Story: Where is Everybody?
Written By: Rod Serling
Series: The Twilight Zone (Original Series)
Season: 1
Right...where was I? When I made my first attempt at launching this Twilight Zone project, I was in a very different place, and while I thought I was only getting a tad sidetracked at first, my life got thrown into a bit of a Twilight Zone of it's own. I thought I'd have time because for the first time I had a job with regular hours. But then I lost that job unexpectedly. Then I ended up in a new place of employment, and as it turns out...I hated it immensely. As such, instead of working on something like this I spent a lot of my time either feeling depressed or searching for a new job. I just didn't have time to properly launch this project. In the midst of all that COVID hit, and we got a President who made our lives miserable. In my personal life, I did leave the job I hated and ended up somewhere nice but that didn't pay well. At least I didn't despise the work. But after three years, they had to let me go due to even bigger budget crunches. I quickly landed on my feet only to have the rug pulled out from under me 6 months later. Luckily, I have skills in my field and connections, and I didn't waste any time taking on both freelance work and getting what I would definitely consider the best job I've ever had. And now that my freelance commitments are finally slowing down, I have time for fun little projects for myself again. First, I decided to start a monthly movie stream, which you can find over at twitch.com/TremendousKendous. That has been a ton of fun and I'd love for you to join me when I do them.
So, "Where is Everybody." This follows a man with a fuzzy memory coming to an empty town and finding there is evidence of life but he can't find a single living soul anywhere. It begins to drive him mad as goes from place to place and still finds himself utterly alone. I remember seeing this as a kid during one of the former Sci-Fi Channel's New Years Twilight zone marathons. I remember liking it, particularly the ending. As our protagonist runs out of a movie theater, crashes into a mirror, then gets to a crosswalk and continuously hits the "Walk" button...and then it is revealed that it has all been a hallucination. Our protagonist is actually an astronaut in training for a solo trip to the moon...he's been sitting in an isolation booth for 20 days and it has driven him to the brink of madness.
I remember being blown away by that ending. I was probably like 13 or something, but I thought it made the whole episode suddenly make perfect sense. And while it is not my favorite episode of the show, as a first episode it really is quite good.
NEXT TIME: Outrunning Death
Comments
Post a Comment