The Twilight Zone Recap: “Where is Everybody?”

The Twilight Zone Recap: “Where is Everybody?”
Original Air Date (CBS): October 2, 1959
Season 1 Episode 1

The Twilight Zone.  Few shows in the history of American television have been as influential, or as endearing, as Rod Serling’s iconic masterpiece (originally airing on CBS from 1959 to 1964).  More than science fiction, more than mystery, more than drama or comedy, The Twilight Zone was each of these things — and more.  It never failed to amplify and challenge societal ills, from the catastrophically monumental to the painstakingly mundane.  It always gave us something to ponder; an alternate reality that was never so unlike our own at its core, but one with consequences and joys that were often more deeply, and immediately, felt.  It gave us redemption, and it gave us doom.  It gave us villains and martyrs, and everything in between.

We begin a little different than we’re used to.  The recognizable theme music is absent in the first season of this show in favor of a more subtle, eerie beginning; ripples in the water give way to a vast and barren horizon.

For the first time, Rod Serling introduces audiences to the concept of his show:

“There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man.  It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity.  It is the middle ground between light and shadow; between science and superstition.  And it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.  This is the dimension of imagination; it is an area which we call The Twilight Zone.”

A man, introduced as Everyman right off the bat, walks alone on a dirt road.  He comes to a diner that, while completely empty, seems anything but abandoned; the jukebox is playing a song, there’s coffee on the stove, and fresh apple pies straight out of the oven.  Nevertheless, it is abandoned.  Not accepting the possibility that these things can exist without the presence of people, the man begins to shout out his order.  No reply.  “Hey, you’ve got a customer here”, he says.  Still nothing.

With what will be the first of a long series of reveals, the man declares he’s an American, but that he knows nothing else about himself.  An amnesiac with two dollars, talking to thin air in a well-tended diner with no people.  The Twilight Zone is alive and well, already.

At this point, I have to mention his outfit; he’s wearing a one-piece jumpsuit that either indicates he’s a mechanic or some kind of soldier from the future.  We’ll see if and when this plays out later.

He leaves the diner and walks up the road to a nearby town.  Again, we see obvious signs of activity but no people.  We’ll revisit this scenario again in season five with the classic “Stopover in a Quiet Town”, where a couple wakes up after a night of partying to find themselves in an unfamiliar, seemingly empty, town.  But whether or not this nameless man shares their fate remains to be seen.

He spots a woman sitting in a car and begins to explain his situation to her; his amnesia, his inability to find anyone anywhere, and then he propositions her.  Oh, fine, you got me, I made the last one up.  Closer and closer he approaches this woman until he opens the door of the car and discovers she’s a mannequin.  Which is an entirely different kind of date altogether, especially when it involves Kim Cattrall and a motorcycle, but this is not that kind of show.

I would also like to take this time to note that the film “Battle Hymn” is playing at the movie theater in this abandoned town.  Battle Hymn  (Universal Studios, 1957)  is a film staring Rock Hudson as a fighter pilot during the Korean War.  Keep that in mind.

Just as the amnesiac man begins to be amused by his strange situation, a phone rings from a phone booth in the middle of what seems to be the town square.  When he answers it he discovers, that’s right, there’s no one there.  Once again, signs of life everywhere with no actual life.  After yelling at the recording telling him he’s dialed the wrong number, he notices a phone book with the name of the town: Oakwood.  At that point, he gives up and tries to exit the phone booth.  It’s locked from the outside, or so he thinks, until he realizes he’s pushing instead of pulling.  Apparently, this specific type of amnesia has blacked out how a phone booth works.  Although he did remember how to use the phone…  I’m no doctor, but if anyone has some insight into how amnesia can make you forget how to open the door of a phone booth, but remember how to use the phone, I’m all ears.

Moving right along.

We’re in a police station now with the same issue we see everywhere else.  He says, “I wish I could shake that feeling of being watched.”  He then recovers nicely from that ominous feeling and puts out an APB on himself.  It’s at that point he notices a freshly lit cigar in an ashtray on the counter.  Surely that must mean someone is there, right?  Sorry, no cigar.  Yes, that was a terrible pun.  Don’t judge me.

Inside one of the jail cells he finds a sink with running water, shaving cream, a razor, and a brush — all looking like they’ve been recently used and left behind.  He tells himself it’s time to wake up directly before the door to the cell starts to pull itself closed, as though it’s going to lock him in.  It doesn’t, and he runs into the middle of the town square to yell the episode’s titular line: “Hey! Where is everybody?”

Cut to commercial.

