The Twilight Zone: A Nice Place to Visit
Feb. 10th, 2026 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAnother “on-set” appearance by Rod Serling in the next episode preview for “A Nice Place to Visit” stuck in my memory and had me anticipating the story to come. So far, the ending twists in The Twilight Zone having a certain amount of “obviousness” hasn’t bothered me too much; there seems a bit more to the episodes than that.
The episode began with a small-time crook stealing jewels; the police showing up and opening fire straight away did bring certain modern controversies to mind. Once that was over with, “Rocky” Valentine took a while realising just what had happened to him even with a jovial man in a pale suit showing up and beginning to promise good things ahead. Impressions I’d once seen descriptions of production codes forbidding the firing of a gun and the results in the same shot did tangle up with his realisation, even if the point was that there weren’t “results.”
It had also got my attention of how elaborate the decorations were in the rooms offered the main character. I did at least wonder about my impressions of “the spareness of mid-century decor” coming from “other sets” and not actual records after I’d supposed something more of his character was being set up. The casino he wound up in also looked more elaborate than the one in “The Fever,” even if a slot machine happened to show up viewed from the side. While it took more than one visit for the main character’s suspicions to build, one bit of austere surroundings had me recalling the “library steps” in “Time Enough at Last.”
As for the final realisation of just where you really were when you got everything you want with no possibility of missing out to make it more interesting, I did think a bit of certain speculations I’ve had to try and dodge particular proclamations of disinterest in “life after death” because the descriptions aren’t appealing. In a more immediate and realistic way, I also supposed The Twilight Zone might have been getting back towards an early theme of “the terrors of isolation”; in this case, though, it involved “the people you’re around aren’t actually people the way you are.”
The episode began with a small-time crook stealing jewels; the police showing up and opening fire straight away did bring certain modern controversies to mind. Once that was over with, “Rocky” Valentine took a while realising just what had happened to him even with a jovial man in a pale suit showing up and beginning to promise good things ahead. Impressions I’d once seen descriptions of production codes forbidding the firing of a gun and the results in the same shot did tangle up with his realisation, even if the point was that there weren’t “results.”
It had also got my attention of how elaborate the decorations were in the rooms offered the main character. I did at least wonder about my impressions of “the spareness of mid-century decor” coming from “other sets” and not actual records after I’d supposed something more of his character was being set up. The casino he wound up in also looked more elaborate than the one in “The Fever,” even if a slot machine happened to show up viewed from the side. While it took more than one visit for the main character’s suspicions to build, one bit of austere surroundings had me recalling the “library steps” in “Time Enough at Last.”
As for the final realisation of just where you really were when you got everything you want with no possibility of missing out to make it more interesting, I did think a bit of certain speculations I’ve had to try and dodge particular proclamations of disinterest in “life after death” because the descriptions aren’t appealing. In a more immediate and realistic way, I also supposed The Twilight Zone might have been getting back towards an early theme of “the terrors of isolation”; in this case, though, it involved “the people you’re around aren’t actually people the way you are.”