Opening Narration
The story begins with Nan Adams, whose vehicle gets a flat tire and has an accident on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Los Angeles. A mechanic puts a spare tire on her car, comments that he's surprised she survived the accident, saying "you shouldn't've called for a mechanic, somebody shoulda called for a hearse" and directs her to the nearest town to fix it properly. Just before she leaves, Nan notices a strange-looking man hitchhiking. Unnerved, she drives away quickly. As she continues her trip, Nan sees the same hitchhiker thumbing for a ride at several other points on her journey. She becomes increasingly frightened of him, and when she is stuck on a railroad crossing and nearly hit by a train, she becomes convinced that the hitchhiker is trying to kill her by beckoning her into danger. She continues to drive, becoming more and more afraid, stopping only when necessary; but every time she does, the same hitchhiker is there. When she ends up stranded in New Mexico, she meets a sailor on his way back to San Diego from leave. Eager for protection from the hitchhiker she's been seeing, she offers to drive the sailor to San Diego herself. However, she is still paranoid about the hitchhiker, and when she sees him on the road she tries to run him over. The sailor, who can't see him, begins to fear for her sanity and leaves her. In Arizona, Nan stops to call her mother. The woman who answers the phone says that Mrs. Adams is in the hospital; she had a nervous breakdown after finding out that her daughter, Nan, was killed in a car accident in Pennsylvania six days ago when the car she was driving blew a tire and overturned. At this point, Nan realises the truth: she did not survive the accident at the beginning of the episode, and the hitchhiker is not a man who wants her to die, but is rather the personification of death, patiently and persistently waiting for her to realise that she has been dead all along. Nan returns to the car and sees the hitchhiker sitting in the back seat through the reflection of the vanity mirror on the visor. "I believe you're going...my way?", he inquires.
Closing Narration
This episode was adapted from the original radio play by Lucille Fletcher, first presented on the November 17, 1941. This was a new concept to me, as I discovered radio dramas were an important part of American storytelling culture: dramatised, purely acoustic performances broadcasted on radio, entirely told through the medium of sound and music.
This episode was ground-breaking at the time for implementing a famous plot twist, the "main character was dead all along!" rigamarole. Additionally, I noticed this was subtly hinted at several times in the episode. For example, the mechanic fixing her tire after a near-death car accident (that was later revealed as her actual death) during the beginning of the episode, he says, in a great dual meaning, she “must be on the side of the angels.” As she drives away, she spots for the first time a mysterious hitchhiker who she’ll see all across the country, begging a ride just from her.
Nan, the independent working woman driving across country for nothing more than fun, is given no backstory, no man she’s chasing down or fleeing from, no tortured or angelic past. She shares her name with one of series creator Rod Serling’s daughters, and maybe this has something to do with the refreshing absence of the typical moralistic or misogynistic structure of a story of a woman alone on the road. Nan’s internal monologue, in the voiceover of actress Inger Stevens, carries the episode along, as it would in a radio play. However, this is accompanied by abundant shots from within the car of America flying by — unusual at a time when so many driving scenes were done in studios with stock footage playing in the background — and Nan’s face registering her anxiety about the hitch-hiker’s reappearances.
The cinematographer of this episode, Alvin Ganzer, uses a great deal of natural light, also unusual for the period; this, too, adds to the vague or hard-to-define tone of the episode. There are a number of terrific closeups of Steven’s face that exhibit the kind of subtlety that was never the trademark of TZ overall, ranging from perplexity to an occasional, unexpected, eerie calm and peace.
Additionally, later on in the episode after Nan desperately picks up a sailor returning to the docks after coming home for a break, while the sailor makes some mild comments about her looks and, after she veers wildly in an attempt to hit the hitchhiker, she tries to get him to stay with intimations that she wanted him to “take her out,” the encounter is of a piece with the gentle, humane tone of the entire episode: there’s always a threat of sexual violence that comes with the fictional presentation of any encounter between a woman and a stranger at night, but in the end, it’s the sailor that ironically flees, scared off by Nan’s intensity and confusion.
The major plot twist of the episode arrives when Nan phones home and is told her mother is mourning from her daughter's sudden death on an accident a few days prior on the motorway. Nan resignedly succumbs to her fate and looks into her rearview mirror to finally acknowledge the hitchhiker. Here, the counterpoint of Nan’s look of exhausted acceptance and the hitchhiker’s wry smile is exquisite. the ending makes clear that Nan’s death is not a punishment; it’s just the way of us all, a fact that must be accepted eventually.
