Stop me if you’ve heard this story before. This person has an amazing career where he or she is considered the best in their area of expertise. Little by little, you start to hear rumblings about personal problems. Suddenly, this person seems to be doing everything that he or she can to completely tank their career. Those of us on the outside can’t help but think, “you had it all: fame, money, respect. How could you just throw it all away?” Some years down the line, that individual starts to discuss the immense pressures that came with staying at the top, and the desperation that grew to remain there. Sometimes, losing in life is the only way you can win in the end. In this week’s episode of the Twilight Zone, we meet Al Denton–the quickest draw this side of the mississippi–I guess that depends on where you live, but I’m sticking with it. For years, Denton would face all challengers who rode into town looking for a gunfight, until one day, the man on the other end of the bullet was a sixteen-year-old boy. When that young man hit the ground, so too did Denton’s sense of self worth. Alcohol became Denton’s only friend, and belligerent cowboys who demanded a song in exchange for a drink, became his counselors. That is, until a man by the name of Henry J. Fate arrives in town with his wares. (That’s right Mr. Fate–a little too on the nose for you? Maybe, but Mr. Serendipity just doesn’t have the same cowboy ring to it. With a gun in his hand, Denton starts to remember who he is, but with it, comes the memories of the constant challenges. And it isn’t long before someone comes riding in looking to test his might. But, Denton has an ace up his sleeve. A magic elixir from Fate that gives perfect accuracy and quick reflexes for 10 seconds. With this bit of magic, Denton prepares for his showdown with a young gun named Pete Grant. As the two men square up for a draw, they both realize that they have each drunk from Fate’s magic elixer. What transpires is essentially a merciful draw. Both men shoot each other’s dominant hands, rendering them unable to take part in future gunfights. They’ve kept their honor, and their lives. 

“Mr. Denton on Doomsday” is directed by Allan Reisner, teleplay by Rod Serling, and  starring Dan Duryea as Al Denton, Jeanne Cooper as Liz Smith, Malcolm Atterbury as Henry J. Fate, and featuring a young looking Martin Landau as Dan Hoteling (The episode first aired on October 16th, 1959. 

This is one of our grower episodes, as in I think you might need to have a few years on you before you can appreciate the fullness of Denton’s circumstances. In Martin Grams Jr.’s The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic, he chronicles that, according to Serling, “I got this idea watching a collection of westerns over a period of a couple of weeks…In many ways it was almost a spoof of the classic high-noon, walk-down-the-middle-of-the-street gun battle” (175). Serling may have begun conceiving the idea as a spoof, but it certainly didn’t end that way. One of the themes that I like to talk with my students about is the burden of greatness. Now, admittedly, I usually use the episode “A Game of Pool '' when I discuss this theme with them, but this episode also speaks to the burden of greatness as well. The difference between the two is that Denton’s greatness led to the death of quite a few men, and as I mentioned in my plot overview, the death of a 16-year-old boy. So, you might ask, why not just stop what you’re doing and go do something else with your life. Why turn to drinking? Well, that’s something that we have only recently started to better understand.  Oftentimes, when our psychology is suffering, we turn to physical self harm so as to create a tangible focal point of pain that we can point to. Now, for this next segment, I want to give a warning to anyone who might have small children listening. I’m going to talk about a very serious topic. I’m only doing so because it is something that worries me personally, and it’s something that I’ve seen manifest itself in my students. It might seem like a reach, but hear me out. If you’ve been paying attention to the disturbing trends of depression and anxiety in young adults today, you might have also heard about the accompanying increase in self harm. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Nonsuicidal self-injury, often simply called self-injury, is the act of harming your own body on purpose, such as by cutting or burning yourself. It's usually not meant as a suicide attempt. This type of self-injury is a harmful way to cope with emotional pain, sadness, anger and stress” (link). Now, I would argue that the kind of drinking that Denton is doing counts in this category of self harm. He is punishing his body because it is something that he can feel, something tangible that he can point to. Whereas, the psychological harm that was caused when he killed the young man seems more like a phantom. Today, of course, our conversations on PTSD are much more open and encouraged, but if we take Denton in his supposed timeframe of the late 19th century, the self medicating nature of alcohol is the quickest way to forget what he has done. 

