Twilight Zone - One Last Stop

A Stop at Willoughby

I have watched this episode quite a few times and whether or not Gart Williams actively pursued suicide has always remained such a debate for TZ fans. It does come up from time to time on the Reddit sub for the show. Could it have been a pervasive desire in the back of the mind, some yearning to depart a miserable existence for some form of "peace fantasy", where Gart is fed up with a bitchy wife (yet another horrible wife written in the first season, more of a sociopath to Eileen Ryan's raging Nora wanting her alimony in "A World of Difference") played with efficient coldness and biting viciousness by Patricia Donahue and unbearable boss (Howard Smith; most folks at some point or another has been under the burden of such a brain-piercing, ulcer-producing barker with an unrelenting pressure pressed on his employees to achieve at a high level, applying the press with that voice). Gart certainly had my sympathies and I could understand why he wanted off the damn speeding train of "progress" that seemed to stress the poor guy to the max. He tries to talk to the wife, but that woman would have none of it. She might ask him to spill about what he really wants, but Gart doing so didn't elicit anything caring from Janie. This is always the hardest part of the episode to me. Because I know that Janie just wants Gart to work himself into a coronary or nervous breakdown, watching the guy spill his heart out to her with nothing but disgust and disdain in return is rough. So Willoughby is presented in the episode as this wish fulfillment fantasy that Gart dreams of while riding home on a train as the snow comes down heavy and thick outside the windows. The most friendly real person to Gart is Wingreen's kind-faced conductor...a smile and friendly disposition Wingreen has is a break from the norm for Gart. That is one good takeaway in the 1960 life of Gart that isn't a bummer. When Gart walks among the citizens of Willoughy, this big smile on his face under the brightly sunny warm atmosphere of the much simpler time he now finds himself, I can see why some viewers have asked if this is "pro-suicide". Perhaps this is a type of heaven, even.

I didn't realize it but when the episode is set in 1960, it is November. So the viewing is timely. I think if his life was as calm as his ride back and forth from work to home and vice versa, Gart's emotional state might not have been so worn out. The train ride scenes really do seem like very comfortable, quite pleasant in relation to the "push, push, push" boss who just can't shut the fuck up or the wife who wants her husband to tolerate the misery and keep his mouth closed.