The story works as a story, but Serling makes some changes to it that are necessary for the change of medium.  In the original the final revelation comes when two guys are in a room talking.  Serling was right to give it a more dramatic spin while Chambers is boarding the intergalactic airplane.

Saw it coming.

But even that paranoia has a little twist.  The Soviet ambassador is the biggest asshole when the Kanamit first shows up.  As it turns out, his leeriness was right and his later trust is wrong.  So while Serling-channeling-Knight endorses Cold War suspicions, he gives his blessing to both sides, sort of.

"Wow, man.  Donuts."

Now that you mention it…

Who Wants to Get Groped by an Eleven Thousandaire is one of my favorite 90s sketches.

I loved
#2 pencils are not sad that they lost.

This was the first time ZG didn't seem to be doing a piss-take on the idea of hosting SNL.  Maybe because it's a May sweeps episode and Lorne wouldn't put up with it,  but he seemed to be trying sincerely to work within the sketches.  It worked pretty well.

One of the better segments from the 80s TZ was "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty."  It was based on a Harlan Ellison story, which another staff writer adapted for some reason.  It's still really good, though.  Peter Riegert goes back in time to look out for his sad, bullied younger self.  He winds up making things…

I respectfully disagree with your disagreement.  I don't know if this was Hamner's intent but Fortune seems to me a kind of Perry Cox/Jeff Winger sitcom antihero.  He's a little bit of a prick, but he's also less hypocritical than everyone around him.  They all reveal themselves as utter two-faces when they hear the…

What's cool about that segment is that they go in a complete 180 for the lead.  Shatner played it pretty cool as the passenger, all things considered.  ("All things" in this case meaning the gremlin screwing with the wing eight feet away.)  Lithgow is so freaked that he practically has springs coming out of his head.

Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if they came back to sample some dark meat later, if only for variety's sake.

She threatened to be one-note up until that point, with every line having to do with food.  Then she got a lot more interesting.

Oh yeah.  Mustin was about 80 when he made this episode, and he'd be a go-to old codger character actor until his death in 1977.  Good man for the job.

"You bought me my first maxi-pad!"

Wisely the writers put a lot of work into defining both characters - with help from Elisha Cuthbert and Zachary Knighton, of course - before throwing them back together.  They're funny as friends and as members of the group, and that doesn't go away when their relationsip starts up again.  (As I assume it will yet…

She'll be leaning in all right.

My original intent was to use the apostrophe to stand in for "white" so that I wouldn't be leaning too hard on that word.  On reflection "White Stripes" is two words, so that probably wasn't the right move.

Yeah, I think what would have happened to Rance in the real, non-TZ enhanced world would have been that he'd get a reputation as being impossible to work with and the offers would dry up once viewers got tired of his stupid vanity TV show.

The dog drowning to stay with him was how I read it too.  Would have been nice ol' Rip could have actually pulled him ashore before he drowned, but that wouldn't have made as much of a story.