Where Is Everybody?
| "Where Is Everybody?" | |
|---|---|
| The Twilight Zone episode | |
Earl Holliman in "Where Is Everybody?"
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| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 1 |
| Directed by | Robert Stevens |
| Written by | Rod Serling |
| Featured music | Original score by Bernard Herrmann |
| Cinematography by | Joseph La Shelle |
| Editing by | Roland Gross |
| Production code | 173-3601 |
| Original air date | October 2, 1959 |
| Guest appearance(s) | |
"Where Is Everybody?" is the first episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It was first broadcast on October 2, 1959.
(Note: In following first season episodes, "sixth dimension" in the above narration was changed to "fifth dimension", and "sunlight" was changed to "summit".)
A man finds himself alone on a dirt road, walking towards a diner. Inside he finds a jukebox playing loudly, and a pot of hot coffee on the stove, but there are no other people. He inquires for some breakfast, but no chef or waitress is to be found. He is dressed in an Air Force flight suit, but he does not remember who he is or how he got there.
After leaving the diner, he walks to a nearby town called Oakwood. The town seems deserted, but everywhere the man goes, he seems to find proof that someone had been there recently: food is cooking on a stove, water dripping in a sink, and a cigar is burning in an ashtray. He grows more and more unsettled as he wanders through the empty town, looking for someone—anyone—to talk to, all the while having the strange feeling that he is being watched. He even mistakes a mannequin sitting in the cab of a delivery truck for a live person.
In a soda shop after talking to himself he idly spins racks filled with paperback books until he comes to an already spinning rack filled from top to bottom with the same book: "The Last Man on Earth, Feb. 1959", upon noticing it he is upset and leaves.
Day turns to night and the man is still alone in the town. Street lights turn on all around him. The marquee of the movie theater is illuminated. As he goes into the theater, he sees a poster advertising the film playing Battle Hymn, which causes him to remember that he is in the US Air Force. Finding no one in the audience, he begins to wonder if he is the last survivor of a nuclear war, until the film begins onscreen. He runs to the projection booth, again finding it empty. He desperately runs through the theater until he crashes into a mirror.
In a panic, the man runs through the streets, even more paranoid that he is being watched, until he finally collapses next to a street crossing and presses a button labeled WALK. As he screams for someone to help him, it is revealed that the walk button is actually a panic button. The man is not alone in a deserted town, but is instead in an isolation booth being observed by a group of uniformed servicemen. Along with the panic button, the isolation booth shows a clock with its glass shattered from the man pounding on it.
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