By Chris Benedict

The thermometer in Norma’s New York City apartment reads 110 degrees. And that is with the air-conditioner chugging along at maximum capacity during the interim between the mandated brownouts, as the depleted gas, water, and electrical supplies are rationed out to the remaining citizens or cut off altogether with greater frequency. The radio announcer reports humidity levels of 91% and tomorrow’s forecast being simply “hot”. With a forlorn voice he is unable to disguise, he adds “More of the same, only hotter.” Departing from his script, he goes on to say that you will be able to fry eggs on sidewalks and boil soup in the ocean and are left to seek help from wandering maniacs.

Rod Serling, who also wrote the episode, appears onscreen to explain that Earth has been thrown off its elliptical orbit, taking the planet and its inhabitants nearer to the sun every day, every moment. People live, if you can call it that, in perpetual daylight. There is no more differentiating between midnight and high noon.

The Schuster family, with twelve gallons of gas and all of their possessions stuffed into a single suitcase, head north to be with family in Toronto despite warnings of horrific traffic conditions, widespread panic, and looting, leaving Norma and kindly old Mrs. Bronson alone in the building. Wearing a paint-smeared smock, she takes a break from her brushes and canvas to tell Mrs. Bronson that she entertains the crazy notion that she will awaken one of these days to the realization that this will all have been a terrible dream and will open her eyes to “a cool bed, the wind, branches rustling, shadows on the sidewalk, a moon, traffic noises.”

Norma comes back from a supply run to a local grocery store with three containers of fruit juice and the awful story of one woman standing in the middle of an aisle, amidst the frenzied scavengers, crying like a baby. Mrs. Bronson ransacks the kitchen drawers for a can opener and greedily snatches the juice from Norma’s hand, knocking it to the floor where she crawls after it on all fours. Mrs. Bronson, animalistically lowered to jungle law the way that the city has been reduced to a state of martial law, is mortified by her behavior. As they touch glasses in a toast, the radio, fan, and air-conditioner all power down for the final time. Pleading with Norma to paint “something pastoral, with a waterfall and trees bending in the wind”, Mrs. Bronson takes the canvas from the easel depicting a cityscape dominated by the presence of an enormously hovering sun and throws it to the floor. “Don’t paint the sun anymore,” she shrieks, weeping and pounding on the painting like a toddler in the midst of a tantrum.

A stranger invades the building through an unlocked roof hatch, one which Mrs. Bronson can no longer be certain she had secured due to her heat delirium. Gaining entrance to Norma’s dwelling, he wrestles her revolver away and removes her last bottle of water from the no longer functioning refrigerator, guzzling half of it and dumping the rest over his sunbaked head, smashing it against the wall for emphasis. Noticing Norma’s paintings, the interloper begins to break down, overcome by the memory of his wife, so fragile, who was also an artist. Their baby died within an hour of being born and she followed soon after. Left to fend for himself, he had devolved from a decent family man into someone-or something-no longer recognizable to himself. Giving the frightened yet sympathetic women his apologies, he straggled back into streets and whatever fate awaited him.

Mrs. Bronson completes her descent into madness when she sees the cascading waterfall that Norma has painted for her, irretrievably lost in the childhood reverie of a similar natural feature in upstate Ithaca, licking Norma’s window as if it were the clear water tumbling over the rocks that she would play in as a little girl. She collapses and, presumably, dies. Norma is roused from an uneasy sleep by the shattering of her thermometer, having topped out at 120. The oils in her paint cannot sustain their consistency, dripping down their canvases, and Norma’s vital functions likewise succumb to the intense heat and she loses consciousness.

A snowstorm rages outside the window and Mrs. Bronson stuffs rags into the gap at the bottom of the sill in a futile attempt to keep the flakes and the cold outside where they belong. Norma’s thermometer shows the indoor temperature to be 10 degrees. The attending physician tells Mrs. Bronson that he has done all he can to break Norma’s fever but that he has exhausted his supply of medication and is heading south in the morning. Mrs. Bronson pulls the doctor aside and asks if he too heard the scientist on the radio speaking about the Earth’s orbital reversal, not unlike the exchange of drastic realities produced within Norma’s fever dream. She repeats the estimate that within one to three weeks, the planet will have been pulled so far away from the sun that they will all freeze to death. Taking Mrs. Bronson’s hand, Norma exclaims how wonderful it is to not be subjected to relentless daylight and heat, to have darkness and coolness.

“Yes, my dear,” Mrs. Bronson falsely assures her, turning her head away to conceal the lie.

“The Midnight Sun” explores the unraveling of the human psyche in the face of impending peril, the inhuman lengths to which we will go towards securing our tenuous survival and fend off annihilation. Lois Nettleton, who portrayed Norma, was a member of the New York Actors Studio and had appeared in Elia Kazan’s off-Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” which earned her a small role in the famed director’s “A Face in the Crowd”, a starring vehicle for the unknown Andy Griffith written by Budd Schulberg. She expressed deep admiration for Rod Serling’s genius for spontaneity, intimacy, and irony. Among the various TV appearances on Route 66, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and countless more besides, she cherished The Twilight Zone above all as her personal favorite.

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