Read On: Return of ‘The Twilight Zone’

The greatest television drama of all time is about to unfold on screens big and small, plugged and unplugged, beginning on Monday. It will play clear through Thursday night and is destined to dwarf “Roots,” “The Civil War,” “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men” and everything that came before in terms of sheer majesty and consequence.

I am talking of course about the 2016 Republican National Convention, arriving in just two days and promising to supply so much pure entertainment and surrealism that you’ll be left constantly pinching yourself as to whether it is, in fact, real.

Imagine it: A group of powerful people will take the stage to play the world’s biggest-ever game of Let’s Pretend.

Let’s pretend we support and endorse Donald Trump. Let’s pretend we’re proud of his campaign. Let’s pretend we’re excited that he is poised to be our party’s standard-bearer. Let’s pretend that mere weeks and months before, many of us were not openly expressing our contempt for him and launching counter-movements to stop him. Let’s pretend we think he’s an ideal-driven maverick rather than a clueless, dangerous, possibly deranged demagogue. Let’s pretend that he stands for actual conservative principles rather than simply for himself. Let’s pretend that our being here at all isn’t about party over ideology.

Let’s pretend we aren’t completely horrified by this spectacle we feel duty-bound to embrace.

File this under the “Truth is indeed stranger than fiction” heading. The truth is that next week’s GOP confab in Cleveland is destined to be the least sincere, least heartfelt, most bizarre, most shallow and bewildering quasi-reality exhibition in American history.

This won’t be a presidential candidate coronation so much as a Pokemon Go tracking gone out of control.

But oh, my God, is this going to be a blast to watch unfold. Future civilizations will point to this as the moment when the American experiment called democracy descended to its nadir.

Consider that this thing is being held in Cleveland. You know who would be elected mayor of that city tomorrow were he to run? LeBron James, that’s who. He just won the city its first major sports championship in more than a half-century with the Cleveland Cavaliers’ recent NBA title.

LeBron James will not be making an appearance at this convention. He would sooner renounce his championship.

You know who else won’t be there? The Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich, himself a presidential candidate during this campaign. Why won’t Kasich be appearing at a GOP convention in his very own state? Hmm … excellent question. For some folks, it seems, endorsing the unimaginable remains unimaginable.

There is an impressive list of others whose decision to skip the convention is more than somewhat conspicuous. Start with the two surviving former Republican presidents, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, along with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former VP Dick Cheney. Now, add to it the last two GOP presidential contenders, John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Among the above group, only Romney has made it clear that his decision to avoid Cleveland is directly attributable to his opposition to the party’s presumptive nominee. For the others, the snub is merely implicit. But it’s been well documented that the entire Bush family is singularly appalled by Trump.

You know who will be in Cleveland? Several members of Donald Trump’s family, including his children and wife (the current one, anyway). If that doesn’t get his base nice and excited, what will?

But here is something noteworthy that may electrify fans of the television series classic “The Twilight Zone”: This convention promises to have uncanny similarities to the episode titled “It’s a Good Life” that had its original premiere on Nov. 3, 1961. It’s been seen in reruns ever since.

If you’re a “TZ” fan — and quite frankly, who isn’t? — you’ll remember this as the half-hour that starred Billy Mumy as a 6-year-old boy named Anthony Fremont. Anthony lives in a small town in Ohio (coincidence?) called Peaksville, over which he rules with petulant, frightening hostility. How so? He can read minds, according to host Rod Serling’s opening, and has the power to do grotesque things to anyone who even thinks negative thoughts of him or others. He can even make them disappear entirely.

When Anthony got angry at someone, he would wish them into the “cornfield” — never to be heard from again. Or he’d turn them into a jack-in-the-box. So everyone walked around pretending to love Anthony and everything he did.

The 2016 GOP National Convention is “It’s a Good Life” come to life. And Donald Trump is Anthony Fremont.

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RAY RICHMOND has covered Hollywood and the entertainment business since 1984. He can be reached via email at ray@rayrichco.com and Twitter at @MeGoodWriter.