May 31, 2023- number 6

Spoilers

“Escape Clause”

The sixth episode of The Twilight Zone in the first season was another episode that took the storytelling into a new direction. This was the first time where the protagonist of the tale was someone you did not want to root for.

“You’re about to meet a hypochondriac. Witness Mr. Walter Bedeker, age forty-four. Afraid of the following: death, disease, other people, germs, draft, and everything else. He has one interest in life and that’s Walter Bedeker. One preoccupation: the life and well-being of Walter Bedeker. One abiding concern about society: that if Walter Bedeker should die, how will it survive without him?“

Bedeker was absolutely nothing more than a whining loser who was putting his wife through all kinds of troubles with his made-up symptoms and annoying complaints. When a mysterious man named Cadwallader appeared in his apartment with a shocking offer, Bedeker was intrigued. Even when he figured out that Cadwallader was, in fact, the Devil, Bedeker was not turned away.

Cadwallader offered him a long life span, something Bekeder had been worrying about. He also made him invincible, Nothing could hurt him. But he gave Bedeker an escape clause in case he wanted to get out of the forever life.

Bekeder, with his new power, became even more obnoxious. He discovered that the thrill of danger was now gone and he started doing things that were designed to hurt himself to see if any of them would interest him. He was such a jerk about it all.

His wife winds up being killed and he takes responsibility for the act, looking for the electric chair.

Bekeder was so unlikable that when he wound up getting life in prison instead of the chair, I cheered at the irony. Of course, he took Cadwallader up on the escape clause, which led to his heart attack in his prison cell.

Bekeder had everything you could possibly want but yet he was constantly unhappy. When he was normal, he was always complaining he was sick. When he could no longer be hurt or killed, he was bored. Just a rotten human being and seeing him pay the piper was extremely satisfying.