The Twilight Zone / Time Enough At Last /Additional

 So much has been said about Time Enough at Last (8th episode of First Season), but this additional viewing does sort of reiterate a thought I often ask myself when watching it: how did the union of Henry Bemis and Helen (Jacqueline deWit) ever take place? I have no idea why Helen would marry Henry if she detested him so much? Was it just to be a pain in his ass? Does she like tormenting him? She takes particular delight in marking through his book of poetry seemingly just because he likes to read it? Is he a bookworm? Yes. He loves him some printed word. Perhaps he prefers the fantasy of stories to the mundane everyday of life. A bank clerk job and a nagging wife at home who talks of "conversation" as an adversary to reading, Henry just seems like the type who should be a loner. He wants to share in the joys of what lies within the page with others, but I always found it funny that everyone in his life seems to despise the mere mention of the written word. They snarl their nose, roll their eyes, and only chipper up when they can keep Henry from partaking in what he loves the most. And even by the end, the universe seems to tell Henry he can't have all that time to read. This episode, even after a gazillion times watching it, really smarts. The guy might be addicted to reading, but did he deserve to suffer that fate? This has been asked for generation after generation, hasn't it? The Twilight Zone didn't always treat its folks so horribly, but Mr. Bemis is the very example of how it can all go terribly wrong for someone. Oh, I did observe in this viewing that Henry Bemis stumbles around the rubble and wreckage of his city after the Big Bomb, nearly often falling to the ground...and yet, his glasses stayed on his head. Even when he's in the vault and feeling his way to the door, Henry's glasses, hanging barely on his ears, remain on his head. And it was only when Henry was grabbing for a book on another step of the library that his glasses fell to the concrete and shattered. The universe wasn't just frowning on most of mankind...Henry might have been in the vault and survived, but he wasn't about to escape scot-free.