While self-injury may bring a brief sense of calm and a release of physical and emotional tension, it's usually followed by guilt and shame and the return of painful emotions. As Serling’s monologue tells us at the beginning of the episode, “This is a man who has begun his dying early.” Whether it is drugs, alcohol, or even food, we will use whatever we can sometimes  to forget who we are and where we are. If you believe that you are trapped in this cycle, you should know this: there is help, and it is absolutely treatable. It has to begin with you admitting that you are worthy of being loved, and loving others, that you have dignity, and that when you are at your best, you have something unique and wonderful to offer this world. But, it begins with forgiving yourself and seeking professional help. Go now. 

Let’s dive into question 1: Has the need to maintain the skills that define us only become worse by the voyeuristic nature of social media and content creation? Or, is the pressure the same as it always has been? When you’re young, you desperately want to make your mark on the world, and test your might against the very best. Today, I think we do a pretty poor job of teaching young people the value of working your way to the top. I’m not saying that young people are lazy or want things handed to them. I actually don’t believe that’s the case. I honestly think those of us who have helped to rear the young have made the mistake of not helping them see why struggling toward a goal is arguably so much the better than actually achieving it. I bring this up because, it’s clear that at one point, being the best gunman for miles and miles was important to Al Denton, and he probably enjoyed defending his honor the first few times. But, once he saw that not only did the challenges never end, but that he always had to have people witness his acts of killing, I think Denton began to question what it means to be great at something–and whether or not one needs to constantly defend his or her greatness. Today, people make entire careers out of being great at something online. They start channels and social media accounts. The problem is that if they deviate from their norm, the audience, carefully crafted through algorithms, can turn on them and begin to question if there was ever anything so wonderful about them from the very beginning.

To answer the question more directly, I do think that the voyeuristic nature of social media has made us more slavish to our skills–at the very least, I think it has altered our ability to branch out and try new things out of fear of losing what we have built. Yes, it is good business to continue to provide your audience with the product they want, but there is also something to be said for needing to continually challenge yourself with new skills in order to maintain a healthy relationship with the audience. 

Connecting this back to our episode. There’s an incredibly eerie feeling toward the end of the episode when everyone in the bar is waiting for 10pm. Everyone knows that this could be the last time they will ever see Al Denton again. The only person who is willing to talk to Denton is the barkeeper, offering our gunman a drink. This is not a throwaway line, by the way. Remember, everyone knows that Denton has spent the last few years drinking to forget, and I’m sure the barkeeper remembers Denton telling him that he was finished drinking. So, why does the Barkeeper offer him a drink? I’m of two minds here. My first thought is because the Barkeeper is simply nervous. He wants Denton to drink in order to create some sense of being back to normalcy. He also might be doing it as a last ditch effort to save Denton’s life. You could make the argument that if Denton drinks, he might just walk away from all of this. That would make the Bartender quite an interesting figure in terms of ethics. 

Question 2: How much responsibility should we give fate for Denton finding his worth again? In a 2019 peer-reviewed study by Hang Hai et all, they wanted to try and verify some of the research surrounding the efficacy of a spiritual/religious component in the recovery process of individuals with addictions. Here is the conclusion to that study, “We found evidence of Spiritual/Religious interventions’ efficacy in helping people with substance use problems. Most [Randomized Control Trials] RCTs have focused on 12-step-oriented interventions, while RCTs on non-12-step-oriented S/R interventions are scant. Of the interventions studied, 12-step-oriented interventions were more efficacious than non-S/R comparison interventions for people with substance use problems'' (146). 

