Before the two leave, the man comforts Tyler, saying that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'. Flat-screen television screens throughout the hospital project an image of the State's despotic leader giving a speech calling for greater conformity.Įventually, a handsome man (by our standards) afflicted with the same 'condition' arrives to take the crying, despondent Tyler into exile to a village of her 'own kind', where her 'ugliness' will not trouble the State. Distraught by the failure of the procedure, Tyler runs through the hospital as the faces of everyone she runs into, the norm in this society, are revealed. The camera pulls back to reveal that she is actually beautiful.Īt this point, the doctor, nurses and other people in the hospital are revealed to be horribly deformed from our perspective, with large, thick brows, sunken eyes, swollen and twisted lips, and wrinkled, pig-like snouts. The procedure has failed, and her face has undergone 'no change-no change at all'. The reaction of the doctor and nurses is horror and disappointment. After a climactic buildup, the bandages are removed. Tyler pleads with the doctor and eventually convinces him to remove the bandages early. The outcome of the procedure cannot be known until the bandages are removed. She is described as being 'not normal' by the nurses and doctor, whose own faces are always in shadows or off-camera. The details of the treatment are not given, but Tyler is first shown with her head completely bandaged so that her face cannot be seen. Janet Tyler has undergone her eleventh treatment (the maximum number legally allowed) in an attempt to look like everybody else. This happens to be The Twilight Zone, and Miss Janet Tyler, with you, is about to enter it.' Episode Summary In a moment, we'll go back into this room, and also in a moment, we'll look under those bandages, keeping in mind, of course, that we're not to be surprised by what we see, because this isn't just a hospital, and this patient 307 is not just a woman. 'Suspended in time and space for a moment, your introduction to Miss Janet Tyler, who lives in a very private world of darkness, a universe whose dimensions are the size, thickness, length of a swath of bandages that cover her face.

Eye of the beholder meaning