Twilight Zone episode review — 2.29 — The Obsolete Man
Episode 2.29 “The Obsolete Man”
Original air date: June 2, 1961
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Elliot Silverstein
Rating: 10/10
Season two’s finale is easily one of my favorite episodes. For a long time, it probably was my absolute favorite, and it’s certainly still close.
It’s a politically powerful episode set in a dystopian future. The world is modeled after a totalitarian state, and feels very much like Orwell’s 1984.
Romney Wordsworth (Burgess Meredith) has a hearing for “obsolescence.” He meets before the Chancellor (Fritz Weaver) and a jury in a minimalist set that’s somewhat reminscent of fascist architecture of the 1930s. Wordsworth says he’s a librarian, when he’s asked his occupation, and it’s revealed that librarians have been determined to be obsolete, given that books are now outlawed.
The Chancellor compares Wordsworth’s situation to that of a minister, considering the state has determined that there is no God. Wordsworth disagrees with this. He argues that he is “nothing more than a reminder to you that you cannot destroy truth by burning pages.” I like the conflict here, and both Weaver and especially Meredith give fantastic performances.
The board finds him obsolete, and he will be executed within the next 48 hours, but he gets to choose the method of his execution. He asks to have it televized, and to have an assassin that he keeps his method of execution a secret. The Chancellor is okay with this, as long as he’s killed within 48 hours.
After he leaves, the Chancellor admits he is glad that they’ll have the opportunity to show everybody how an obsolete librarian dies.
The Chancellor comes to visit Wordsworth in his apartment, where he will be killed in less than an hour. The Chancellor admits that it’s unusual, but that he has decided to come because he wishes to prove that the state has no fears. Wordsworth rejects this, however, saying that he’s come to understand how someone has come to so completely deviate from the norm. The television camera turns on, and the Chancellor goes through a speech, a performance for the camera.
He taunts Wordsworth for not looking at the camera. He tries to get him to be emotional. He then goes to leave, and finds that he’s locked in. Wordsworth tells him that in a few minutes, a bomb will go off.
Wordsworth then begins performing for the camera, wanting to see how the Chancellor reacts to this kind of knowledge. He goes and reads his Bible, the only possession he has that has any value to him, he says.
As he reads from Psalms, the Chancellor cracks. “In the name of God, let me out!” he shouts. Wordsworth unlocks the door. “Yes, Chancellor, in the name of God, I will let you out.” As the Chancellor runs out of the building, the bomb goes off.
When the Chancellor shows up to work the next day, he finds the Subaltern in his seat. He is found obsolete for showing cowardice before the entire state. He tries to escape, but the jury, acting like zombies, capture him and slide him across the table.
Serling narrates: “The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshiped. Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody. When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all.] Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man…that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under ‘M’ for ‘Mankind’ — in The Twilight Zone.”
It’s great stuff. It’s a powerful, well acted story, and it’s some of Serling’s best writing.
