Do you know how you can tell The Hunt isn’t a Rod Serling episode?  Well I guess the correct answer is: wait until the opening credits, but I knew earlier than that.  How, you ask, did I deduce such a brilliant thing?  Not so brilliantly, really.  It was in the names.  Serling’s narration opens with “An old man and a hound dog named Rip…”  Nope.  If it opened up “Rupert Smedley Hancock and his dog Coonicus Rex…” I would have known it was Serling.  Instead Earl Hamner Jr gives us the Waltons meets the Twilight Zone complete with an elderly couple who call each other “old woman” and “old man”.  (I was never a fan of The Waltons.  Call me crazy!)

The episode didn’t wow me for half of its running time.  By 8 minutes in, I predicted the outcome.  By 9 minutes, I had it confirmed.  And you know what?  I was slow; I should have realized it the moment the narration said, “These hunters won’t be coming home from that hill.”  Oh sure it could have been a different story.  Old man Hyder Simpson could have popped into the future; we’ve seen that story before too.  But there’s another clue that we get right at the start.  The dog’s name is Rip.  When I wrote it down (as I do when preparing my notes for all that we review here on The Junkyard) I wrote it in large enough letters that I saw it right instantly:  R-I-P.  Within 13 minutes, the story was over.  I saw it all.  Hyder and Rip walk through their lives before shuffling off their mortal coil completely and enter the pearly gates (which were distinctly wooden, I might add).

With over 10 minutes to go, there was nowhere for the story to go but down.  Straight to hell, in fact.  And that was when the episode came to life and did something clever!  Simpson arrives at the gate to heaven and prepares to enter, but St. Peter won’t let Rip in.  That’s no place for dogs!  There’s a different heaven for them.  Thankfully, Simpson loves Rip and decides not to go in, content to wander purgatory forever as long as he has his dog by his side… whereupon he meets another traveler who says heaven is up ahead.  Simpson isn’t going unless Rip can come too.    The moral of the story ends up being that in heaven, your pets are allowed to be with you again!  No, actually, it’s that man will walk into hell with his eyes wide open; a dog knows better.  (Brilliantly acted by the dog too – when he is about to enter the fake St. Peter’s version of heaven, the dog recoils.  It’s brief but it stands out.)

The thing is, I do think man will walk headlong into hell if given the reason.  More often than not, those reasons don’t even hold up under mild scrutiny!   I was amazed by that simple line; it seemed so obvious and so real.  But was the writer saying that the simple love a man might have for his pet is enough to give him pause?  The writer, obviously a pet lover, effectively finds a way to make the 25 minute format work despite the obvious.  Half the story might be predictable but it wraps easily enough and in under 15 minutes having built enough interest in the lives of the old couple while the other half was totally unexpected.  This isn’t a favorite episode of mine; don’t misunderstand, but it certainly managed to pull the rug out from under me in a most unexpected way.

Having said that, I do think the script allows for an unintentionally funny moment.  The new angel welcoming Hyder into the real heaven tells him that his wife will be along soon to which Hyder is pleased.  Now, sure, I get it: you get to be with your spouse again, sooner than expected, but, don’t you want her to still live her life for a while?  I know, I know, we have no idea how fast or slow time goes in heaven, but it still was an unintentionally comical moment that did detract slightly from the overall story.  But only slightly.  The rest gave me hope that I’ll see all my loved ones again one day, even the furry ones.  I like shows that make me think, but I love shows that make me hope.  ML

The view from across the pond:

This is a deceptively simple episode of The Twilight Zone and I think it is hugely underrated because it requires some work on the part of the viewers. If you let the story wash over you then you’ll get little out of it. This one needs some deep thought to understand exactly what the writer was saying to us. Having said that, it can still be enjoyed on a basic level as a story of a man failing to be tricked into hell, thanks to his love of his pet dog, and I’m sure a lot of people can sympathise with his determination not to be separated from his beloved Rip. If there’s a heaven for dogs, most dog owners would probably say that’s where they want to end up.

But let’s peel away a layer. Let’s look a little deeper. Hyder and Rip die, and somebody tries to trick Hyder into hell, pretending it’s heaven. He doesn’t actually realise he’s being tricked until an angel tells him, but he is simply certain of one thing: where Rip goes, he goes. If heaven doesn’t have a place for Rip, Hyder won’t be going through those gates. If doggy heaven doesn’t have a place for Hyder, neither of them are going there either. The thought of being on “Eternity Road”, a sort of limbo, forever, holds no fear for Hyder. As a little aside, we are told that Rip can’t be tricked into hell anyway, because dogs can smell the brimstone, which is something that should resonate with a lot of dog owners who will have noticed that a dog can be a remarkably astute judge of character. If somebody’s heart is rotten to the core, they often have a way of knowing.

So this is about loyalty, and loyalty is rewarded. Hell is about temptation, and the deal that is offered to Hyder is a false paradise, which he can have in exchange for abandoning the dog he loves. He is told that Rip will be fine too, but it would still be the breaking of a bond in order to get what’s on offer. Hyder’s loyalty to Rip saves him from hell.

This might raise some questions in your mind, and to answer them we need to peel away another layer. What kind of a system is this, you might say, where a good person can be tricked into hell? Or if he’s not a good person, how does he get into heaven? How can it work like that? And what about his loyalty to his wife? How can he be content to leave her to run the risk of temptation herself, and possibly end up separated from him forever, when her time comes? Does his love for his dog mean more to him than his wife?

Of course not. And here’s where we need to be really paying attention. Hyder and Rachel have a great relationship, that has endured for 50 years and is still playful and loving. But the key point is she’s a church-goer and he isn’t. So there is a clear message here: the good person who is also a good Christian is going straight to heaven, and nobody has any worries about her getting there; the good person who has not been active in his faith is far from being excluded from heaven, but his loyalty must be tested first. There is hope for everyone, but the bar is higher for Hyder.

So why is it loyalty that has to be tested? Why does Hyder have to prove his love for his dog before he gets to go to heaven? Well, that’s simply proof that he cares about something more than himself, and has also inspired devotion and loyalty. He loves, and he is loved.

Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love…

… but the greatest of these is love.

RP

Read next in the Junkyard… The Twilight Zone: Showdown with Rance McGrew