A Nice Place to Visit

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“A Nice Place to Visit”
The Twilight Zone episode

Sebastian Cabot and Larry Blyden in "A Nice Place to Visit"
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 28
Written by Charles Beaumont
Directed by John Brahm
Guest stars Larry Blyden (Rocky Valantine)
Sebastian Cabot (Pip)
Sandra Warner (uncredited)
Production no. 173-3632
Original airdate April 15, 1960
Episode chronology
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"The Big Tall Wish" "Nightmare as a Child"
List of Twilight Zone episodes
For the album by Frozen Ghost, see Nice Place to Visit.

"A Nice Place to Visit" is an episode of the American Television anthology series The Twilight Zone and aired on CBS on April 15, 1960. The title comes from the idiom, "A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

In 1965, a slightly modified version of this story was broadcast on the radio program Theater Five.[citation needed] The episode "The Land of Milk and Honey" retained all of the important aspects of this episode, including the innuendos and the surprise ending.

Contents

[edit] Opening narration

“ Portrait of a man at work, the only work he's ever done, the only work he knows. His name is Henry Francis Valentine, but he calls himself "Rocky", because that's the way his life has been—rocky and perilous and uphill at a dead run all the way. He's tired now, tired of running or wanting, of waiting for the breaks that come to others but never to him, never to Rocky Valentine. A scared, angry little man. He thinks it's all over now, but he's wrong. For Rocky Valentine, it's just the beginning. ”

[edit] Synopsis

At the start of the episode, the protagonist Henry "Rocky" Valentine is robbing a pawnshop. He shoots a night watchman, and then a policeman, but before he can get away he is shot and killed by another police officer.

He wakes up to find himself seemingly unharmed by the encounter. He is in the company of a pleasant individual named “Pip”, who tells Rocky he is his guide and instructed to grant Rocky whatever he desires. Rocky immediately assumes he has died and gone to Heaven and Pip must be his guardian angel.

Later, he becomes so thoroughly bored by always having his whims satisfied and predictably winning at anything he attempts, he finally begs Pip to send him to the “other place” (referring to Hell). Pip retorts "This is the other place!"

Valentine tries vainly to leave while Pip laughs uproariously.

[edit] Closing narration

“ A scared, angry little man who never got a break. Now he has everything he's ever wanted and he's going to have to live with it for eternity in the Twilight Zone. ”

[edit] Production

Some aspects of the episode changed during production. Rod Serling was originally offered the role of Rocky Valentine, but declined.

One version of this episode has Valentine throwing an apple at a table which changes into a pool table-although another version has this scene cut out.

"A Nice Place to Visit" was also singled out for its brazen sexual innuendo. Program Practices requested that Valentine not refer to a girl as "a broad ... really stacked," even though the crudity was essential to establishing the unsavory qualities of the character. Nor could the protagonist refer to a party as "a ball", since that word had more than one meaning. In another "Nice Place" sequence, a voluptuous young lady tends to Blyden’s every need, then says "is there anything else I can do for you?" CBS’s comment: "Please be certain that the girl’s third speech be delivered in a sweet manner, as described.[1]

[edit] Influence

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  • The TV show Futurama parodies this episode[citation needed] with a fictional show-within-a-show called The Scary Door in which a man wakes up after a car accident to find that he is in a casino. He wins the jackpot on a slot machine, causing him to think that he is in heaven, then wins a second time and, finding it boring, realizes that he is in hell.
  • A spoof of this episode can be found in the webcomic 8-Bit Theater.[citation needed] In one comic, a character named Thief (who is, naturally, a thief) dies and is told that he is now in Hell. Looking around, he sees unimaginable riches, and realizes that everything he can imagine, he owns. He remarks that this doesn't seem like Hell, only to be told that there is nothing to steal.
  • Ray Kurzweil's 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, contains the text, "If death were to be indefinitely put off, the human psyche would end up, well, like the gambler in the The Twilight Zone episode." This text is also included as part of the "R.K. on Death" track on Our Lady Peace's fourth album Spiritual Machines, which is named after Kurzweil's book.
  • This episode was referenced in the season 6 The Sopranos episode "Chasing It", when Carlo finds Tony's current gambling situation similar to that of Valentine.
  • In Pulp Fiction, when asked what his name is by the guys who stole the briefcase, Jules replies, "My name is Pip."

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Erikson,Hal(October 1985). "Censorship: Another Dimension Behind the Twilight Zone", The Twilight Zone Magazine.
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