Twilight Zone 1.1 Where Is Everybody?
The one where Earl Holliman finds himself wandering around a curiously empty town... what rating would you give it?
shareNine. The gold standard for pilots.
shareI've only seen random episodes here and there so I can't tell yet but ranking this only against the other Twilight Zone episodes would you say it belongs in the top 10% percentile, 20%, 30%... etc?
shareI'd put it in the Top 20. It addresses many of the themes "The Twilight Zone" would explore ad nauseam later on: isolation, loneliness, paranoia, dreams vs reality, and the space age. Plus the camerawork and music are top notch and Earl Holliman's performance, the only performance for much of the episode, is a solid piece of work devoid largely of the hamminess that characterizes much of the acting of that era.
shareThe denouement reminded me of Psycho (which came after this episode). After you realize what happened, the scientists proceed to analyze and explain what took place in a way that the audience of that era would be able to understand.
share I felt the denouement in "Psycho" was more egregious than the one here. What the military brass has to say actually deepens our understanding of what we've just seen: Ferris cracked, his lack of companionship the cause, a lack intensified by being stuck in an isolation booth for over four hundred hours. The explanation fleshes out Ferris and lends context to "Everybody," tying it to the topical "space race" happening at the time. Ferris even prophetically assures the moon as he's being carried out in a stretcher that either he or another astronaut will be up there soon (even though this optimism is tempered somewhat by Serling's rather ominous outro). The conclusion of "Psycho," on the other hand, leaves us wondering just how stupid the movie thinks we are (no doubt the result of a meddlesome studio convinced they know better than a master).
Did you notice, incidentally, the clock Ferris knocks over when he's in the kitchen at the start of the episode? It reads "6:15." Just before Ferris is pulled out of the isolation booth, having spent a day, perhaps longer, in the town, did you notice what time it was on the clock in the booth? "6:15" as well.
I actually didn't find that offputting... it simply is a reminder of how rudimentary the average person's knowledge was of psychology during that period... I pointed it out because it was similar and that certain things we'd take for granted today would've been very unfamiliar back then (...wasn't it Mad Men where the psychiatrist would explain the wife's intimate conversations to the husband?) Interesting about the time, I'll have to check that out next viewing.
share