Great Aspie Twilight Zone episode

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I just re-watched a really great hour-long portrayal of an Aspie last night, on The Twilight Zone's 1963 episode called "Miniature". A young Robert Duvall plays a man in his thirties, who has always been single, makes poor eye contact, does good work at the office but never talks to or feels close to his co-workers, and they all think he's weird, including his boss.

His sister says she knows what his "problem" is: "You need a girl," she declares directly. His eyes somewhat dim and glaze, as if he's thinking, "Wow, what a misdiagnosis." She sets him up on a date, and pushes him into going on it. He's clearly not into it at all, because his date is loud, brash, and trashy. He's polite with her, but awkward and clumsy. I mean, they even got the eye contact right! He is just SO Aspie all the way through the episode, and his Asperger's is specifically what everyone keeps griping at him about, even though they don't know it's AS, but just think he's crazy. They send him to a psychiatrist, whom he eventually tricks into thinking he's "cured", so he can leave. But all the other characters are very NT, and also shown as crude and boorish, as they would seem to his perspective. He's the most sensitive and imaginative of them all. He's got one overriding obsession through the whole episode. It's totally harmless, but his family keeps harping at him about how he's just "not normal", and his boss fires him because he's not a "team player" and tells him: "You just don't fit in. Understand?" His boss asks him if he likes his co-workers. The Aspie employee pauses, and says, "Well... I suppose so..." His boss replies, "You suppose so?!?" The Aspie says, "I never really thought about it."

He also displays a private physical outburst of extreme rage at the fact that everyone's trying to change him -- dispite the fact that he never shows the slightest anger in front of others -- he keeps it all bottled up, because he senses they just don't, and won't, understand him. They tell him he's "sick", and declare, "You're just not normal!" The psychiatrist does wisely state to his family, however, that they shouldn't be imposing their definition of "normal" upon other people, because, quite naturally, one's person's "bizarre" is another person's "normal". When they throw judgments like that at him, he just slightly smiles a bit uncomfortably, as if to shrug, "They just can't understand."

Of course, no single character can represent every kind of Aspie, since we're so diverse, but this was a really good portrayal of a person who has a lot of the common traits to a 'T'.

Last edited by Ragtime on 28 Dec 2007, 11:03 am, edited 8 times in total.

Next stop, the Twilight Zone Topic!

Ragtime, TZ was always one of my favourite TV shows when I was a kid. Science-themed horror is still one of my interests. It is the internalization of the bogeyman hiding under the bed, and then rewriting this abstract fear in another form. It is the feeling of forboding when you enter a room and there is something unseen and unpleasant going to happen, specifically frightening just to you.

TZ has a way of evoking the fears in all of us, Aspie or not. These fears lurk just below the surface and let us know they are there every once in a while. Each episode depicted its own angst, hinted at by Rod Serling at the beginning of each episode. It is not surprising that TZ was created in the fifties during the Cold War crisis. TZ, The Outer Limits and other assorted science/horror literature and films were the objective concrete manifestations of the trepidation and doubts within us, writ large by the political crises of the day. Franz Kafka would have understood TZ.

TZ's narrator Rod Serling, like a prophet/teacher, always ended each episode with a warning, a sort of moral that was supposed to educate viewers about the dangers of misunderstanding and ignorance. It is unfortunate that the message inherent in this episode was not heeded by insensitive NTs, both viewers and in the story itself.

Pardon my naivite, but maybe if Rod had asked us all, as a moral imperative, to somehow embrace our inner Aspie (though the term was unknown at the time) our world might not be stuck in its own real life version of the Twilight Zone.

Confronting fear means to embody it, as Rod did, and to deal with it. I wish Franz had done this; perhaps had he lived longer...

Thanks, Ragtime for sharing this topic. I just love to analyze!

so what happend to the Aspie guy in the TZ episode?

He and his obsession merged into one event. Hey, it's the Twilight Zone -- anything can happen.

I did like the ending though, as well as the Mozart piano piece that kept playing all through the episode because he's my favorite composer. It was Piano Sonata 11 in A, 1st movement:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HADtL7a6wxg[/youtube]

Are any of the original seasons on DVD?

Because I can't find a copy at all the places I could think of.

Yes. I have all but 20 episodes on DVD, in the disorganized way they originally released them.

But now, they finally decided to re-release them by season:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/105-2705355-5244462?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Twilight+Zone

I've rented TZ videos at Hollywood Video, so I know that they are available. (I haven't tried Netflix.)

One of my favorite episodes is called "Time enough at last."
Burgess Meridith, plays a person who is obsessed with reading. He is definitely an aspie like character.

It is a very good portrayal of someone with Aspergers, to the point where you start to think someone very familiar with it was closely involved in the making of this episode.

Also notable is that Robert Duvall (who plays the main character) was praised for his performance in this episode, and this episode is mostly well known for that performance.

I've loved the Twilight Zone since I first saw some episodes as a child.


Wanting a quiet life, being introvert and quiet, being a bookworm, wanting a more slow-paced life was a theme in quite a few TZ episodes.

Here is Miniature by the way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9CXl-W0-TY

I absolutely love The Twilight Zone, and I agree with the OP that that episode starring Robert Duvall as a socially awkward loner who has fallen in love with a doll house figurine is almost certainly about Asperger's before Americans ever knew what Asperger's was.

I absolutely love The Twilight Zone, and I agree with the OP that that episode starring Robert Duvall as a socially awkward loner who has fallen in love with a doll house figurine is almost certainly about Asperger's before Americans ever knew what Asperger's was.