Need to Know
"Often, the most perplexing mysteries have the simplest solutions. The most complex questions, the simplest answers. Sometimes, we seek long and hard, only to find the solutions and the answers lie right before us, in a reference book, under "T" — for the Twilight Zone."
On one particular day, the residents of the small town of Loma Valley, Washington suddenly begin going insane out of the blue. To this end, the US government sends agent Edward Sayers (William Petersen) to investigate the situation. Meeting up with local woman Amanda Strickland (Frances McDormand), Edward soon discovers that this insanity is instigated by a specific phrase, which spreads like wildfire with every new person who hears it. Edward and Amanda soon learn that the first infected subject, a local professor who claims the phrase to be the meaning of life, dementedly insists on letting everyone on Earth know the truth.
Tropes
- Aside Glance: Edward ends the episode with one, right after Amanda shares the meaning of life with him.
- Awful Truth: Professor Potts returned to Loma Valley from a trip to Asia, where he learned the meaning of life. While we never hear what it is, the meaning of life is a short phrase that instantly drives everyone who hears it incurably insane.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Professor Potts knocks Edward unconscious with a bottle and succeeds in delivering the meaning of life over the radio, causing all of Loma Valley to go mad. Edward tries at the very least to save Amanda by smashing her radio, but she's already gone insane on account of the fact she had visitors.
- Bookends: The episode opens and closes with someone learning the meaning of life and going insane.
- Brown Note: The meaning of life, as everyone who hears it goes insane. One can only wonder what the ultimate truth of life really is when it drives anyone who hears it to madness in seconds.
- Cannot Keep a Secret: Jeffrey Potts' brother Andrew was originally the only person he shared the meaning of life with. He proved to be horrible at keeping secrets to the point where over half the town was infected.
- Chekhov's Gun: Everyone in Loma Valley listens to the town's local radio station all the time. Professor Potts later goes on that same station to share the meaning of life with his fellow townspeople, causing everyone who hears his broadcast to go insane.
- Continuity Snarl: Amanda's father suffers this when he goes insane. He has a daughter, and yet, he only remembers having a bunch of sons. He remembers talking to his wife this morning, before saying she's been dead for years.
- Downer Ending: Despite Edward's best efforts to stop him, Professor Potts succeeds in sharing the meaning of life over the radio. Edward tries to destroy Amanda's radio to save her, but a group of infected people are revealed to have visited while Edward was away. Amanda then whispers the meaning of life in Edward's ear, similarly condemning him to lunacy. What's worse, with Edward driven insane, there's nothing left to stop the insanity from spreading worldwide.
- Failure Hero: Edward tries to figure out the cause of the insanity outbreak and works to stop it, but Professor Potts easily knocks him out with a bottle and he wakes up hours later, too late to save Amanda or stop the professor from going on the radio.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Whenever someone is told the meaning of life, they instantly go insane. Things quickly go From Bad to Worse when the first person to hear the meaning of life is invited to share it on a local radio talk show.
- Hope Spot: Edward manages to smash Amanda's radio so that she can be spared from hearing the meaning of life. Unfortunately, she's already had visitors drop by... and promptly whispers the meaning of life into Edward's ear.
- I Have No Son!: Played with. Amanda's father, as Edward questions him, insanely insists that he has 9 sons instead of a daughter.
- Infectious Insanity: Insanity is being spread throughout Loma Valley by repeated utterances of the meaning of life.
- Insane Equals Violent: Mrs. Hotchkiss, an old lady Edward interviews, is revealed to have gone insane after learning about the meaning of life from her husband. As Edward questions her, she tries to attack him with the knife that she had been calmly using to slice a cake moments earlier. Edward is stunned by the sudden display, but manages to fight her off.
- Laughing Mad: The opening scene has Jack Henries begin laughing hysterically when Wiley Whitlow tells him the meaning of life, which causes insanity in anyone who hears it. Jack breaks down crying just as quickly as he starts to laugh.
