Description: Season 3, Episode 3
Air Date: September 29, 1961
Plot Summary: A neighborhood is turned upside down after the news of an imminent nuclear strike.
Review: Although this episode feels remarkably similar to "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," the themes are tweaked enough to make it stand on its own merits. I mean, both deal with the pleasantries and mindless facade that neighbors put on for each other, but this episode wanted to stress the panicky self-preservation of humans. More appropriately, that, under the right conditions, friends will readily turn against one another in the face of death. At the same time, this story differs in that it plays off precise Cold War exploitation while "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" obviously had aliens.
In essence, we are shown a seemingly happy community celebrating a birthday when the birthday-boy's son hears a radio broadcast about objects approaching the USA. The neighbors all jump to the conclusion that it must be a nuclear attack and try their best to prepare. The birthday-boy has a bomb shelter while no one else does. This creates a conflict as the friends of the birthday-boy want him to let them in to the shelter. To the credit of one character, the birthday-boy's best friend, he tries to keep a level head in face of impending doom. On the other hand, the others begin to freak out and reveal their true, selfish nature; they would rather risk everyone dying in order for themselves to have a chance to live. Not listening to reason, the neighbors ban together to break into the shelter--never thinking that the shelter would be useless without a door. Also, it never occurs to them that if a lousy battering ram can break into the shelter, how in hell is it going to protect you from a nuclear blast or the fallout?! Just as they are about to kill each other over this tiny shelter, a radio broadcast is heard explaining that the objects were merely satellites. Feebly trying to recover their dignity and apologizing, the neighbors realize their relationships have been ruined permanently. And that's all she wrote.
While self-preservation is an innate instinct in most lifeforms, humans typically believe themselves the superior organism. This episode reveals the truth that, when the chips are down, rare is the individual who will demonstrate true character and conviction. Really, how many people out there are simply going to come to terms with their deaths? Ironically, it's the only thing certain in every person's life. You can't necessarily blame people for human nature, but humans aren't as far above the rest of the animal kingdom as they ignorantly believe. A grim conclusion to a somber episode. Not too bad overall, but the twist was predictable and the similarities to other Cold War-themed episodes didn't help.
This is one of the best Twilight zone episodes, which makes it even more moving with how this episode, unlike many of the others, deals with a situation which really could happen in real life. Most people, if faced with the almost certainty of death in the very near future, will likely claw their neighbor's eyes out in order to avoid it themselves. Middle America residential neighborhoods, more so back in the 1950s than today, always carried the outwardly friendly pleasantries and were often friends as well as neighbors inviting each other over for barbeques and celebrating one's birthday like in this episode before the bomb scare on the radio started. And those neighbors continued to remain that way unless an ultimate life or death situation would occur. As for the neighbors desperately trying to get in the shelter, you can only blame them for not preparing and building one themselves. And that was also a distant secondary reason for him not letting his neighbors into his shelter (the first reason being that they'd run out of air and suffocate if they all crammed in there). It's not even so much a totally fake facade that the neighbours put on for each other, some of them probably really liked each other (the neighbor who had bigoted thoughts towards the foreign neighbor was not one of them though), it's just that none of them would truly sell themselves out for them.
ReplyDeleteOne other thought, back in the 1950s, the middle American neighborhoods that usually carried the pleasantries and befriended their neighbors were also usually all white neighborhoods. Many of them were not the same towards blacks or minorities back then, which this episode showed an example of with the neighbor who held bigoted thoughts towards the foreign neighbor.
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