The After Hours

You know who you are!

Anne Francis, aka "Honey West," died the other day at the age of 80.  She starred in my favorite "Twilight Zone" episode ever, called "The After Hours." The first time I saw it, I was babysitting and wanted to hide behind the couch.  But I didn't.  That would've been unprofessional.  So I sat there and quivered in my desert boots.  All these years later, "The After Hours" still scares the SJG.  In the opening, Anne Francis wanders from counter to counter, not a care in the world.  Rod Serling tell us: "Express elevator to the ninth floor of a department store, carrying Miss Marsha White on a most prosaic, ordinary, run of the mill errand. Miss Marsha White on the ninth floor, specialties department, looking for a gold thimble. The odds are she'll find it, but there are even better odds that she'll find something else, because this isn't just a department store. This happens to be the Twilight Zone."


Oy vey, I'm a mannequin  

Miss White, you see, was due back yesterday, but she forgot.  How selfish can a mannequin be?  And now the other mannequins are pissed-off.  And they're coming after her! "Marsha... Marsha... Marsha!"  Run, Marsha.  Run!  At the end of the eppie, she's posed on a platform,  lifeless, a plastic smile on her face.  Rod Serling tell us: "Marsha White in her normal and natural state…But it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Just how normal are we? Just who are the people we nod our hellos to as we pass on the street? A rather good question to ask, particularly in the Twilight Zone."  A rather good question to ask in Sherman Oaks, too.