Happy Mother’s Day and Happy Twilight Zone Day!

• Twilight Zone Heaven Is Hell
• Twilight Zone Heaven Dog
• Twilight Zone Casino Episode Heaven Or Hell
• Twilight Zone Casino Episode Heaven Or Hell Full
• The Twilight Zone All Episodes

My mother introduced me to this extraordinary series during my childhood. Over the years, many of the episodes have steeped in my mind, forming a richer understanding of the show’s thought-provoking and often philosophical subject matter. The Twilight Zone didn’t just provide great entertainment, it also prompted viewers to contemplate and question social issues and ideals. It helped audiences to ascend to a different dimension of imagination and envision a future unbound by the impossible. For those reasons, I am a huge fan of the series and I have many favorite episodes, but for the sake of brevity, I narrowed down the five I find most memorable (in no particular order).

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
When a seemingly perfect 1960s neighborhood suddenly loses power after a strange shadow passes overhead, the residents begin to speculate. Tensions rise when it becomes clear that one neighbor’s vehicle has been spared from the outage. This triggers suspicion that the ‘monster’ responsible for the outage is already among them. It doesn’t take much for the residents to turn against each other. Good neighbors quickly become bitter enemies, resulting in a full-blown riot and at least one violent death. I think the following closing narration, like the episode itself, is as applicable today as it ever was.

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill…and suspicion can destroy…and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own – for the children…and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is…that these things cannot be confined…to the Twilight Zone.

It’s A Good Life
Anthony has a gift. He possesses the power to make his wishes come true. There’s just one problem… He has a strong hatred for anyone who dislikes or criticizes him. Anthony, who I’d imagine would be a perfect playmate for Damien Thorn, is pretty much a dictator in his home. If anyone dares to say or do anything he dislikes he uses his near-omnipotent powers to punish them in horrifying ways. Some disappear. Some are ‘put on fire.’ And others are disfigured.The tragic part is that the people in his life are forced to stifle their true feelings and praise his vile behavior so as not to face a similar fate. The conundrum escalates when the boy’s parents and neighbors are met with an opportunity to put an end to their misery, though doing so would mean becoming monsters themselves.

There are many Anthonys in the world today, both young and old. Though they may not have the ability to wreak havoc via supernatural means, they are just as manipulative and dangerous; especially when they receive encouragement for their bad behavior.

A Nice Place to Visit (1960)
In the case of Larry Blyden, a criminal who met his end in a shootout with police, the afterlife seemingly has everything any guy would want; beautiful women, and a never-ending winning streak at the casino. At first, he soaks it up, but then realizes that winning has no thrill without the risk of losing. Similarly, he sees no point to an afterlife without any danger, especially since he’d grown accustomed to a life full of hazard and unpredictability. He figures heaven just isn’t his scene and he requests to be sent to ‘…the other place,’ to which his guide laughs, ‘This is the other place!’ I was blown away by the twist in this episode. I believe it’s what first introduced me to the notion that heaven and hell are tailor-made for the individual.

Time Enough at Last
This episode, though extremely well done, is utterly heartbreaking. The main character, Henry Bemis, is constantly berated for most beloved pastime—reading. He is surrounded by people who bear similar anti-intellectual traits as some of the characters in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Actually, this episode shares several themes with Bradbury’s work, right down to the unaffected wife and a sudden apocalyptic event that wipes everyone Henry knows off the map. The latter leaves Henry alone with enough to sustain his body and mind for years to come. Just when he believes he could survive a life of perpetual solitude as long as he had such a vast collection of books to read, life flips him off one final time and his hopes are irreparably shattered. Every time I watch that final scene, my heart weeps along with him. It’s not fair, indeed, Henry. In fact, it’s pretty damn cruel.

“And the man said, ‘If this is Heaven, let me go to Hell.’ And the person said, ‘You are in Hell.’ (pp. 31-32) The episode Trump is referring to is called “A Nice Place to Visit,” which aired on April 15, 1960. The episode revolves around Rocky Valentine, a thief who is shot to death during an attempted robbery. Or instead, it might have a sardonic twist: eternal boredom. In The Twilight Zone episode “A Nice Place to Visit,” a small-time gambler, desperately in debt but addicted to the adrenaline of risk, dies and wakes up in a fabulous casino. It’s loaded with beautiful women, and every comfort and convenience.

1. List of The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes ' A Nice Place to Visit ' is episode 28 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. The episode first aired on CBS on April 15, 1960.
2. The Scary Door is a popular television show on Earth. Each episode consists of a scene that is a pastiche of episodes of the Twilight Zone, or another subject of science fiction. When watching The Scary Door, everyone appears unmoved and Bender has even said, 'saw it coming'. This may mean that it is a very predictable television program. 1 Episode 1, featured in the Futurama episode 'A Head.

The Eye of the Beholder
How could I not include this classic episode? It’s the favorite of many, and with good reason. Though it’s over a half-century old, it’s still relevant today, perhaps more than ever. So many people go to drastic extremes in an attempt to attain the social standard of beauty. And still, so many people are ridiculed when they fall short of acquiring it. I loved this episode because of the message it sends; that beauty and ugliness are both dependent on one’s perception.

