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Exploring The Twilight Zone, Episode #92: "Person or Persons Unknown"

by Peter Martin, October 25, 2011 9:01 PM


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Maybe you had a little too much to drink last night. You wake up with a bit of a headache, fully-dressed, in bed with your wife, and you start to get ready for another ordinary day. And then your wife stares at you and screams.


The Twilight Zone, Episode #92: "Person or Persons Unknown" (original air date March 23, 1962)

The Plot: David Andrew Gurney (Richard Long) wakes up at home with his wife Wilma (Shirley Ballard) one morning, only for her to turn on him and declare that she doesn't know who he is. (His bristling conversation with her leads one to question the nature of the relationship, in any event.)

More than a little perturbed, he heads to the bank where he works, greeting his colleagues, who stare at him blankly. But it's the last straw when he sees another man sitting at his desk, leading to rising anger, an assault on a security guard, a public confrontation, an arrest by the police, and a meeting with a psychiatrist.

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The Goods: The episode, written by the prolific Charles Beaumont, creates a peculiar kind of amnesia, in which you know exactly who you are, but nobody else does. If the story was extended to feature length, you'd expect the protagonist to begin doubting himself, or to wonder if he's losing his mind.

But within the brisk running time of a single episode, Beaumont effectively delimits the frustrating extent of David Gurney's nightmare. Richard Long is entirely relatable as an everyman who is firmly convinced of his own sanity. He's a brusque character, and, while we can't quite sympathize with his manner, we can definitely empathize with his predicament.

The ending twist(s) have a perverse logic to them that might be anticipated, but are still somehow satisfying.

The Trivia: Long later appeared in the Season 5 TZ episode "Number 12 Looks Like Just You," co-written by Beaument. He was just 18 when he scored a contract with Universal Pictures after World War II, though his biggest stardom came in television, first in the Western The Big Valley, opposite Barbara Stanwyck, Lee Majors, and Linda Evans, and then the shorter-lived television show Nanny and the Professor, opposite Juliet Mills. Tragically, he died of multiple heart attacks at the age of 47, leaving behind a wife and three children.

On the Next Episode: "When a spaceship lands on a planet for repairs, one of the crewmen finds a tiny society."

Catching up: Episodes covered by Twitch | Episodes covered by Film School Rejects

We're running through all 156 of the original Twilight Zone episodes, and we're not doing it alone! Our friends at Film School Rejects have entered the Zone as well, only on alternating weeks. So definitely tune in over at FSR and feel free to also follow along on Twitter accounts @twitchfilm and @rejectnation.

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