It takes Sartre’s No Exit‘s conclusion of “Hell is other people,” and responds, “Hell is existence.” For this character that we’ve grown to like, that’s certainly what this ending means. It’s the most mercilessly brutal ending to a work of art I can think of. I also mentioned that The Twilight Zone evaded this quite often, and sometimes, it’s brilliant. I have mentioned in my reviews of “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine” in regards to the main character, and of “Escape Clause” in regards to the main character’s wife, we want to see bad characters come to bad endings and good or innocent characters come to happy endings. “That’s just not fair There was time now.” “That’s not fair,” he says as tears begin to fall. He soliloquizes in happiness, until, reaching to pick up another book, his glasses fall off and he can no longer see. Even a life as the only man on a destroyed earth was a life worth living, if it had books. He finds undamaged books, and, at the steps of the library, realizes that he’s finally found everything he ever wanted. He reasons that he’d be forgiven, given the circumstances, and is about to shoot himself, when he spots a library. Now officially completely alone, he wanders in despair, eventually finding a gun. He goes to his old home, and finds that, like everything else, it’s destroyed. They look great in black and white, and the shots of Bemis wandering around awestruck are unforgettable. Bemis finds his glasses and heads out to see the total destruction as promised by the newspaper. He reads a newspaper, whose headline reads “H-Bomb Capable of Total Destruction.” This is our first indication of anything of the sort, and it works, because the story is ultimately about the character, and it sucks you in that way. One day, Bemis goes down into the bank vault to read during his lunch break in peace and quiet. It’s such a horrendous action that it really makes you feel for the character, and chances are you liked him already, even if you found him ridiculous. In a scene with his wife, she tricks him into thinking she wants to hear some poetry, only to allow him to discover that she has crossed out the words on every single page of his book. When getting scolded by his boss, Bemis confesses that his wife won’t let him read at home, and that’s why he reads at work. There are a few funny lines, and Meredith plays the role perfectly awkward. These opening scenes are played as light comedy, and they work as that. We see early on that his constant reading prevents him from being good at his job, and gets him in trouble with his boss. It features perhaps the series’s strongest character and performance, and has an unforgettable ending.īurgess Meredith ( Of Mice and Men, Rocky) plays Henry Bemis, a myopic bookish little bank teller that seems to get on everyone’s nerves. This episode seems to always be in the running in people’s minds for best ever. Episode 1.8 “Time Enough at Last Original air date: NovemWriter: Rod Serling (short story by Lynn Venable) Director: John Brahm
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