This episode has stood up pretty well. Richard Deacon, most famous for "The Dick Van Dyke Show" has control of his late father's company. Despite the fact that his father doubled his production, the son sees him as a failure, allowing the competition to get a leg up. His solution is to go to an almost totally computerized and mechanized factory, eliminating nearly all the workers, even the ones who have been there for 20 to 30 years. The factory goes from an active, friendly place to a wasteland in a few weeks. He even fires the man who has worked most closely with him since he was a boy. He speaks glowingly of giving the time card machines to a museum as well as the money he will save from fringe benefits like insurance, paid vacations, and the like. Deacon projects a villainous glee that literally glows when he is on screen. Of course, as sympathetic viewers, most of us grow to hate him. Some have written that this was a sign of things to come, showing Serling's prescience. Its outrageousness is what makes it work very well. I first saw this episode nearly fifty years ago, and now, seeing it again, it was quite familiar to me. It must have made quite an impression. The curse of mechanization is that if people aren't retrained and are left unable to work, the loss of a middle class's buying power is in the offing. Hence the Robert Reich reference.
Review of The Brain Center at Whipple's
