It’s funny how every generation thinks they’re the first ones to discover a certain type of person when in realities, many of these types have existed forever.
The nerd, for example, has been around for a very long time.
Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) is a big time book nerd. He’s dweebish and geeky, only able to see out of a big set of coke bottle glasses and thus, any hope he has for adventure comes through living vicariously through the characters in the books he loves to read.
The only problem is no one will allow him to engage in his favorite pastime. Understandably, his boss at the bank where he works as a cashier gets livid whenever Bemis pays more attention to a book than to his till.
Less understandably, Bemis’ wife is a real battle-axe, decrying her hubby’s hobby as frivolous, that only losers spend their time enveloped in fantasy.
Blah, blah, blah, long story short, one day Bemis sneaks down to the bank vault in the hopes of catching up on his reading when the whole world goes kerblooey in a nuclear blast.
He’s all alone and as often happens in the “Twilight Zone,” you’re asked to suspend disbelief and/or thoughts about plot holes, here, for example, that Bemis probably would died from radiation poisoning. Instead, he walks about the post-apocalyptic landscape freely.
He’s the last man on earth. No jobs. No mean bosses or wives and low and behold, he stumbles upon the public library. Funny, this episode is probably a librarian’s dream as it really promotes the power of the written word.
And so, left to his own devices, Bemis is able to read for the rest of his life…but will his lifelong dream come to fruition, or will there be an ironic twist?
Check it out on Netflix and find out.
Bookshelf Battle 