Janet Tyler is a patient in a hospital.\u00a0 When we first see her, she is lying in a hospital bed with her head wrapped in bandages.\u00a0 Her doctor provides the back story as an annoying expository lecture to her of facts that she is obviously aware of.<\/p>\n
He tells her that the injections she has been given are meant to alter her horrible facial deformity that makes her a source of horror and a member of a group that is forbidden to remain in the normal population.\u00a0 A number of attempts have been made to cure her of her deformity and this is the final attempt allowed by law.\u00a0 If she remains deformed, she will be exiled to a reservation for people with her affliction.\u00a0 We learn that this world mandates conformity including conformity of appearance.<\/p>\n
Janet becomes extremely agitated as the Doctor repeats this litany of her misfortune.\u00a0 She starts yelling and complaining about the unfairness of discriminating against her appearance.\u00a0 The Doctor agrees to remove her bandage that night instead of waiting another day.<\/p>\n
The Doctor is shown in a scene talking to a nurse and reveals that he is extremely sympathetic to Janet\u2019s plight and even talks treason by saying that appearance shouldn\u2019t be the basis for acceptance in society.\u00a0 In this scene as in all the scenes up to this point, the faces of the \u201cnormal\u201d people, the doctors, nurses and orderlies, are heavily shadowed so that we can\u2019t tell what they look like.<\/p>\n
Finally, the Doctor removes the bandages in a painfully slow and boring scene and we are informed by the words and body language of the staff that Janet is still hideous.\u00a0 Then we are shown her face.\u00a0 She\u2019s actually a pretty cute blonde.\u00a0 And now we see what the \u201cnormal\u201d people look like.\u00a0 They\u2019re hideous pig-snouted freaks with bizarre sharp cornered lips and other ugly features.<\/p>\n
Knowing that she\u2019s still a hideous monster Janet freaks out and starts running through the hospital disgusting everyone she meets.\u00a0 Finally, by accident she runs into the representative of the freak reservation who is there to indoctrinate her into freak society.\u00a0 Of course, he\u2019s a leading man type and she quickly seems to relax and adjust to the idea of living in the freak colony.\u00a0 As he gives her the pep talk, he concludes by telling her to think about the idea that \u201cbeauty is in the eye of the beholder.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a very famous episode and it\u2019s been parodied several times.\u00a0 But the message is anything but subtle and is pounded on the nose throughout the show, \u201cbeauty is in the eye of the beholder.\u201d\u00a0 But ironically, the ugliness of the \u201cnormal\u201d people and the attractiveness of the \u201cfreaks\u201d has the opposite effect than the message from the lesson.\u00a0 We are attracted by Janet and her friend and repelled by the other people.\u00a0 So the real lesson we learn is avoid weird looking people because they\u2019ll gross you out.<\/p>\n
This episode is annoyingly didactic and normally I would punish it with a very low mark but it\u2019s so laughably obtuse in its tone deafness that for its unintentional comedic value I\u2019ll give it an A-.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Janet Tyler is a patient in a hospital.\u00a0 When we first see her, she is lying in a hospital bed with her head wrapped in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,240,1661],"tags":[38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,1754,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-6284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rod-serling","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-the-eye-of-the-beholder","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n