This is one of the most famous Twilight Zone episodes, and since its plot and ending are well-known in popular culture, there will be spoilers in my discussion of this episode. It also featured character actors Jacqueline deWit and Vaughn Taylor, although in terms of both time on screen and importance, Burgess Meredith pretty much carries the episode himself. It starred famed actor Burgess Meredith as bookish and henpecked bank teller Henry Bemis. "Time At Last" is the eighth episode of The Twilight Zone. The ending has passed into pop mythology - it was most recently referenced in The Simpsons, where a mailman trapped beneath a car cheerfully announces he has plenty of reading material to occupy him until help arrives. 'Time Enough At Last' is pure Serling, and pure Zone. It is available on the second Twilight Zone DVD from Image Entertainment. The episode was written by Rod Serling, of course, and is based on the short story of the same name by Lynn Venable, first published in 1953. to an irregular degree, certainly, but after experiencing the poor man's treatment at the hands of his tormentors, and his initial reaction to post-holocaust isolation, the viewer is glad to see him finally get a break. And this is a particularly unjust Twilight Zone. Bending down to pick up a volume, he drop his spectacles - which shatter to pieces, leaving him utterly unable to read.Īh, the irony. Bemis realises that he can finally spend as much time as he likes with his beloved tomes, without fear of persecution. He wanders for a while and isolation soon leads him to the brink of suicide, but then he discovers the library, where the H-bomb (kinder on books than people) has scattered books hither and yon. During a lunch break, he sneaks into the bank vault for a crafty read, and in the process survives a nuclear holocaust that kills (literally) everyone else. His boss forbids him to read at work, and his wife defaces and mutilates his books. Spoliers ahead!īurgess Meredith plays a bepsectacled, bookworm bank clerk, Henry Bemis, who is hounded by his boss and his wife for his rather excessive love of reading. That's the crew, by the way.One of the quintessential episodes from the original run of The Twilight Zone (episode 8, from 1959).
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