Serling’s Apology to Carol Burnett for Twilight Zone’s “Cavender is Coming”

Some Twilight Zone fans might give Season 3’s “Cavender is Coming” a passing grade, but good luck finding anyone who ranks it among their top favorites. Its critics included Rod Serling himself, who actually apologized to star Carol Burnett for how it turned out.

It’s true that Serling was notoriously hard on his own work, but he seemed particularly disappointed in this episode. As I’ll explain in greater detail in a future post, it was intended as a pilot for a new series that would have featured weekly appearances by co-star Jesse White. But when CBS passed on it, Serling wound up using it on the Twilight Zone.

Given his opinion of it, though, it’s a wonder he didn’t simply shelve it. As he told Burnett in a letter dated May 3, 1962 (three weeks and one day before the episode aired):