'The Ray Bradbury Theater' Retro Recap: 'The Town Where No One Got Off'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

For a majority of our youth, we often see the world through a pair of rose colored glasses. We firmly believe that everyone in the world has good intentions stashed away in their soul and that everyone we meet is ready to work together in order to make our planet a more wonderful place.

But of course, there comes a day when we realize...that simply is not the case. There are evil people out there, that have the worst intentions for humanity in mind and we also discover that the world just isn't quite ready for unity. It doesn't mean that the world is an awful place, just one that isn't ready to take that next step and the day we discover this is an important and jarring one to say the least and it just so happened The Ray Bradbury Theater decided to explore this in the fascinating episode, 'The Town Where No One Got Off'.

Cogswell is a man with a unique vision of the world. He sees city life as impersonal and damaging to relationships and firmly believes that mankind should return to a simpler time, where small towns reign supreme over massive and shining cities so that people can learn to treat one another with respect once again. It's a view he shares aloud on a train ride with a stranger, who quickly challenges Cogswell's views as naive and accuses the young man of never once setting foot in a small town to have any clue of what it is actually like and not having the guts to even do so to begin with. Cogswell feels the sudden urge to prove the man wrong and makes a point to get off at the next stop. But as he explores the quiet little berg he has entered he comes to find that not everyone is as friendly as he was hoping they would be...and one stranger in particular, sees Cogswell's arrival as the opportunity of a lifetime. 

Already in this fourth episode, the audience can see the show evolving in its storytelling. For starters, this is the first episode that features Ray Bradbury in any form or fashion outside of his opening monologue as he introduces this tale to us from a train station on the railroad of imagination, but once we get past that, because it was a touch awkward, it's business as usual. We are once again drawn into a world where more complex ideas are presented forth and while this one is nowhere near as vague as the last two episodes, it's certainly provoking in the respect that Cogswell's journey shows him a nastier world than he ever envisioned, but the centerpiece is the old man and his desire to kill Cogswell just for the sheer hell of it. 

It's brutal an jarring to hear him happily reveal his plan to the young man, and it's equally disturbing to see the hunger and determination in his eyes to kill a stranger and well...what makes this episode so thought provoking is the fact that one has to wonder what drove this old man to make such a decision and wait twenty years to execute it. Sure he hints at being pushed around his whole life and that he's tired of taking the world's guff. But to reach that moment, where you're completely comfortable taking a life without any remorse or regret...well whatever pushed him to that point had to be something incredible for certain. Either way, this was a thrilling episode, since the unknown permeates every single second of it and our innocence is joined with Cogswell since he's oblivious to the harder realities of the world and we are oblivious to what this story has to offer and it makes that ending a satisfying one for certain. Until next time.

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