A Nice Place to Visit.
"A Nice Place to Visit" is the twenty-eighth episode of the The Twilight Zone. It first aired on CBS on April 15, 1960. The title comes from the saying, "A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." Part 1 "Portrait of a man at work, the only work he's ever done, the only work he...
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I think this TZ episode does a better job of answering the eternal question of "Why does God allow suffering?" than anything else I have ever heard or read.
Here is Rod Serling's closing narration:
"A scared, angry little man who never got a break. Now he has everything he's ever wanted, and he's going to have to live with it for eternity - in the Twilight Zone."
Too much of anything, even a good thing, is not good - or so learns the protagonist of this particular episode; one Rocky Valentine. career criminal!
Cosmic justice
We ultimately get what we deserve
You make a bed, it's surely the one you'll lie in
The concept of Karma
Pretty common theme across the Twilight Zone and one that proves immensely satisfying, I think
Who among us, after all, doesn't enjoy seeing someone get what they've got coming?
I'm trying to think, though, are there any other episodes wherein a character is made to endure an eternal {i.e. post death} fate due his/her actions in life?
Any other depictions of Hell, itself?
I can think of several episodes wherein characters have consigned themselves, through their own bad actions, to reliving over and over the same bad actions and the consequence of said bad actions upon their very selves, but I'm struggling to remember any wherein this particular fate is positively asserted to have extended beyond earthly existence as we know it...
Seems like death, itself, is more often than not presented throughout the Twilight Zone as the "final word", if you will
That said, I think maybe the grimmest and most chilling episode of all is the 11th episode of season 1, titled - 'And When The Sky Was Opened'
And When the Sky Was Opened - Wikipedia
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Most every episode of the Twilight Zone, in my experience, contains and delivers a valuable moral
What, though, is the moral here?
I don't think there is one, actually...
The bleak message seems to be that we are at the capricious mercy of unseen and unknown forces
Forces that render us absolutely powerless
Some of Twilight Zone's main characters receive happy endings
Some do not
Even in those episodes where the main characters are denied a happy ending, there is, I believe, a silver lining to be found
A happy ending for us - the audience!
A lesson to be learned
A message received
A moral that we can take away
'And When The Sky Was Opened', however, appears to be the exception to this rule
There is no 'well deserved comeuppance' to be found in this episode...
To the contrary, the 3 lead characters - astronauts Harrington, Forbes, and Gart, are, by all accounts, good and decent men standing as heroes not only to our nation, but to all of mankind
None come anywhere close to deserving the fate unfairly delivered upon them!
A fate that far exceeds in terribleness any that has befallen any other Twilight Zone character that I can think of - including Rocky Valentine
Had Rocky's personalized iteration of an eternity in Hell been described as non-stop burning and torture of himself rather than eternity in a penthouse with beautiful, permanently compliant dames and an unbreakable winning streak at the casino - one might accurately ascribe to this brand of Hell a 'terribleness' exceeding that of an erasure from existence as experienced by Harrington, Forbes, and Gart
Certainly, I, personally, would far prefer to have never existed as opposed to being burned and tortured for eternity!
That said, though, if the choices are:
Eternal punishment of 'too much of a good thing'
or
To be erased as if one has never existed
then count me among those who consider it FAR WORSE to be removed altogether from time and space!
Just my thoughts, anyway
One of my favorite things about the Twilight Zone - it forces you to think!!
What do you think?