Pre-blog note: I thought it would be fun to essentially Live-tweet the first episode. I won't do this with all of the episodes, but this was really fun.
The show opens with a man in a flight suit wandering into a town, walking into a diner and finding nobody. He calls out for someone "You have a customer" and SWINGS ACROSS THE COUNTER INTO THE KITCHEN.
Dude, come on. Even helps himself to coffee. While yelling out his order and that he has money (the fact he's bragging about $2.85 is funny to me). He says it's American money, and realizes he's American but doesn't know much else about himself. Saying he'll wake up in a minute.
I'm going to pause here for a second to let y'all know that post-apocalyptic/being the last person on Earth is literally one of my greatest fears. Unfounded? Probably. But it's bad enough I have never seen an episode of The Walking Dead, and a dear friend has promised to mercy-kill me should this happen.
Back to the show!
Mystery man had apparently found someone in a car, and he explains he "woke up" this morning walking down the road. The person he was talking to was a mannequin. Eerily, he starts hitting on her, I'm assuming for his own amusement. He keeps finding more mannequins and I'm getting a Doctor Who vibe already.
THE PHONE IS RINGING! It's a payphone of course. Ah the nostalgia.
He talks to the Operator... it's a recording!! How 2000's. Like I said, ahead of its time.
He's begging with the recording to tell him who he is. I feel sorry for the guy!
Oh a phonebook! More nostalgia.
(To himself) "Who's watching any of the stores?" Dude is going to rob them, I'm calling it.
Now he's stuck in the phone booth. This is either a set up or he's changing into Superman in a second...
Neither. He just panicked and calmly let himself out. *facepalm*
He thinks he's being watched, listened to, and he's gone into a police station. Reporting himself over the radio?
OH there's a cigar! It's still smoking! Honestly, I'm a little on edge myself at this point.
The faucet is running in one of the prison cells. He's trying to "wake himself up" and the cell door starts closing. Creepy AF guys.
Ah the title... running into the street "WHERE IS EVERYBODY?"
Cut to commercial and a wine glass refill.
We open back up to a bell ringing as he walks into a drugstore. He sees himself in the mirror as he's getting ready to make himself ice cream (because it solves everything). I was waiting to see if he recognized himself. He does. Where the hell did this dude come from??
He's comparing himself to Scrooge, quoting him verbatim basically saying this is all a bad dream because of what he ate. Albeit an elaborate one.
He comes across a rack of books all titled "The Last Man on Earth".
Nope, I'm not liking it.
The streetlamps are turning on by themselves, somehow more creepy than NOT turning on.
He's now realizing he's in the Air Force. We're on to something folks!
"That must have been it, a bomb. But nothing is destroyed." He's in a movie theatre and a movie starts playing. Runs up to the booth to see who's running it? Nobody.
OH SHIT he just ran into himself in a mirror!! Ok definitely didn't see that. May have screamed.
Now we're running through the town, panicking.
What the hell?? There's a room full of dudes in suits watching him?? HE'S HOOKED UP TO WIRES??
"Release the subject on the double"
WHAT THE HELL
He's hitting a clock that looks really similar to the one we first saw in the beginning. (Didn't know that would be important).
They're taking the wires off him and saying he's coming out of delusions. The head honcho is asking if they got all the data and what the time was? (485 hour 36 minutes) Now the press is asking if it's a success?
Apparently this was a simulated trip to the moon, and the wires are electrodes and everything was monitored. "What happened to him at the end is that he cracked. If any one of you confined in a box 5 feet square for 2 and a half weeks I'd bet your imagination would run away with you too."
DAMN
We're back to him, and he's apologizing. They ask where he was and he said somewhere he didn't want to go again. He asks what happened to him.
In a very touching way, he is told that while they can cover a whole host of things from food, to air, to entertainment the only thing they cannot simulate is the basic need for companionship.
"Next time it won't be just a box in a hangar will it?"
"No Mike, next time you'll really be alone."
He sees the moon and tells it not to go away, we'll be up there in a little while.
Rod closes us with he usual speech, letting us know that the moon awaits us in its vastness. In the Twilight Zone.
Closing Thoughts:
Overall, I liked the one regardless of my fear of being the last person on Earth. I like looking back on this being where we are in time now. This episode debuted in 1959, and having a man land on the moon was literally science fiction. Ten years later, we landed a man on the moon.
Yes, some of these episodes are going to be dated. That's just a fact. But what if we changed this from the moon to... Mars? Maybe not so dated after all.
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