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"Felicity" is all about the emotional uncertainty of contemporary teens and young adults. "The Twilight Zone," which originally ran from 1959 to 1964, was about paranoia and uncertainty of every kind. It was done in a bold, slashing style: an antidote to the bland official culture of an era when anxious Americans found security in conformity. Thanks to Johnson and "Felicity" creator J.J. Abrams, the shotgun marriage of these shows is a double-barreled blast.

Given the way TV de-emphasizes directors (and movies emphasize them), Johnson is probably best-known to general audiences for acclaimed big-screen productions like "The Last American Hero" and "Cattle Annie and Little Britches." Within broadcast circles he's long been known as the master of network dramaturgy. He has used his own experience as an actor and director in radio, movies and theater to exact great performances and supply an acute visual sense for series like "Have Gun Will Travel" and "The Twilight Zone," miniseries like "The Kennedys of Massachusetts" and "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story" and, especially, breakthrough small-screen films like "Off the Minnesota Strip" -- the juiciest pre-"Sopranos" work of writer David Chase.

Michael Sragow Michael Sragow's column appears every Thursday in Arts & Entertainment + Archives

Johnson's latest voyage into the unknown started eight months ago, at a salute to the 40th anniversary of "The Twilight Zone" at the Museum of Television & Radio in Los Angeles. As Johnson told me last week when I phoned him at his home in Monterey, Calif., he was surprised by the swarms that gathered to pay homage to Rod Serling's creation. Johnson thought they'd be in "the walkers and wheelchairs set," but most were baby boomers or younger. "I know that avid fan clubs are not to be believed," Johnson says. "I know that younger people can get an almost necrophiliac pleasure from all this. But we had to turn away a hundred or more."

One bright-eyed face in the crowd belonged to the co-creator of "Felicity," J.J. Abrams. "As my agent told me the next day, a guy named J.J. Abrams had asked him at the function how I would react to an offer to do episodic television. My agent told him that he'd see -- I had done 'episodic' back in 1959. Abrams had an idea to throw the 'Felicity' group, who are going through all the teen angst that is the currency of the show, into the Twilight Zone." Johnson says he initially thought the notion was "insane," adding, "First of all, I didn't know the show; it's not the kind of subject matter I would normally seek out." But he agreed to sit down with the tapes, and what he discovered was that "it's done awfully well -- the kids can act, and it's beautifully written."

He went down to Los Angeles to meet Abrams, whom he describes as "this bouncing Buster Brown boy of 33 who looks 10 years younger and is an incredible manager and supervisor and seer." Abrams won Johnson over with his energy and concept. "J.J. said that all his characters were in such terrible turmoil about their love lives, they'd become such a pain in the ass, that he was going to dump them into a lime-pit and shake them up, so they wouldn't know where they were."

Next page | Five characters in search of an exit