Part of the reason season 5 couldn't recover was because the big three writers weren't as involved as much, between Serling's continued exhaustion, Beaumont;s terminal illness, and Matheson being an in-demand writer on other projects.

Understood, but you might want to take another whack at it.  It's the captain, not the doctor, who gives Bell the big speech about how he shouldn't blame himself for what the war did to his crew.  That struck me because it's easy to chalk the ending up to cultural differences, with military failure being a bigger deal…

Yeah there's a scene from a Tennant Doctor Who episode that makes a pretty stark contrast with this one.  An evil alien stands up to a headmaster and gloats to him about how WWI is coming, and all his students will die horribly.  "Do you think they'll thank you for teaching them that it's glorious?"

Yeah, if I didn't know already that Pleaance was in his early 40s when he filmed this, I wouldn't have figured it out by looking at him.

Having just watched it without the laugh track, I'd say the laugh track was the least of its troubles.  You've still got the over-obvious music cues, the unnecessary chipmunk voices, and a general distrust in Carol Burnett as a comic actress.  And when the production leaves her alone, Burnett nails it.  She's…

David White was in "A World of Difference" too.  It's always nice to see him, but I thought the earlier episode was better.

It kind of looks like that at first.  Anne is the only sane one, because she knows her spineless dad is just buying them another emotional crutch.  It's Tom and Karen's eagerness to transfer their affections to a toy that seems creepy to me.

Yeah, more accurate to say that it was an experiment that didn't quite work, except when it did.  The episodes you site are mostly exceptions to the rule.

Yeah, this episode does have the actual gay guy at his office saying "Speaking for my people, no."  He does have a quality, but taht quality doesn't mean what all his friends seem to think it means.

The closing credits gag in "Underdog" really sticks out for me, with Joey frantically ripping the posters away until he gets to "winner of 8 Tonys" and gets all smug.

And why she was one of the first repeat guests.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying Weekend Update has never been funny since then.  I was a huge fan of Tina and Jimmy, for instance.

Oddly enough, when you think about the early years, "a pile-up of topical one-liners" is what Weekend Update has been since '85.  Except for maybe Kevin Nealon, no one since then has cared to make even token stabs at satirizing a newscast.

On Hitchcock I think her best was "The Five Forty-Eight", a story that makes it plain just how bad an idea it can be to bone your secretary.

Do you think Holt knew that Farraday was giving him a break?  I kind of got that feeling.

That was such a boss line.

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Qne ir you're not insane you have to fly more missions.  That's some catch, that catch 22.

One thing I do like about "Four O'Clock" is the visit from Hall, the FBI agent.  He goes in wary, leaves a little warier, and barely even bothers to berate Crangle.  Serling seems to have known that listening to nuts with conspiracies was a routine part of a Fed's job, and Linden Chiles underplays it nicely.

Yeah, in adapting this story Serling demonstrates a light touch, which is not necessarily a quality you associate with him.

The Internet has been a boon to the Crangles of the world.  It's not like you can get people fired for disagreeing with you, not in general.  (You might get lucky with some employers if they share your intolerance.)  But a bunch of networked lunatics can certainly make your life miserable.