Finished watching Seasons 1, 2, 3, and 5 of the Twilight Zone. I noticed some interesting things....

Apparently, Rod Serling was really concerned about what was going to happen in 1974 because two episodes ("Steel;" Season 5, episode 2 and "The Old Man In A Cave;" Season 5, episode 7) presented dystopian/apocolyptic visions of that year...

Many of the episodes simply wouldn't be produced in the #MeToo era. "The Lonely" (S1, E7), "Two" (S3, E1), and "Dead Man Shoes" (S3, E18) all showed men hitting/physically assaulting women BEFORE showing affection or embarking on romances with them...

"The Chaser" (S1, E31); "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" (S5, E16); "From Agnes, With Love" (S5, E21); and "Spur of the Moment" (S5, E21) had Male characters who aggressively pursued romances with women who made it clear that they simply weren't interested...

Three episodes ("The Passerby" S3, E4; "Still Valley" S3, E11; "Occurence at Owl Creek"; S5, E22) were overly sympathetic to the Confederate cause, not even mentioning slavery, let alone depicting any slaves.

In fact, black people were almost NEVER depicted in the series. Season 1's "The Big Tall Wish" had a mostly black cast and depicted African-Americans in a fairly positive light. And "I Am The Night--Color Me Black (S5, E26) and "The Brain Center at Whipple's (S5, E33) had...

Black characters serving as the voice of reason but African-Americans were largely absent, even as background characters...

Latinos don't fare much better. In the three episodes that depicted Latinx people, they were either weak and gullible ("Dust," S2, E12); superstitious, ignorant, and unnnecessarily hostile ("The Gift" S3, E32) or just plain greedy ("The Rip Van Winkle Caper" S2, E24)...

Only one episode in the four seasons with half hour episodes depicted an Asian character ("The Encounter", S5, E31). Played by @GeorgeTakei, this character, while displaying a great deal of complexity, almost immediately fantasized about killing a white male character w a ...

Samurai sword. (In all fairness, the white man is revealed to have committed a war crime during WW2 and made several racist statements that would make even the most hardcore Trump supporter cringe.)...

The misogyny is more subtle but the fact that so many of the female protagonists are presented as weak, blubbering idiots says a lot about how Rod Serling and the male writers viewed women...

And WAY too many of the episodes had cast comprised EXCLUSIVELY of white male characters.

The series also overrelied on plots featuring dead people who didn't know they were dead, aliens and space travel, giants (four episodes featured giants), robots, and sole survivors/lone inhabitants.

A war was a common theme. (This made sense as Serling was a WW2 veteran who suffered from symptoms of PTSD for the rest of his life.) One episode about WW2 featured a young Dean Stockwell in yellowface.

Still I cannot dismiss the series outright...

It was ahead of its time in many ways--using sci-fi, fantasy, and supernatural elements to critique the social norns of mid-20th century America and the seamy underbelly of human nature.

"The Monsters Are On Maple Street" showed just how quickly people lose their collective shit in the wake of minor inconveniences. "The Shelter" depicted how quickly friends and neighbors will turn on each other during a crisis