TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:35am EST, one of the most MEMORABLE episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “TIME ENOUGH AT LAST” (written by Rod Serling, directed by John Brahm, originally broadcast November 20, 1959) The most sensitive and outcast of Rod Serling’s sensitive outcasts was bookworm Henry Bemis, played by the great Burgess Meredith, in the first of his four Twilight Zone appearances. In “Time,” we share poor bookworm Bemis’ dumbstruck horror as his towering terror of a wife gleefully rips out the pages of his favorite book of poetry, aghast at how these two could have ever wound up married. Bemis’ obsession for quietude to read at work (bank teller), far from his shrewish wife and the madding crowd, saves his life when he sequesters himself alone in the underground bank vault to read during his lunch break, allowing him to be the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust—the first fictional visualization of the aftermath of an atomic bomb on American television, and one of the greatest set designs in television history. The abrupt, downbeat twist of the (in-) famous ending of “Time” (spoiler alert!), Bemis breaking his glasses accidentally on the library steps, accounts for the episode’s memorability and high esteem it still holds today, sixty-four years later—but that’s because it was a remarkably pessimistic one for Serling, upending the audience’s episode-long rooting for Bemis, only to unfairly punish him, undeservedly depriving him of his very lifeblood—and that’s because it is not an original script by Serling, but the first of his many great Twilight Zone adaptations of short science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories (this one by Lynn Venable). Had it been a Serling original, I believe his more positive, hopeful worldview would’ve ended the episode with a long crane shot of Bemis blissfully reading from those stacks of library books, alone at last, with “Time Enough at Last.” arlenschumer.com/twilight-zone #rodserling #twilightzone #thetwilightzone #burgessmeredith #timeenoughatlast #arlenschumer @dgareps @richardsyrettstrangeplanet @nyadventureclub https://www.instagram.com/p/CoprJDvv_Fi/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
