THE TWILIGHT ZONE
"Where Is Everybody?" (1958; d. Robert Stevens, tp. Rod Serling)

Man in jumpsuit walking path (Military Man on journey: masculine reassessment post-War; cf similar TZ "King 9 Will Not Return") hears jazz (freeform music of Instinct) coming from café juke (subconscious mind regurgitating info from fixed store in dream), joint empty (abandoned mid-perk: interrupted routine, as personality he sez he can’t recollect – "just found self in road") at 6:15 (w/ $2.85 – "American" – in pocket, concentration on numerals vestigial attachment to rational consciousness); posts CLOSED sign (shutdown of waking physical activity) + heads out to empty streets (channels of conscious mind, café inquiry "what’s the name o/t town up the road?" aka own i.d.: psyche evacuating self in order to repopulate/reconstruct) following churchbell (à la jazz – call of still-functioning soul), storefront doors all open (limitless possibility; free passage, also, of private, subconsc notions out into public forum), woman in car across square (fem img also stalled in transit: passenger, aka own fem aspect, car à la never-seen plane/body) turning out 2B mannequin (cipher for self, + the body abandoned on descent into deathlike dream).

Phone-booth ring (tone, again, from enclosed space: restless, intuitive "noise" from w/i, as in isolation-booth conclusion) yields only recorded "Operator" (rational mind on automatic + Self on hold in wait for new i.d.), he stuck inside momentarily (à la coffin, outgoing communication "dead" as ½-power mind receives stimuli but can’t adequately process/respond); in police station (self-governing superego), sez he feels watched (self-governing superego, uniformed authority figures also revealed in end), drawn by running water (unconscious "tap" left on, à la open doors) to jail cell (previously inaccessible compartments of mind, faucet activity w/i) where nearly locked in ("Time to wake up, now" nightmare of sensing dream but inability to wake – men’s dawning awareness of own constricting patterning [cell as labyrinth] but no clue yet how to break out) before returning to streets to yell title (inability to know self w/o context: masculinity at Ground Zero).

Churchbell again ("call" rescuing self from despair/intuition giving hope) draws him to soda-fountain mirror (answer to question: he is everybody, both psychodrama [interior] + allegory [microcosm]) + paperback rack full of LAST MAN ON EARTH (cf 50s’Five, Target Earth + World, Flesh + the Devil: bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki devastated US as well, forcing – attempted – reconstruction of unbridled destructive masc pwr); lights come on in square (interior illumination o/t imagination as consciousness continues dimming) + he checks out movie theater (showing ’56 Battle Hymn, about similarly stymied WWII pilot rebuilding life w/ Korean orphanage: nuke-age Icarus à la contemporary sci-fi matinee pilots [many absent/dead] in Rocket Man, Cosmic Man, Monster That Challenged the World, Cyclops, Killers from Space, Giant Claw, et al) where he sees self in poster (cipher à la mannequin: he in movie TV self-reflexivity, character himself cipher, too), projection booth unmanned (further reflexivity: observing workings of own dreaming mind, "projecting" issue via ephemeral imgs; recognition, also, there’s no God behind larger drama, only own preprogramming à la phone message), smashing into mirror in lobby (literally hitting wall in search for inscrutable, labyrinthine Self; cf soda-fountain glass, entire dream interior reflection) before begging callbox outside, "Help me" (cf ’59 Fly: self-diminishing 50s male [à la Incredible Shrinking Man]’s primal scream).

Military uniforms watching subject on closed-circuit TV (objectivity gained on breakdown plea; frame-w/i-frame enclosing men in similar drama, play likewise experiment), finding on his release he broke clock-glass (6:15 – time story began: occurring in single moment, drama expansion/exploration of fleeting emotion), he in isolation chamber (womb: rebirth of man; or bomb: liberation from destructive course) simulating trip to moon (small town instead: need to 1st resolve A-bomb death-potential before colonizing new, moon aka "reflective" fem); leader summarizes "You can’t simulate man’s hunger for companionship" (but they did simulate it: tipping hand, "hunger" necessary product [chamber à la laboratory culture] if man to achieve civil society [vs fission threat in space-race 50s]), colleague chiming "Next time he’ll really be alone" (need to push experiment into reality, figures still being watched – by audience – next step), closing "We’ll be up there in a little while" healing Icarus-wound, for which puppet "subject" sacrifice.

Title ironic for 1st episode of new series, Serling writing in similar vacuum + fearing no audience, + possibly not aware of meaning behind own events, character’s recognition of self in film-w/i not insignificant.