When we return, the man looks significantly less distressed as he walks down the sidewalk beside a drug store.  It doesn’t say how much time has passed, but when the bell rings from the church he quickly, if not suspiciously, accepts it as an oddity rather than an actual sign of life.  Points to the amnesiac for getting wise, although I will deduct a few for not getting there sooner.  Side note, the razor blades are 27 cents.  Does anyone remember when razor blades were 27 cents?  Does anyone remember when anything was 27 cents?  Inflation is a cruel mistress, my friends.

You know how the old adage goes, if you talk to yourself you’re not crazy; you’re only crazy when you start to answer yourself.  Well, this is the point where he stages a full fledged conversation with the mirror.  That can’t be a good sign.  And, just like that, when I begin to call the man crazy he quotes Dickens:

“I just remembered something. Scrooge said it. You remember Scrooge, old buddy? Ebeneezer Scrooge? That’s what he said to that ghost Jacob Marley. He said, “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a crumb of cheese, a blot of mustard, a fragment of an undone potato, but there’s more of gravy than of grave about you.” You see, that’s what you are. You’re what I had for dinner last night. You must be. But now I’ve had it. I’d like to wake up. I’d like to wake up now. If I can’t wake up, at least I’d like to find somebody to talk to. Well, I must be a very imaginative guy. Nobody in the whole bloody world could have a dream as complete as mine, right down to the last detail.”

I take it all back.

As he gives the final lines of this speech, he haphazardly spins several book towers out of sheer frustration.  One, then another, then a third… finally he notices that one of the towers is filled from top to bottom with a book called “The Last Man on Earth”.  The headline on the back says “Don’t Be Half a Man”, which Google tells me is the first part of a slogan used by the KKK.  Also something to note.

Flash to what I’m going to assume is several hours later, because it’s the middle of the night, and the man is playing tic-tac-toe with himself in the dirt with a stick.  Then, all of a sudden, the lights flash.  Everywhere.  Blinking on and off, still with no signs of actual life.  He approaches the movie theater I mentioned earlier and notices that Rock Hudson is wearing the same jumpsuit in the poster that he’s currently wearing.  He realizes he’s in the Air Force.

Could this be the answer he’s looking for?  Is his involvement with the Air Force the reason why he’s here?  He muses that a bomb may have gone off, this time from a seat inside the movie theater, and then realizes that makes no sense; why would he still be here?

Just as it’s been before, life happens where there is no life; a film begins to play and the man rushes to the projection booth in a panic, only to find it as empty and abandoned as everything else.  He continues to panic, accidentally crashing into a mirror in the lobby of the theater.  Disoriented, terrified and grief-stricken, he rushes out into the street again, finally reaching his breaking point as he presses the “Walk” button on a stoplight over and over again.  “Help me,” he pleads, “Will somebody please help me?”

And then it happens.  The very first twist.

We’re taken to the perspective from a darkened room, filled with military officers watching this man on a television screen.  Except he’s not in an abandoned town, pressing the button on a stoplight.  He’s somewhere else entirely with little sensors all over his head.  Surveying the situation of extreme panic and distress, one of the men gives the command to “release this subject on the double”, and the camera gives us a wide shot of a small box in the middle of this room.

The report is in: this man is Mike Ferris, an astronaut in training, confined to this small box for a total of 484 hours and 36 minutes before he pressed the panic button.  It was all a test to see if he could withstand the confinement and isolation of a trip to the moon.  Eventually driven to delusions, he hallucinated the entire scenario of the abandoned town; none of it was real.  This is all explained to us in the final minutes of the episode, as the Colonel involved debriefs the press.

The true brilliance of this episode, and one of the strongest morals in the entire series, is best described in the final lines of dialogue between Mike, the doctor and the General.

FERRIS: Just off my rocker, huh doc?
DOCTOR: Just a kind of a nightmare that your mind manufactured for you. You see, we can feed the stomach with concentrates, we can supply microfilm for reading, recreation, even movies of a sort, we can pump oxygen in, and waste material out, but there’s one thing we can’t simulate. That’s a very basic need. Man’s hunger for companionship. The barrier of loneliness, that’s one thing we haven’t licked yet.
FERRIS: Next time it won’t be just a box in a hanger, will it?
GENERAL: No, Mike. Next time you’ll really be alone. 

FERRIS (to the moon): Hey, don’t go away up there. Next time it won’t be a dream or a nightmare. Next time it’ll be for real. So don’t go away. We’ll be up there in a little while.

And, finally, we’re given Rod Serling’s first closing voiceover:

Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting, in the Twilight Zone.

And with this strikingly true and painfully brilliant statement about the very nature of human beings, and the psychological necessity of companionship, the episode that began it all comes to a close.

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