I am eating my way through a wonderful Penguin edition of the best Richard Matheson short stories, and just read “Button, Button”, the basis for my very favorite episode of the 1980s Twilight Zone revival. I didn’t know before yesterday that it was a Matheson original, but I’m not surprised; he also wrote the indelible 1960s Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, which I’ve written about elsewhere recently.

But I immediately disliked Matheson’s story! Its ending is radically different from the TV show’s, and the TV show’s ending hit me right where I lived at age 12. It had exactly the right amount of subtlety for a 12 year old, and because I was 12 it was therefore instantly the most unforgettably amazing thing I’d ever seen. I told my family and my friends at school about how cool this episode was, summarizing the whole plot for them.

The silly twist ending of the original printed story has nothing on the TV version! Had I never seen the episode I probably would have said “lol” and moved on, but instead I was brought from the amazing high of discovering the source material to one of my all-time favorite TV moments, only to get this womp-womp ending. Wow.

(The two endings are discussed on the TV epsiode’s Wikipedia page.)