History Recap / TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast

** Both get what they want at the end (Being alone to read for Bemis, Being the best pool player for Cardiff) but suffer harsh consequences (Bemis is [[spoiler: unable to get new glasses to read]], Cardiff has to spent his entire [[spoiler:afterlife defending his title and nothing else]]).

* UncertainDoom: Bemis breaks his glasses, leaving him largely blind. He is last seen stumbling around mournful and alone, not only unable to read his beloved books but really find much any means to fend for himself unless he finds that shotgun or a new pair of glasses.

->'''Rod Serling:''' The best laid plans of mice and men...and Henry Bemis, the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis...in the Twilight Zone.

* JerkassHasAPoint: While the bank president is rather harsh about Henry's fondness for reading, he does have a legitimate complaint about an employee's on-the-clock activities interfering with job performance, such as a bank teller who miscounts money and annoys customers because he has a book in his lap that commands more of his attention than the work he's being paid for. Though he ''does'' mention that he only reads at work so much because his wife refuses to let him read literally ''anything''. Not even food labels!

* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: To ''really'' punctuate the CruelTwistEnding, after Bemis accidentally drops his glasses, both lens don't just break, but every last fragment falls out from the rims just to make sure there is ''absolutely nothing'' to view out of them.

* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: To ''really'' punctuate the CruelTwistEnding, after Bemis accidentally drops his glasses, the lens don't just break, but every last fragment falls out from the rims just to make sure there is ''absolutely nothing'' to view out of them.

* {{Expy}}: Many people have compared Bemis with Jack Klugman's character Jesse Cardiff from the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E70AGameOfPool A Game Of Pool]]" where they share similarities:

* LastOfHisKind: Bemis is, as far as he can tell, the last human being left.

* ItWasHisSled: Henry now has all the time in the world to read, because everybody else is dead, but his glasses are broken.

* DomesticAbuse: After years of belittling or ignoring Bemis's love of reading, his wife finally consents to have him read his favorite book of poetry to her, only to reveal she's defaced every page.

* KickTheDog: Bemis's wife tossed away or destroyed anything that could be readable within their home (even food labels), but deliberately left one of the books Bemis hid right where he put it... only with all of the text inside blacked out. [[BaitTheDog And she asks Bemis to read her some of it so he'll find out the hard way]], before making clear that she will be even more militant about forbidding him from reading from now on.

* AntiEscapismAesop: Bemis is a man who spent much of his life shutting himself away from other people so he could indulge in his obsession with reading, best demonstrated by him going to the bank vault during lunch so he can be alone to read. After he becomes the SoleSurvivor of a nuclear attack, potentially the last man on Earth, he wonders if that's really a life worth living.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Somehow, even though he's protected in a sealed bank vault, the shock wave from the nuclear blast still flips open Henry's book and breaks his watch.

* InformedFlaw: [[WordOfGod Rod Serling Himself]] said that the CruelTwistEnding was punishing Bemis' supposed anti-social behavior. Aside from his wife and boss, Bemis a milquetoast man who is just too caught up in his bibliophilia/bibliomania.

He happily sorts the books into the order he wants to read them in, giddy with anticipation of all the reading he's going to do. As he bends down to pick up the first book, however, he stumbles, and his glasses fall off his face and shatter. Being BlindWithoutEm, Bemis goes into shock, crying "That's not fair. That's not fair at all! There was time now! There was all the time I wanted! ''That's not fair!''" The episode ends with Bemis sobbing uncontrollably, surrounded by books he now can never read.

* NonResidentialResidence: After the world is destroyed and Bemis finds himself in a ruined landscape, he takes a nap on a couch that is just sitting among the ruins. This is as close to a "residence" as it gets, considering every building on Earth has been leveled.

* SerendipitousSurvival: Henry Bemis chooses to go down to the bank vault during work hours in order to read his newspaper. This ends up saving him when the nuclear bombs ravage the world, as the vault ends up protecting him from the explosions.

->'''Creator/RodSerling:''' "Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself...without anyone."

->'''Rod Serling:''' "The best laid plans of mice and men...and Henry Bemis...the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis...in the Twilight Zone."

