http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/26/arts/television/marathons-of-the-twilight-zone-the-simpsons-and-more.html 2014-12-26 01:24:29 Marathons of ‘The Twilight Zone,’ ‘The Simpsons’ and More There are a number of ways to spend New Year’s Eve that involve television but won’t expose you to those trying to replace Dick Clark these days. === You can’t bear to watch another New Year’s Eve ball-dropping, and yet you don’t want to leave the dominant appliance in your life unacknowledged on the year’s most festive and wistful night. Not a problem. There are a number of ways to spend New Year’s Eve that involve television but won’t expose you to whoever is trying to replace Dick Clark these days. Let’s break them down into three broad categories: YOU COULD RUN A MARATHON Some great episodes are on the list: “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” with William Shatner as an airplane passenger who sees odd things out the window; “To Serve Man,” about the friendly giants from outer space who turn out to be hungry. The show, in addition to being full of early appearances by future stars, is a snapshot of the anxieties of the scientific age as envisioned in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which somehow seems perfect for a night on which many are contemplating the future with equal parts dread and hope. If that’s too abstract for you, there is real science over on the The apparently endless appetite for “The Simpsons” is being fed once again by FXX, which is showing the premiere and finale from each of that show’s first 25 seasons. Does that make you want to hit yourself in the head and say “D’oh”? Then perhaps the marathon for you is the one on the YOU COULD CRAWL INTO A BOX “Mister Ed” is almost surely the finest sitcom about a talking horse ever made. As with “The Twilight Zone,” you never know what household-name actor is going to turn up in this show, which ran from 1958 to 1966. When Ed is not getting along with another horse, who is the target of his wrath? Mr. Magoo, an animated character with bad eyesight, had a TV show in the 1960s (which had previously been released on DVD), but this latest collection consists of the 53 cartoons moviegoers saw in theaters in the 1940s and ’50s. Jim Backus, later stranded on “Gilligan’s Island,” provided the voice of Magoo, a character often criticized as insulting to the sight-impaired. In YOU COULD TRY A PRE-ELECTRONIC BINGE Any fan of the medium would enjoy “Walking Distance: Remembering Classic Episodes From Classic Television,” by the aforementioned Professor Cahn, of Skidmore College. He analyzes memorable TV moments like the “Baby Fat” episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and the “Escape in Time” installment of “The Avengers,” explaining why he thinks they’re pivotal. “Walking Distance,” his title, is also the title of what he identifies as the best episode of “The Twilight Zone.” And yes, it’s showing during that Syfy marathon. There’s also Julian David Stone’s fast-moving yarn “The Strange Birth, Short Life, and Sudden Death of Justice Girl,” which came out in late 2013 but still makes lively reading in 2014. It’s set in 1955, the early days of television, and involves a writer who comes up with a character who turns into a fad. The story has a great take on what it must have been like to be in the business during those formative years, when anything was possible and nothing yet seemed like an imitation of something that had come before. And then there’s an odd little volume called “The Mediterranean Universe: Imagining Feline Civilization,” by John Newmeyer. In a whimsical way that’s difficult to describe, the book explores what life might be like on a planet where cats had fared a little better in the evolutionary chain. Why is it mentioned here? Because the author is the brother of Julie Newmar, the original Catwoman in the 1960s “Batman” TV series. He dedicates it thus: “To my elegant and ever-evolving sister Julie, the essential Catwoman. Together we have done great work for the Universal and Eternal Feline.”