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I certainly agree about "It's a Good Life"--episode and original Jerome Bixby story.

To me, Matt, the varying lengths of the stories on the '80s Zone is exactly what killed it. (Curiously, it's precisely the same mistake the producers of Night Gallery had made 12-13 years earlier.) The greatest (by common acclaim) anthology series--Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Outer Limits--all feature one story per episode, the same length every time. This creates a structure which can help support the weaker stories in such a series. Even with a very weak original Twilight Zone, there is pleasure in going through the rituals of the show--the unforgettable main title, the opening weird situation, the monologue by Serling, the body of the story--again, always the same length, and you know you're exactly halfway through when the commercial comes on--and then the zapper ending, followed by Serling's off-screen closing words. As much as the individual stories, it's that structure--the experience of watching the orignal Twilight Zone--that people remember.

With varying-length shows, though, there is no support structure at all, and each individual story simply has to sink or swim on its own. Almost by definition, most sink. One might remember an individual story from such a series, but one won't tend to remember the series.

Actually my wife and I have just re-watched some of the '80s Twilight Zones, courtesy of Netflix, and, man, Matt...we'll just have to agree to disagree. We abandoned ship partway through the second disc. I definitely agree that there were some individual stories that were effective--"Nightcrawlers," "The Burning Man," "Paladin of the Lost Hour"--but we found most of them just plain awful....