->'''RodSerling:''' Seconds, minutes, hours. They crawl by on hands and knees for Mr. Henry Bemis, who looks for a spark in the ashes of a dead world. A telephone connected to nothingness. A neighborhood bar, a movie, a baseball diamond, a hardware store, the mailbox of what was once his house and is now a rubble; they lie at his feet as battered monuments to what was but is no more.

->'''RodSerling:''' Mr. Henry Bemis, on an eight hour tour of a graveyard.

->'''RodSerling:''' "The best laid plans of mice and men...and Henry Bemis...the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis...in the Twilight Zone."

Henry Bemis (Creator/BurgessMeredith) is an avid {{Bookworm}} who loves to spend any time he has reading. Unfortunately, he has a habit of reading on the job, and while reading ''Literature/DavidCopperfield'' during his work as a bank teller, he shortchanges a customer and gets chewed out by the bank president. His home life is no better, as [[HenpeckedHusband his]] wife constantly takes away, hides, or outright ruins his reading material.

->'''Creator/RodSerling:''' Seconds, minutes, hours. They crawl by on hands and knees for Mr. Henry Bemis, who looks for a spark in the ashes of a dead world. A telephone connected to nothingness. A neighborhood bar, a movie, a baseball diamond, a hardware store, the mailbox of what was once his house and is now a rubble; they lie at his feet as battered monuments to what was but is no more.

->'''Creator/RodSerling:''' Mr. Henry Bemis, on an eight hour tour of a graveyard.

After some time, Bemis realizes that he's now all alone on a ruined earth with food to last him a lifetime, but no one to share it with. He's [[DrivenToSuicide driven to the depths of despair and is about to shoot himself in the head.]] However, he spots something that raises his hopes: The city library. It turns out all the books in the library survived the blast, and now he has all the time in the world to read.

->'''Creator/RodSerling:''' "The best laid plans of mice and men...and Henry Bemis...the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis...in the Twilight Zone."

* AccidentalPervert: The bank president says that one time Bemis spent a bit too long [[MyEyesAreUpHere staring at a young female customer's campaign pin on her lapel]], whereupon she tried to hit Bemis with her umbrella; Bemis says he was just trying to see who she voted for.

* AdaptationNameChange: In the short story by Lynn Venable, Henry Bemis' wife is named Agnes. In the television adaptation, her name is Helen.

* {{Expy}}: Many people have compared Bemis with Jack Klugman's character Jesse Cardiff from the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E70AGameOfPool A Game Of Pool]]" where they share similarities :
** Both characters are really passionate about their hobbies (Books for Bemis, Pool for Cardiff)
** Both characters have flaws resulting from their obsessions (InnocentlyInsensitive for Bemis, CompetitionFreak for Cardiff)
** Both have sympathetic traits (Bemis is a ShrinkingViolet and a NiceGuy, Cardiff has an InferioritySuperiorityComplex and has SacrificedBasicSkillForAwesomeTraining)
** Both get what they want at the end (Being alone to read for Bemis, Being the best pool player for Cardiff) but suffer harsh consequences (Bemis is [[spoiler: unable to get new glasses to read]] , Cardiff has to spent his entire [[spoiler:afterlife defending his title and nothing else]])

* ArtisticLiscenseNuclearPhysics: Henry would have been hit with a lethal dosage of radiation after stepping out of the vault.

->'''Creator/RodSerling:''' ''"Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself...without anyone."''

->'''Creator/RodSerling:''' ''"The best laid plans of mice and men...and Henry Bemis...the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis...in the Twilight Zone."''

* AdaptationalNameChange: In the short story by Lynn Venable, Henry Bemis' wife is named Agnes. In the television adaptation, her name is Helen.

Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) is an avid {{Bookworm}} who loves to spend any time he has reading. Unfortunately, he has a habit of reading on the job, and while reading ''Literature/DavidCopperfield'' during his work as a bank teller, he shortchanges a customer and gets chewed out by the bank president. His home life is no better, as [[HenpeckedHusband his]] wife constantly takes away, hides, or outright ruins his reading material.

* ButtMonkey: The main character. This man cannot catch a break.