There are a number of other favorites worth mentioning: Nothing in the Dark, To Serve Man, I Am The Night – Color Me Black, The Invaders… I could go on and on, but then this blog would probably never end, so I’ll stop there. Feel free to chime in with your favorite/most memorable episodes.

Published in The Catholic Thing on September 2, 2020

Twilight Zone Heaven Is Hell

I’ve been thinking a lot about Hell lately, not because I want to, but because we’ve become so good at surrounding ourselves with its working replicas in the here and now. Check the news.

As for the Hell of Christian faith: Anyone who doubts Hell’s existence should try this simple test. Turn out the lights some moonless night and listen alone to the late Heathcote Williams’s brilliant reading of Dante’s Inferno.

It’s a little too vivid for comfort. In the sunlight of a warm September morning, leathery demons in a pit of descending torments, no matter how ingeniously described, can seem ludicrous. We live in the Age of Science after all, with its well fed confidence and disdain for the superstitious. The “real,” we’re told, is what we can measure and prove – this, despite the conveniently blind assumption that reality conforms to the limits of our senses and the kind of material data they can collect.

But in the dark, with the eyes turned inward on the landscape of the soul, the terrain of the real reality – the things that actually matter in the course of our days, and the choices and consequences that shape us – can be very clear. As Dante wrote,

Twilight Zone Heaven Dog

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wilderness,
For I had wandered from the straight and true.

Dante follows his guide, the poet Virgil, into a Hell that’s alarmingly persuasive and perversely right, absent the noise of the modern world. In a nation now drunk with hatreds and resentment, it’s useful for a reader to dwell awhile on the Inferno’s Canto Eight, where the River Styx, in an endless flow of excrement and filth, holds the souls of those damned because of their anger. The wrathful thrash the surface, biting and attacking each other; the sullen drown below, swallowing their own muck.

The idea of the afterlife as a “place” is deeply embedded in the human imagination. And understandably so: We live in a physical world with mappable geography. Our bodies teach us pleasure and pain. So we tend to picture Hell as a lake of fire; or an extremely shabby Las Vegas where the drinks are miserly, the dancers ugly, and no one ever wins; or the Inferno’s final and lowest circle – a ferociously cold pit of ice.

The fiction of C.S. Lewis – especially The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters, but also That Hideous Strength – captures something of what Hell might be like. Or instead, it might have a sardonic twist: eternal boredom. In The Twilight Zone episode “A Nice Place to Visit,” a small-time gambler, desperately in debt but addicted to the adrenaline of risk, dies and wakes up in a fabulous casino. It’s loaded with beautiful women, and every comfort and convenience. But he can never leave and worse, he can never lose. In The Night Gallery’s “Hell’s Bells,” a cynical, hard-partying rocker dies and slides down the chute to damnation. Hell’s massive “fire door” opens on a cozy sitting room, a comfortable sofa – and an elderly couple eager to show him their vacation slideshow from Hawaii. Forever.

All of these images can be implausible, frightening, or amusing by turns. All may contain a grain of truth. But they miss the heart of what Hell would finally be, whatever form it takes, and why its suffering would be so fierce.

Hell would be the utter absence of love: a radical severing of the soul from the God who is Love himself, the source of our meaning and identity. Dante drew his inspiration for the structure of the Divine Comedy from Augustine, who described our “weight” as our love. Real love, unselfish love, is a fire: sacrificial, generous, ever-expanding; a blaze that lifts the soul upward toward God. This is why the lowest depth in the Inferno is not a furnace but a lake of ice, kept eternally frozen by the sin of pride – the arctic, willful, unrepentant flapping of Satan’s great wings.

Yet a question poses itself: Why, for us poor humans with lifespans barely a drop in the ocean of eternity, would Hell’s separation be permanent? For finite beings, the prospect of eternal punishment, whatever that might mean, seems hideously unfair. But it’s entirely fair. God doesn’t inflict Hell. The damned freely prefer it.

Twilight Zone Casino Episode Heaven Or Hell

The damned, by their actions and choices, become creatures unable to have it otherwise; creatures who cannot bear Heaven, cannot want Heaven, and could never fit there. If we are free – and our freedom is central to our special dignity; it sets us apart from all other creatures – God cannot force us to be what we’ve freely chosen not to be. God’s mercy is infinite. But it requires the sinner’s honesty, humility, and repentance. These the obstinate sinner will not give. Thus “mercy” would simply be an alibi for injustice.

Twilight Zone Casino Episode Heaven Or Hell Full

C.S. Lewis once wrote that while Heaven is “an acquired taste,” a taste acquired over time through a certain course of life, it was nonetheless made for men and women. Hell was never intended for the human soul. And what enters Hell is no longer fully human. It’s a cinder of human remains burned out by rage, frustration, loneliness and devouring self-love; just as a white dwarf star is no longer the fullness of a star, but its collapsed, self-consuming shell – the shriveled memory of a star, but with a crushing mass and a ferocious gravity that allow nothing to escape its appetite but the faintest light.

Dante ended his Divine Comedy with one of the most powerful and beautiful lines in Western literature, describing God as “the Love that moves the sun and other stars.” I suppose the lesson here is simply this. Whatever the fury and turmoil of our times might be, it’s who we love, what we love, and how well we love that determines our destination. So we need to choose. And the wise choose well.

The Twilight Zone All Episodes

© 2020 The Catholic Thing.

Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and senior research associate at the University of Notre Dame.