The 25 Best Twilight Zone Episodes...#19 - "Stopover in a Quiet Town"

Isolation. It is a key element in multiple Twilight Zone episodes. It was, in fact, the foundation of the very first Twilight Zone, "Where is Everybody?" Season Three's "The Little People" is a story of two astronauts crash landed on a far away planet, one determined to find his way back and the other defeated by his gradual insanity. In Season Four's "On Thursday We Leave For Home," James Whitmore's Captain Benteen leaves himself behind to suffer a lifetime of isolation. In Season One's "The Lonely," Jack Warden is relegated to a planet that is designated to house Earth's worst criminals, and is brought a life-like computerized woman to keep him company. And on and on.

"Stopover in a Quiet Town" is a wonderful Twilight Zone example of the effects of isolation...the original confusion, the denial, the optimism, the gradual realization, the ultimate reality. A married couple wakes up after a raucous night of drinking at a party in the northern suburbs of New York. They are clueless, however, on their exact whereabouts upon awakening. Had they been brought to this suburban home after passing out? Had they stopped there and not remembered? Millie remembers only faintly a giant shadow looming over the car as they passed through Riverdale.

They walk downstairs and are met by doll house features such as food props in the refrigerator, fake kitchen drawers, and an unwired wall telephone. They wander outside to a well-manicured but desolate town. Fake trees, stuffed squirrels, and nary a soul...except the occasional sound of a giggling child.

Such is the creepy setting for number 19 on this "best of" list, the result of an unscientific poll of 250 people in the New York metropolitan area who were asked to rank their favorite Twilight Zone episodes based on writing, performance, and compelling subject matter. The historic television series, The Twilight Zone, turns 50 this year, and to commemorate Rod Serling's groundbreaking effort, the 25 best episodes are being chronicled here.

Eventually, it dawns on Millie and Bob Frazier, played by the perfectly cast Barry Nelson, that perhaps an accident had occurred on their way home to New York City. They were both drunk. That was clear. Perhaps they had died and this was hell. There's no one around, yet they're being watched. The false climax happens when they discover the Centerville train station and board the empty train - which unfortunately whisks them around in a circle right back to Centerville Station. They are ready to run from town when a huge hand sweeps in from above and scoops them up.

At this point, we are treated to another Twilight Zone twist and turn specialty, and a bit of a morality lesson. As it turns out, Bob and Millie have been ripped from this Earth to serve as playthings for a child in some other world. This have-everything upwardly mobile couple with seemingly the world in the palm of their hands, finds themselves in the palm of somebody else's hand.

"Stopover in a Quiet Town" does not appear on many "best of" Twilight Zone compilations, but it does here because of the composite of writing, directing, acting, background score, and eerie atmosphere generated by all of the above. As Mr. Serling warns us:

"Bob and Millie Frasier -- average young New Yorkers who had attended a party in the country last night, and on the way home, took a detour. Most of us, on waking in the morning, know exactly where we are; the rooster or the alarm clock brings us out of sleep into the familiar sights, sounds, aromas of home and the comfort of a routine day ahead. Not so with our young friends. This will be a day like none they've ever spent, and they'll spend it in the Twilight Zone."