- Mind Virus: Edward is sent to the small town of Loma Valley to investigate a mysterious outbreak of insanity. With the help of a local woman named Amanda Strickland, he determines that this insanity is spread from person to person like a virus. He manages to track the insanity to its source: Professor Jeffrey Potts, who recently returned from Asia, where he learned the meaning of life, an Awful Truth which causes anyone who learns it to immediately go insane. Jeffrey told his brother Andrew, who was unable to keep it to himself.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We never hear the meaning of life, which causes everyone in the episode to go insane. Since we never hear it, we can only wonder: how horrific can the truth of existence itself possibly be to drive anyone insane?
- Silent Whisper: We first see local farmer Jack Henries whisper the meaning of life into the ear of his friend Wiley Whitlow, driving him insane. At the end, Amanda whispers it in Edward's ear.
- Small Role, Big Impact:
- Professor Potts appears in only one scene, but he's revealed to be the source of the insanity outbreak.
- Similarly, his brother Andrew was the only person he originally shared the meaning of life with. Andrew unfortunately Cannot Keep a Secret, and he's the reason why Loma Valley has gradually gone mad.
- Take Our Word for It: While it's never plainly stated, the meaning of life is apparently something so awful, so horrific, and so unspeakably depraved, anyone who hears it is instantly driven batshit insane.
- These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: The meaning of life. While we never know what it really is, it's able to drive anyone who hears it completely insane, hinting that it's something far too horrific for mankind to comprehend.
- Weapons-Grade Vocabulary: The meaning of life is presented as a short phrase detailing the truth of existence. As Edward discovers, anyone who hears the phrase goes completely insane.
"Man is a questioning creature, constantly striving for answers. But there is some knowledge for which he's not yet ready. Secrets, once learned, overwhelm him. Secrets that, for now, are best left undisturbed — in the Twilight Zone.
Red Snow
Colonel Ilyanov (George Dzundza) of the KGB is tasked with traveling to a Siberian gulag to investigate the deaths of two high-ranking officials of the Communist Party. It is in this gulag that the Colonel meets Valentina Orlova (Victoria Tennant), a woman who claims to have been exiled 50 years ago despite her youthful appearance. Ilyanov digs deep enough to discover that Valentina and a number of others are vampires, and therefore the cause of the officials' deaths. She explains to the Colonel that she and her fellow vampires are all exiles, and they provide the townspeople with protection against wolves and thieves in exchange for sanctuary. These vampires also despise Soviet rule for what it has done to Russia, and offer Ilyanov a place in their ranks so he can take them down from the inside.
Tropes
- Always Night: The town the episode takes place in is built in a region of the Arctic Circle that only gets light during the summer, which won't be for months.
- And the Adventure Continues: In the end, Ilyanov frames Titov for the deaths of the officials he was sent to find, placing him in the government's favor. Ilyanov is also revealed to have joined the vampires, hoping to create more of them so the Soviet Union can be brought down from the inside.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: Ilyanov tells the locals that the Romani music being played in their tavern is banned in Moscow, and that they are on notice to stop playing it... should they ever return to Moscow.
- Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: When a wolf mauls Mayor Titov to death, Ilyanov frames him as the killer to allow the vampires to remain safe.
- Detective Mole: Polvin, a local Party official, accompanies Ilyanov during his investigation and assembles plenty of evidence for him. He's also one of the vampires who killed the local KGB officials.
- Dirty Communists: The vampires residing in the gulag hate the KGB and everything that they stand for. They believe that Communism and Soviet rule have brought nothing but pain, suffering, and death to the Russian people, and it's for this reason that they seek to destroy the USSR for the sake of humans and vampires alike.
- Double-Meaning Title: The "Red" in the episode's title may be a reference both to the spilling of blood, and the red color of the Communist flag.
- Establishing Character Moment: In the opening scene, Ilyanov arrests a dissident named Ivanovich for possessing banned books, and orders the guards to send him to a gulag. It turns out that Ivanovich is actually well known for having contact with Western agents, and this is not his first offense. As such, his crimes warrant the death penalty, so a high-ranking minister overrules Ilyanov's order and has Ivanovich put to death. Ilyanov is highly upset when he hears this, but doesn't say anything.
