Monday, February 25, 2008

The Twilight Zone Diaries, episode 8



Time Enough at Last

originally aired: November 20, 1959
written by: Rod Serling
starring: Burgess Meredith, Vaughn Taylor

"Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents, or wives, or clocks, or anything else. He'll enter a world all to himself without anyone."

classification: drama

story: A myopic bank teller survives an atomic war and looks forward to a life or peaceful reading until he breaks his glasses.

my summary: This has got to be one of Serling's best plays, and definitely one of the series' most memorable episodes. Burgess Meredith is brilliant; the wife was extremely creepy and well-cast. She actually terrifies me. Great scenes of her stalking around that house humiliating him. That creepy smile while she rips up his poetry book? Ish. H BOMB CAPABLE OF TOTAL DESTRUCTION!! Great headline. You just want it to end differently, every time. Spare glasses.

"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."

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