Where is Everybody?

Description: Season 1, Episode 1

Air Date: October 2, 1959

Plot Summary: A man with amnesia finds himself in a town void of people yet troubled by the feeling he is being watched.

Review: There are actually two versions of this pilot episode, but there isn't much of a difference really. The original version is slightly longer and entails a direct pitch from Rod Serling to advertisers hoping to get the show picked up. Besides that, there is a different narrator--which begs the question of whether it was suggested that Mr. Serling serve as the narrator after they saw the presence he carried when talking to the advertisers? Nevertheless, one cannot deny that Mr. Serling possessed a distinct manner of speaking that came off both ominous and sage-like.

As for the story, it's not one of the more classic episodes, but I can understand why people may have been impressed back then. Essentially, a man with no memories finds himself in a town without any people while unable to shake the feeling he's being watched. There are traces of life strewn about as if someone was in the area only moments prior, but the man never finds anyone. The man talks to himself incessantly with some cheesy dialogue that will definitely come off amusing by today's standards; for example, his ability to directly quote "A Christmas Carol" word for word while talking to himself in a mirror and eating ice cream. In the end, the man starts to lose his mind as we realize he's in an isolation chamber as a part of some air force experiment. Allegedly this is to help prepare for a manned mission to the moon. I did think it was a bit idealistic to believe the military would be chatting it up with the media and let them see the experiment; even back then that's pure bullshit. On the other hand, a questioning of reality was interesting and would have been unique back in the days of pure cornball, drive-in sci-fi. I did like how the breaking of a clock and the street light signal mirrored his situation in the chamber. They did miss an opportunity to imply that what the man saw could have been a real place somewhere, but that kind of thinking would be later applied properly throughout the series. Overall, this was a decent opening, but the real gems were just on the horizon.