- The Gulag: Colonel Ilyanov is sent to a gulag in Siberia to investigate the mysterious deaths of Communist Party secretary Vladimir Borisov and KGB investigator Major Yuri Andreev. As soon as Ilyanov arrives, he finds conditions to be even worse than he imagined, since it's the dead of winter and the gulag is in a part of the Arctic Circle where there is no sunlight from October to April. He later discovers that the residents of the gulag have formed an arrangement with a group of exiled vampires, who protect them from danger in exchange for sanctuary. These vampires also hate Communism with a fury, and it was they who killed Borisov and Andreev.
- Internal Reformist: Ilyanov has spent his entire adult life working within the Soviet Union's rulings to save lives wherever and whenever he can, largely by advocating exile over execution. As he unfortunately says, for every person whose life he saved, the lives of two more were ended. After learning of the vampires' situation, the Colonel agrees to be made a vampire himself so that he can create more, who can assist him with destroying the Soviet Union from the inside.
- Monster Town: Several residents of the Siberian gulag are vampires. Due to the Commonality Connection feelings about how they and the humans living there are both exiles, the vampires are given sanctuary by the human residents in exchange for defending them from threats.
- My Grandson, Myself: When Ilyanov picks up on how the vampires' leader Valentina is too young to have been exiled fifty years ago, Polvin claims she's actually the original Valentina's daughter.
- Never Suicide: Colonel Ilyanov does not believe that Major Andreev, the previous investigator sent to the gulag, slit his own throat as is believed. When he examines the Major's frozen body, he immediately notices that there is no blood on the wound, indicating that his throat was slit after his death. He later learns that Andreev was killed by the vampires, who framed the incident as a suicide.
- Older Than They Look: Colonel Ilyanov meets a young woman named Valentina soon after arriving in the gulag. When he consults her file, he discovers that she was exiled there by Stalin in 1936. He later learns that she is actually a vampire, and thus is in her 80s even though she looks 50 years younger.
- Our Vampires Are Different: The vampires living in the gulag have many of the traditional traits, such as fangs, sleeping in coffins, and a fatal weakness to sunlight. Despite this, they're not evil in the slightest. In exchange for sanctuary during the summer, they protect the townspeople of the gulag from danger. They feed largely on wolves and only harm other humans when wolves are unavailable, but only thieves, murderers, and KGB officials. These vampires also despise the Soviet Union for all the suffering that Communism has forced upon the Russian people.
- Penal Colony: The locals of the Siberian gulag don't seem to perform the kind of back-breaking labor they would normally be doing in a penal colony. Despite this, they and/or their parents were still exiled due to being out of the government's favor.
- Savage Wolves: One of the suspicious deaths is blamed on the local wolf population. While the wolves themselves are innocent of this, the locals still fear them for being ruthless predators. Titov is even mauled to death by one of these wolves, allowing Ilyanov to posthumously frame him for the deaths.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Ilyanov's more ruthless rivals in the KGB usually win their arguments to have convicted citizens put to death because they have powerful friends.
- This Bear Was Framed: The vampires unsuccessfully claim that one of their victims died from being mauled by a wolf, but the Soviet government is unconvinced. In the end, Titov himself is mauled to death by a wolf and Ilyanov posthumously frames him for the murder of the other two officials.
- Vampires Sleep in Coffins: Titov, mayor of the gulag, stores the vampires' coffins in the town's abandoned church. They are empty during the winter, when there is no sunlight from October to April, but Titov and others protect them during the summer, when the coffins are occupied during the day. In exchange, the vampires protect the townspeople from wolves and criminals
- Vampire Vannabe: Communist Party secretary Povin agreed to become a vampire shortly after arriving in the gulag, largely because he knew it would be difficult to survive the harsh conditions otherwise. Although he is initially disgusted by the vampires and fears that they intend to feed on him, Ilyanov later agrees to be made a vampire himself. Valentina convinces him that the best way to defeat the Soviet Union is to create more vampires and take it down from the inside.
- Vegetarian Vampire: Downplayed. The vampires get along well with the human residents of the gulag and only drink the blood of wolves, as long as wolves themselves are available. If there aren't any wolves around, the vampires drain criminals and Dirty Commies serving the government's agenda.
