Eye of the Beholder

Probably most famous for his short story/novella "I Am Legend", Richard Matheson has easily been one of my favorite authors, especially when I'm in the mood for an odd tale with a twist at the climax and, usually, some sort of moral lesson at the base of it all. Most of his writings are from about 50 years ago, but I find this strangely irrelevant. The plot is still intriguing, the suspense and twists are still tense and surprising, and the lessons are still worth learning. Much like, actually, The Twilight Zone.

Somewhat recently--or rather, I suppose, since break--my roommate has been watching The Twilight Zone from season 1. Now she's on season 2, and today she offered to show me an episode she said she'd seen before and was one of her favorites.

Now, like anyone else, I had heard of The Twilight Zone and its infamy of being a bit out of the ordinary, but other than that, I honestly didn't know too much more since I had never sat down and really watched an episode. But, I'd heard much praise for the show from many people, and I figured it was probably about time I checked out this show.

I later learned the episode was called "The Eye of the Beholder", and soon after watching it, it also became one of my favorites as well as now making me an avid watcher of The Twilight Zone. Over the course of the episode, you gradually learn that this woman in the hospital bed with her face covered in bandages is named Janet Tyler, and she's gone through an eleventh treatment to try to "fix" her apparently ugly face. She is reminded by the nurses and doctor (whose faces are kept either in shadow or off-camera) that eleven is the maximum amount of treatments allowed legally. So if her face still hasn't changed, she will have to be sent to a place outside of "normal" society where she can live with her "own kind". The outcome of the treatment, though, can't be known until the bandages covering her face are removed, so Ms. Tyler pleads with the doctor and nurses to remove them, until finally the doctor consents.

By now it's easy to feel the episode has built up to the climax. The doctor slowly removes her bandages as the nurses help and/or look on. The first you see after they're fully removed is the clearly disappointed reactions of the nurses and doctor--the treatment failed. Then you see Ms. Tyler's face and...she's beautiful, at least in our perspectives anyway. Now the faces of the doctor and nurses are shown and they're highly disfigured with thick eyebrows and piggish snouts.

Distraught, Ms. Tyler runs from the room and tries to escape the hospital, but eventually she is stopped and a similarly "ugly" man comes to take her to that place where they can live with their "own kind" in peace. To calm down a clearly wary Ms. Tyler, the man tells her a "very, very old saying" that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", hence the namesake of the episode, and the two of them depart from the hospital.

All in all, a brilliantly written tale of that somewhat cliche theme of how we all need to remember to look beyond skin-deep and to the inside for true beauty.

Probably one of my favorite lines from this episode is from the closing narration. Taking this from some quick research off tv.com for the precise words, I'm going to copy Rod Serling and close this entry with this message:

"Now, the questions that come to mind. Where is this place and when is it? What kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the derivation from that norm? You want an answer? The answer is...it doesn't make any difference. Because the old saying happens to be true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence; on this planet or wherever there is human life, perhaps out amongst the stars. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Lesson to be learned...in The Twilight Zone."