By William Kozy

“What’s your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?” And here come all the episodes rounding the final turn…3,000 fans and writers responded to the poll…here they come down the stretch, and it’s “The Last Night of the Jockey!”…coming in a tie for 151st place after receiving just 2 votes.

The episode opens with that stock piece of TZ music that always reliably indicated a noirish scene of down-and-out deadbeats and ne’er-do-wells in some city somewhere. The camera pans across the floor where several sports pages lay scattered and headlining trouble for a horse jockey named Grady. Here’s a fun fact: As the camera moves past the prop newspaper called “The Daily Bulletin Sports”, look at the headline: “Jockey Banned from All U.S. Tracks” –you can see it at the 00:43 mark. Then go and call up the episode “Ring-A-Ding Girl” and fast forward to the 03:42 mark where a teenage boy sits in a chair reading the sports pages. Yep, it’s the EXACT same newspaper. The props department simply reused it for that episode. Okay, moving on…