“The Twilight Zone” was a popular TV series that aired from 1959 to 1964. It was hosted/narrated by its creator Rod Serling. The man was a genius!! Sadly, he lived a very short life: 50 years. Rodman Edward Serling (1924 – 1975). Even though this TV program only lasted for 5 years, it left an indelible mark in the history of science fiction entertainment.
Anybody who has watched this classic TV series probably has one particular episode they remember. Some people say that the most popular episode was the one titled “To Serve Man”. I don't know if it was popular because of the content OR because of that creepy looking guy with the funny-shaped head.
🤗If you would, contrary to heart recommendations against too much salt, pour baby pour! The Kanamits are partial to salty delicacies!🎨"To Serve Man" aired on March 5, 1959😳#RodSerling #TheTwilightZone #ToServeMan #Scifi pic.twitter.com/hE0EVdo2PH
— Author🦑John DeLaughter🦑 (@HPL_JDeLaughter) March 10, 2022
But to me the most memorable episode was “The Rip Van Winkle Caper”. The moral of the story was twofold:
(1) One can plan for the future but one can not predict the future; and
(2) Avarice and greed are probably timeless human characteristics.
Here's the plot. These guys get together to steal gold. One of the guys is a scientist. He tells his friends that they can steal the gold, and evade the law enforcement authorities by getting into this time capsule. They will go to sleep for several years, like Rip Van Winkle, and when they wake up in the future, they won't have to worry about going to jail for committing the crime. They reason that, in the future, law enforcement won't be looking for them because it will be assumed that they died many years ago. When they arrive in the future, they reason that they are now free from being fugitives from justice, and THEY'RE RICH! They can go to the secret place where they hid the gold, divide up the gold amongst themselves, and start living the good life! Right?
Uuuummm ... not quite. Because even in the future, there is no honor among thieves. They are still avaricious and greedy. They try to kill each other, and only one of them survives the double-crossing and the betrayal. That one who survived found himself with a lot of gold and in a hot desert. No humans around for miles. And also … no water. By the time he does see human beings, he tries to get help for himself, offering to pay them in gold, however … he drops dead! The humans who had stopped for him were confused by my his words and behavior.
April 21, 1961: Twilight Zone's "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" airs. You steal a shipment of gold, but how do you spend it? Hey, it's the fifth dimension: Hibernate for 100 years. Sounds like a fool-proof plan, right?
— The Twilight Zone (@TheNightGallery) April 21, 2022
Written by Rod Serling. Stars Oscar Beregi and Simon Oakland. pic.twitter.com/EYNtIURUlN
The humans remark to themselves: “He seemed to think that gold was valuable.”
It turns out that in the future, gold was worthless!! Humanity had changed to the point where there was no need for gold. That was a fact that the thieves had not even considered.
This episode aired in April 1961. Out of all of the Twilight Zone episodes I watched, that one made an impression on me and the life lessons learned have stayed with me to this day.
Rod Serling (1924–1975), the creator of the #TwilightZone, was born on #Christmas Day.
— Sony Movies (@SonyMoviesTV) December 25, 2018
He lived for just 50 years, but his gift to all of us is timeless. pic.twitter.com/XsS4h7uyDK
![By KWa (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATears_for_Fears_2008.jpg){kind=link}