This episode, especially the deathly plot twist, was commenting on the historical and cultural social factors of the fatalistic and paranoid view of American society of the time. It really epitomised the McCarthyism of the time. Nan, the figurative symbol for petrified American society, self-creates a fantastical horrific tale of the hitchhiker by her own doing, while the hitchhiker, the symbol of communist allegiances or sympathies, quietly unsettles her, never overtly attempting to assault her, but inhumanely following and almost haunting her until the point when she finally accept her demised fate. The message of the episode really encapsulated the attitude of America at the time– death was inevitable and although we might try to prolong the chase, ultimately, death isn't a punishment, but merely the end of a very long day.
| “ | Her name is Nan Adams. She's twenty-seven years old. Her occupation: buyer at a New York department store. At present on vacation, driving cross-country to Los Angeles, California from Manhattan. | ” |
The story begins with Nan Adams, whose vehicle gets a flat tire and has an accident on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Los Angeles. A mechanic puts a spare tire on her car, comments that he's surprised she survived the accident, saying "you shouldn't've called for a mechanic, somebody shoulda called for a hearse" and directs her to the nearest town to fix it properly. Just before she leaves, Nan notices a strange-looking man hitchhiking. Unnerved, she drives away quickly. As she continues her trip, Nan sees the same hitchhiker thumbing for a ride at several other points on her journey. She becomes increasingly frightened of him, and when she is stuck on a railroad crossing and nearly hit by a train, she becomes convinced that the hitchhiker is trying to kill her by beckoning her into danger. She continues to drive, becoming more and more afraid, stopping only when necessary; but every time she does, the same hitchhiker is there. When she ends up stranded in New Mexico, she meets a sailor on his way back to San Diego from leave. Eager for protection from the hitchhiker she's been seeing, she offers to drive the sailor to San Diego herself. However, she is still paranoid about the hitchhiker, and when she sees him on the road she tries to run him over. The sailor, who can't see him, begins to fear for her sanity and leaves her. In Arizona, Nan stops to call her mother. The woman who answers the phone says that Mrs. Adams is in the hospital; she had a nervous breakdown after finding out that her daughter, Nan, was killed in a car accident in Pennsylvania six days ago when the car she was driving blew a tire and overturned. At this point, Nan realises the truth: she did not survive the accident at the beginning of the episode, and the hitchhiker is not a man who wants her to die, but is rather the personification of death, patiently and persistently waiting for her to realise that she has been dead all along. Nan returns to the car and sees the hitchhiker sitting in the back seat through the reflection of the vanity mirror on the visor. "I believe you're going...my way?", he inquires.
Closing Narration
| “ | Nan Adams, age twenty-seven. She was driving to California—to Los Angeles. She didn't make it. There was a detour…through The Twilight Zone. | ” |
This episode was adapted from the original radio play by Lucille Fletcher, first presented on the November 17, 1941. This was a new concept to me, as I discovered radio dramas were an important part of American storytelling culture: dramatised, purely acoustic performances broadcasted on radio, entirely told through the medium of sound and music.
This episode was ground-breaking at the time for implementing a famous plot twist, the "main character was dead all along!" rigamarole. Additionally, I noticed this was subtly hinted at several times in the episode. For example, the mechanic fixing her tire after a near-death car accident (that was later revealed as her actual death) during the beginning of the episode, he says, in a great dual meaning, she “must be on the side of the angels.” As she drives away, she spots for the first time a mysterious hitchhiker who she’ll see all across the country, begging a ride just from her.
Nan, the independent working woman driving across country for nothing more than fun, is given no backstory, no man she’s chasing down or fleeing from, no tortured or angelic past. She shares her name with one of series creator Rod Serling’s daughters, and maybe this has something to do with the refreshing absence of the typical moralistic or misogynistic structure of a story of a woman alone on the road. Nan’s internal monologue, in the voiceover of actress Inger Stevens, carries the episode along, as it would in a radio play. However, this is accompanied by abundant shots from within the car of America flying by — unusual at a time when so many driving scenes were done in studios with stock footage playing in the background — and Nan’s face registering her anxiety about the hitch-hiker’s reappearances.
The cinematographer of this episode, Alvin Ganzer, uses a great deal of natural light, also unusual for the period; this, too, adds to the vague or hard-to-define tone of the episode. There are a number of terrific closeups of Steven’s face that exhibit the kind of subtlety that was never the trademark of TZ overall, ranging from perplexity to an occasional, unexpected, eerie calm and peace.
 |
| This screenshot is a tight shot from the episode. It demonstrates how the episode is almost perfectly divided between sunlight (natural light) and darkness. |
The major plot twist of the episode arrives when Nan phones home and is told her mother is mourning from her daughter's sudden death on an accident a few days prior on the motorway. Nan resignedly succumbs to her fate and looks into her rearview mirror to finally acknowledge the hitchhiker. Here, the counterpoint of Nan’s look of exhausted acceptance and the hitchhiker’s wry smile is exquisite. the ending makes clear that Nan’s death is not a punishment; it’s just the way of us all, a fact that must be accepted eventually.
This episode, especially the deathly plot twist, was commenting on the historical and cultural social factors of the fatalistic and paranoid view of American society of the time. It really epitomised the McCarthyism of the time. Nan, the figurative symbol for petrified American society, self-creates a fantastical horrific tale of the hitchhiker by her own doing, while the hitchhiker, the symbol of communist allegiances or sympathies, quietly unsettles her, never overtly attempting to assault her, but inhumanely following and almost haunting her until the point when she finally accept her demised fate. The message of the episode really encapsulated the attitude of America at the time– death was inevitable and although we might try to prolong the chase, ultimately, death isn't a punishment, but merely the end of a very long day.
 |
| The final scene, in which the plain-faced hitch-hiker sinisterly says with a smile: "I believe you're going... my way?" |
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