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“One More Pallbearer” (season 3, episode 17; originally aired 1/12/1962)
In which a loser keeps on losing…
A pair of middling episodes this week, neither of them awful, but neither of them exactly good, either; both suffer from stories that don’t work as effectively as they need to, and both benefit from strong lead performances that at times subvert the intentions of the actual narrative. Of the two of them, “One More Pallbearer” is more of a chore to get through, because there’s no real suspense. In the opening scene, we meet Paul Radin (Joseph Wiseman), a natty gentleman and apparent rich person whose hired a workman to construct a view screen in his basement. Well, that’s not exactly it. He isn’t just installed a new TV: he’s setting up a bomb shelter that will allow him to trick people into believing the world has ended. Which means videos of nuclear explosions, pre-recorded Civil Defense radio broadcasts, nightmarish sound effects, the works. It’s an elaborate set-up, and work-man is clearly impressed; more, the audience impressed, and immediately curious as to why Paul went to all this trouble.
Turns out, he’s designed a trap in order to punish three people who humiliated him at various points in his life. Mrs. Langsford (Katherine Squire) was Paul’s teacher as a boy; when she caught Paul cheating, she excoriated him in front of the class, and went even harder on him when he tried to place the blame on someone else. Reverend Hughes (Gage Clark) preached against Paul when Paul’s actions drove a young woman to suicide. And finally, Colonel Hawthorne (Trevor Bardette) had Paul court martialed for refusing an order to attack a hill. Despite these setbacks, Paul has managed to excel in life, and is now in a position to get some petty, petty revenge. His plan: first, he’ll convince the three that the world is ending, and then he’ll offer them the use of his bomb shelter, but only if they get down on their knees and apologize to him for their various offenses.
This is a complicated plan, to say the least. It seems almost to have been built off the twist of another episode. Oh, you think the world is ending? Turns out it’s all an elaborate hoax! Letting the audience in on the twist early has a certain amount of cleverness to it, because it gets ahead of our expectations by confirming them in advance. And the ending works fairly well, too, appearing to be a deeply implausible twist before reversing to show that it’s just another expression of Paul’s lonely, doomed character. But by making it clear at the outset that Doomsday isn’t coming, the scenes with Paul confronting his tormenters lose a lot of their tension. The stakes are minor at best, and they dwindle even further once it becomes obvious that Paul’s plan hasn’t a hope in hell of succeeding.
Again, that’s got a certain amount of cleverness, because at times it plays like a trio of sensible people wandered into one of Rod Serling’s nightmares and decided they were having no truck with such foolishness. None of them have any remorse or guilt over their past actions, and they don’t bend in the slightest when Paul tries to change their minds. Worse (for him), when the festivities start, the trio is more concerned about getting back to their families than begging for their lives. The only thing the “joke” accomplishes is throwing a brief scare into Paul’s enemies, a scare which will be completely alleviated as soon as they take a ride in the elevator back up to the street. This has a certain novel charm to it, because it reverses any expectation on how a Twilight Zone episode is supposed to go. The “good” people are never in any danger, and they never expose themselves as secret cowards. They don’t suffer so much as a reduction in dignity. It’s just one more character tear down for Paul, in what appears to have been a lifetime of people telling him what an asshole he is.
And that’s kind of an issue, because Serling’s script is clearly pushing for some sort of moral apotheosis, but it mostly plays as merciless grind. There’s no doubt that Paul is a creep, but we don’t actually see any of the horrors he commits (apart from the prank itself, which is dickish, no question), which means his creepiness is more conceptual than a visceral fact. Wiseman gets across the character’s arrogance and refusal to accept criticism, but he also hints at a deeper vulnerability that makes Paul sympathetic; certainly not anyone you’d want to spend any length of time in a bomb shelter with, but there’s a recognizable human being under all the artifice and feigned pomposity. It’s an excellent performance, and one which helps to make the episode more watchable than it would otherwise be. Paul’s repeated refusal to recognize what’s right in front of him—namely that his whole scheme is doomed to failure from the start—is pathetic, ugly, and kind of fascinating to watch, especially once you realize that his refusal isn’t a choice. As the “twist” ending shows, Paul has locked himself away in a world of his own conception, and he can’t accept reality when it disagrees with his assumptions, even when those assumptions mean the end of everything.
It’s just, Wiseman is so good, and Paul is so interesting, that the supposed moral paragons who lecture him come across as bland and unlikable by comparison. Mrs. Langsford’s increasingly ornate put-downs are presented in the voice of moral authority, but there’s something off about it, especially her idea that “sympathy and compassion” have to be earned, as though a high school or, worse, elementary school student who cheats and lies to cover his behavior is so unquestionably awful that he automatically deserves to be written off for life. Sympathy and compassion aren’t earned, and there’s something horribly uncharitable in the righteous smugness with which Langsford once again condemns her former pupil. None of the others fare much better. The colonel’s story implies Paul is a coward under fire, which, quite frankly, isn’t something I can ever truly despise anyone for. The reverend’s accusation about the dead girl (who killed herself because Paul treated her badly) is more deservedly harsh, but without hearing the story, or having seen Paul in any other context than as a petty, needy man, the reading of his sins has no impact. We’re told not to like him over and over again, and some of it sticks, but it gets old.
Really, it’s the delivery that’s the issue more than the content. “One More Pallbearer” (whose name never makes a damn bit of sense, even when it’s mentioned in the episode itself) gets to Paul’s reckoning far too quickly. The three people he tries to hurt are so utterly impervious to injury that their positions become reversed; instead of a mastermind tormenting a group of decent but unsuspecting victims, it’s a sad little boy lashing out at adults who can’t be bothered to hide their disdain. The reversal, from what we expect to happen (Paul torments his tormentors) to what actually happens (he has no power over them) is conceptually effective. It plays on our assumptions, proving better than any lecture how much Paul’s instability and selfishness have damaged him over the years. But it happens so quickly that we never get to see him in command. That’s a crucial step missing, because without it, he just comes across as a lonely twerp driven out of his mind because he knows no one gives a damn about him. In the end, he imagines that his ruse has come true, and the bombs really have dropped. This is presented as just deserts, but if you can hear those desperate cries of isolation, and not have some pity, well, maybe you should come by my bomb shelter some time.