Fans of The Twilight Zone will almost certainly recognize this studio still of Burgess Meredith in a post-apocalyptic setting -
“The best laid plans of mice and men and Henry Bemis, the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis, in the Twilight Zone.”Since I've always enjoyed last-man-on-earth fantasies, this episode really appealed to me - until the very conclusion, which was a crushing disappointment (and I think totally unnecessary):
I had totally suppressed my memories of this ending until I was reminded by that photo at the top, which I found at Old Hollywood.
Reposted from 2011 to accompany the adjacent post about Jorge Luis Borges.
Reposted from 2016 because of the impending release of the new Twilight Zone revival.
I beg to differ on the ending being totally unnecessary! The ending is what makes the episode a Twilight Zone and is what gives us the "teaching moment" that we need more than just physical objects to be happy - even if those physical objects are things that can expand our learning.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a wrenching moment, but I think that was a big part of what made Twilight Zone what is was.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree. I thought at the time and do to this day that a better ending would have been Henry's discovery of the loss of a good book's necessary companion - someone to talk about it with.
ReplyDeleteTo cure you of your fandom of post-apocalyptic SF. It didn't work for me either, but Varley has a point.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.varley.net/Pages/Manhattan.htm
jk, my lastmanonearth fantasies don't require a nuclear holocaust. I prefer an "alternate universe"-type scenario in which my earth has no people and I have a flying transparent sphere and a vest with bottomless pockets from which I can retrieve foods and liquids.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Dan and Timothy Benfield as well as Anonymous. But the first two commenters speak directly to the Twilight Zone--just deserts.
ReplyDeleteOnly sad for a moment, if you stop to think that if Burgess Meredith was the last person left alive, he could simply find an optometrist's office and rifle through the ruins to get or make himself another pair (he said himself, that he had all the time in the world, now).
ReplyDeleteI considered that possibility too. In keeping with The Twilight Zone, though, I suspect he'd also find other survivors and that they'd turn out to be rather unpleasant.
DeleteAs someone who actually IS that blind, I remember crying while watching this one with my dad. He gave me a rundown on likely sources of lenses that I could make due with until I dug out an optometrist office.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea if any of those suggestions would actually work, but I feel better...
I used to think that the broken glasses were important. But I think most viewers would recognize that while books might be satisfying for a very long time, at some point, this man would long to speak with someone, to tell someone of what he read. While the lost glasses makes his situation immediate, I think most viewers would have seen that he was in a predicament even if the glasses had been spared.
ReplyDeleteI always thought the point was that no good can come from global war... not even for those who avoid conflict and love the life of the mind.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. The ending was a wholly unnecessary kick in the teeth for the protagonist. I liken it to a detective in a novel who, after 300 pages of investigation, leaves to arrest the perpetrator of a murder and gets run over by a garbage truck. This is also why I never liked the second Outer Limits series.
ReplyDeleteLurker111
Put another way, shock endings for the sake of shock endings tend to fall flat, not satisfy the viewer or reader, and tend to be written by hacks.
ReplyDeleteLurker111
I agree with 9:24. Anyone who thought nuclear war was survivable (and there were people claiming it was true, and others who chose to ignore the situation in the hope it would resolve peacefully), anyone who feels the "big picture" isn't their problem (then or now), should see themselves in the little man who wouldn't even stand up to his own wife for totally defacing his books but instead accepted that he would have to content himself reading for an hour, locked into a safe at lunchtime.
ReplyDelete-prospero
Cue up the Rolling Stones: "You can't always get what you want..."
ReplyDeleteDidn't most Twilight Zone stories end with an ironic twist? I recall several that had the theme of "be careful what you ask for."
ReplyDeleteThis was the first Twilight Zone I ever saw. I was a child. I was crushed. I remember that I went to bed and cried. Decades later, I still cannot watch that episode.
ReplyDeleteLurker111, to say Twilight Zone was written by hacks because you don't understand the ending is laughable. Like Miss Cellania said, Twilight Zone was known for it, it is why people watched the show and it is what made the series what it was.
ReplyDeleteTry to watch "Probe 7, Over and Out" without cringing. You could write a dissertation on what's wrong with that episode.
DeleteLurker111
+1 for the, 'be careful what you ask for' theme. I always thought the glasses were for the children in the audience (like when characters reminde each other of the obvious). Clearly, the time that he pined for would still not be his for reading - until he found sources of food and shelter...
ReplyDeleteIt's worth mentioning up Futurama's take on this particular episode: http://videosift.com/video/Futurama-The-Scary-Door-The-Last-Man in case you haven't seen it before.
ReplyDeleteSad? I think it's hilarious, but then again, I do have a cruel sense of humour.
ReplyDeleteThe Saddest in my opinion was the ring-a-ding girl.That was really a melodramatic episode.
ReplyDeleteThe Passersby is sad from the get go. That aerial shot of dishevelled soldiers walking (limping) by, accompanied by the melancholy and ominous string arrangements of the theme song.
ReplyDeleteI just watched it on YouTube. Tx. An interesting episode I don't remember having seen.
DeleteI discovered your wonderful blog by accident. Which is what I love about the internet and traveling (which, unfortunately, I can neither afford to do, nor fit into a plane's seat, but that's beside the point...if I COULD travel, I would love to wander). (Right now, I just get lost a lot, and it's almost as good, I guess, although very scary.) Another thing I love is when I've been talking or thinking about something, and then I hear or see something about it soon afterward. That may be due to being a Pisces, or God, or whatever. Anyway, I recently found out that my granddaughter watches "The Twilight Zone", which I told her is too otherworldly and frightening for someone her age, (about the same age that I was when I watched it). I then proceeded to tell her all about the episodes which I have never forgotten because they had had such an upsetting effect on me. This was at the top of the list. Thanks for posting it. I won't watch it, but I'm going to send it to her. ~ Phyllis Coppolino
ReplyDeleteTwilight Zone was brilliant. This was by far the best way for this episode to end--classic T.Z. irony.
ReplyDeleteHow was this episode any different from just about every other one? Anytime someone got a little too big for his britches, Rod & Friends would bitch-slap them back to reality. It's all about hubris and pissing off the Gods: Prometheus having his liver pecked out, and so forth. That said, Rod was a pretty vindictive guy, wasn't he?
ReplyDeleteI think this post and the line of comments trailing from it show the distinctive emotional results of the Twilight Zone and fulfill what it was trying to achieve, an eye-opener for the watcher that makes on question themselves and humanity.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, it was a terribly sad episode as I, a reader, greatly connect with Bemis and I think it is a funny and positive alternative for him to find an optometrist as a few people suggested.
I will never forget this episode.
"Mr. Henry Bemis, in the Twilight Zone."
So many of us forget that the 'last man on earth' isn't likely to be some superman, but just a lunk like we see every day. Stuck in an escapable miserable life (dude, stand up to your wife) he isn't the kind of person who'd have the gumption to take the glasses off some dead person's face. Surely there were several glasses-wearers in the bank alone.
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