy infused into "Night Gallery", you can't deny that the quality of the serious scripts dropped considerably. Many episodes were now pretty awful--so bad that I simply couldn't continue watching the shows. My time is too important to watch any more.
The series is alternately called "Rod Serling's Night Gallery"--and this leads to the biggest problem with the show. While Serling's name is at the masthead, he actually only wrote a few episodes here and there--and wrote less and less as the series continued. Why the execs would NOT want Serling writing as much of the show as possible is beyond me--he was brilliant in all his previous work and you'd think a shelf full of Emmy Awards for writing would convince the high muckity-mucks to make him THE writer for the show. But, instead, it seemed like practically anyone (talented or not) could write for the show--and this became VERY obvious in season two.
This brings me to the next biggie damaging the show. It's rare to see a show's writing go downhill so fast as it did between season one and two. While season one was no masterpiece, some idiots thought the format needed retooling--and comedy shorts were added to the show in addition to the scary stuff. Some of the comedy was funny--most was not. But the big problem is that it totally disrupted the serious mood of the show and cheapened it. In effect, the series jumped the shark in season two.
The final big problem is that even if you ignore the comedy infused into "Night Gallery", you can't deny that the quality of the serious scripts dropped considerably. Many episodes were now pretty awful--so bad that I simply couldn't continue watching the shows. My time is too important to watch any more.