So, what is it about the religious/spiritual component that is so helpful? I’m sure there is a neurobiological answer to the question, but I would like to offer a more philosophical conclusion. Addictions are often masking underlying problems of undiagnosed depression, and something that depression does that is quite horrifying is that it can change our relationship with time itself. When depression is at its worst, it can make us believe that nothing good has ever happened; nothing good is happening; and nothing good can ever happen. Self-medicating with alcohol and drugs is a way of turning off our awareness of time–thus severing our connection with our depressive thoughts–at least for a brief moment. But, the connection is rebuilt again the moment these addictive chemicals leave the system. However, when we experience something spiritual or religious, we enter into a state of awe–something I talked about in the pilot episode of this show, so I won’t go into as much detail here. Suffice it to say, awe tasks the mind with trying to accommodate new information that cannot be simply reasoned away by our normal heuristics or ways we confront life through our shortcut answers to things. I think the greater connectivity with the human species, the more accurate placement of one’s self in the cosmic order of things, and the need to accommodate new information, all play a role in why spiritual/religious components tend to help individuals who are suffering with addictions–although by no means are they the only parts of a recovery plan. Medical assistance is often needed and should be consulted. 

Several times toward the beginning of the episode, Denton is in awe of what the gun has produced–the accuracy that is almost Odysseus-like in nature. And then, at the very end, when he realizes that, due to the elixir of Fate–or Fate’s elixir, I suppose–when Denton realizes that the outcome is the best that could have ever happened–that both he and the young man will never have to engage in another ridiculous drawing match, the perfection of that moment serves as a kind of spiritual moment of perfection. Fate has stepped in and produced a kind of miracle, and it’s just enough of a miracle that Denton will no longer need to fear returning to the bottle for escape. At the risk of sound maudlin, I’ll simply say, If you are struggling with alcohol or drugs, anything that you are using to simply carry your pain, you need to know that there were good times in the past; there can be good times in the present; and with a new outlook on life, there will be good times in the future. Seek professional help. 

Where did you find your moment of awe, something that moved you or inspired you to think beyond the surface? Obviously Mr. Fate is pulling some fancy stuff throughout this episode; however, the real magic happens as soon as Denton picks up the gun. It comes to represent a time when he was responsible for something. It reminds me of the scene in the first Rambo movie when Rambo basically says, “over there in Vietnam I was in charge of multimillion dollar equipment, and back here in the states, I can’t even keep a job parking cars.” There is something magical that happens when we pick up items that remind us of when we were expected to do something great. Too easily, those moments can be placed in an attic or thrown away. Remember, there is something of greatness inside of all of us, we just have to clasp our trinkets of yore and remember.

As for my ranking, I give this another middle-middle tier ranking. 

Next time, we’ll be discussing “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine.” Here are your questions to consider as you watch.

1. Question 1: Could you see yourself getting trapped in the past like Barbara Jean?

2. Question 2: Is there an entertainment nostalgia push? If so, has it failed or succeeded? 

3. Question 3: What are your moments of awe here? 

I’m still working on a website for the show; however, if you head over to thekeyofimagination.com, it will take you to the YouTube channel, where you can see me deliver my monologues. There are certain podcasts that I think lend themselves to audio only, and this might be one of them, but I, nonetheless, offer the video option.Use the links in the description to continue the conversation: you can rate the episode and leave your thoughts on Mr. Denton on Doomsday? If you enjoyed the show, I ask that you please take a moment and do one of the following to help build our community. Rate the show, review the podcast, leave comments, thumbs up, all of the usual algorithmic gymnastics. However, even if you do none of that and absolutely hate my work, I would still like to thank you for spending some time with me. Until next time, remember, all doors are open to those who possess the key of imagination. 

Hai, Audrey Hang et al. “The Efficacy of Spiritual/religious Interventions for 

Substance Use Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.” Drug and alcohol dependence 202 (2019): 134–148. Web.