The Chaser

 

 

There is something about the original Twilight Zone TV show that I can not quite seem to understand…how can something so old, so dated, so presumably out of touch with modern reality, be so fucking good? Rod Serling, the show’s founder, passed away before I was born…and I am utterly convinced that at least pieces or traces of his spirit found their way into my body. Not only is the show good, but it’s more relevant to modern man than any other show I’ve seen. And while the first thing that may come to mind when you think of the show (besides the irritating high-pitched intro) are crazy science fiction tales of fantastical things, you would be right…if it be the surface veneer of the show you aim to identify…for beneath it is a brilliance and thoughtfulness unrivaled in anything of the same medium, before or after it. If I had to label it, I would call it avenues of philosophy disguised as entertainment disguised as science fiction.

In the 1960 episode The Chaser, a young man finds himself hopelessly and irrecoverably in love with a woman who’s utterly indifferent to his existence. To set the stage, the episode opens with a line of people waiting to use a telephone booth, while the young man repeatedly calls the woman over and over and over again, just to bask in her voice and fleeting attention. She is hardly polite, and treats him with unwavering contempt, denying him date after date with casual excuse after casual excuse, before finally telling him straight off and hanging up the phone. A man in line behind the young man hears his plight, and sends him to a senile old crackpot who sells various potions for various functions, one of which being a standard love potion;

 

"Ah, you want the loveless potion? Only 1000 dollars…"

"No! Not the loveless potion, the love potion!"

"Oh that? Well that’s only a dollar… but really, you want the other one. No taste. No odor. No trace.."

"Why would I want that? Old man you’re not making any sense."

Sense is -all- I make, my boy….which is why I’m such a lonely man.."

Despite the confusing warnings of the old man, he buys the potion and convinces his lady fair into one last date, slipping it into her cocktail as she dons her evening gown. The result is exactly what he desires…he watches her attitude towards him change before his very eyes into exactly what he wants. She no longer ignores him and keeps her distance, and instead begins to worship him…hanging all over him, devoting her entire existence to serving him. Initially he is overwhelmed with joy. They marry, and settle down together. Three months pass, and we the viewers find ourselves in their living room, watching the young man try to read the newspaper while his woman kneels at his feet, begging answers from him, staring at him. Would you like me to massage your back? Let me get your shoes off. Ok, I’ll sit down…which chair would you like me to sit in? How should I sit? The man finds himself on the brink of insanity without a moment to himself to breathe, and discovers that the woman he was once so obsessed and in love with has now simply become a contemptuous bore, with no opinion or spirit of her own. In a panic, he flees from the house despite her nagging and begging to come with him, and returns to the old man who sold him the potion.

As it turns out the old man was right the first time after all, he does want the loveless potion, and he desperately pays 1000 dollars for it. The man warns him, however, that he must use it quickly and not hesitate, for if he fails to use it now, he would never find it within himself to use it again. Once again the man doesn’t quite understand, and runs off, as the old man smiles and thumbs through the money, muttering to himself;

"…first the bump, and then the chaser…"

The man returns home with a bottle of champagne and fixes his wife a drink with the reverse potion, but as he’s holding it she confesses to him with joy that she is pregnant, and he drops the glass to the floor with a look of shock and terror on his face. Oh that’s ok, darling, she says, it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, and we’ll have the rest of our lives to be happy and have more champagne. The episode ends with her pressing into him, nuzzling up against him as he stares upwards and away, slowly sinking into the sofa, resigning himself to the rest of his unhappy life.

The episode is a meditation on an all too common distortion of love– the unbalanced, warrantless, selfless infatuation with another. It explores both horrible ends of such; the pain and longing of the chaser, and the bored irritation of the chased– two places that most balanced individuals have been to at one point or another in their lives. To the chaser it is a lesson that what you want is not really what you want at all, and to the chased it is a lesson that the love of a selfless labrador, if not immediately banished and destroyed, will eventually draw you into an inescapable path of hell, responsibility, and monotony. It is a testament to the fact that true love begins, and ends, simply with a love of oneself– a love only from which true unconditional love can be made manifest, to the happiness of all.

 

"Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one, and because it is selfish and demanding, because it is impulsive and exacting, I didn’t embrace it…I succumbed to it."

"I was writing about the values of a society that places such stock in success, and has so little preoccupation with morality once success has been obtained, and this is not the morality of good and evil…this is morality’s the shady side of the street."

-Rod Serling