The Lateness of the Hour (The Twilight Zone)

"The Lateness of the Hour (The Twilight Zone)"

"The Lateness of the Hour" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling's opening narration

The residence of Dr. William Loren, which is in reality a menagerie for machines. We're about to discover that sometimes the product of man's talent and genius can walk amongst us untouched by the normal ravages of time. These are Dr. Loren's robots, built to functional as well as artistic perfection. But in a moment Dr. William Loren, wife and daughter will discover that perfection is relative, that even robots have to be paid for, and very shortly will be shown exactly what is the bill.

Synopsis

Jana, the sensitive daughter of a creative genius, Dr. Loren, is distraught over her parents' reliance on her father’s seemingly perfect robot servants. She implores her father to dismantle the robots before he and her mother become completely dependent on them. After he complies, she reveals to them her plans to start a new life by leaving the confines of the house, getting married and having children. Seeing her parents' dismayed expressions, she comes to the shocking realization that she, too, is a robot, albeit quite a bit more sophisticated than the ones that were dismantled. The discovery causes Jana such anguish that her "father" is forced to erase the memory of her former "identity" and ultimately use her as a replacement for Nelda, the maid skilled at giving Mrs. Loren her most pleasurable activity, a shoulder massage.

Rod Serling's closing narration

Let this be the postscript: should you be worn out by the rigors of competing in a very competitive world, if you're distraught from having to share your existence with the noises and neuroses of the twentieth century, if you crave serenity but want it full time and with no strings attached, get yourself a workroom in the basement and then drop a note to Dr. and Mrs. William Loren. They're a childless couple who made comfort a life's work, and maybe there are a few do-it-yourself pamphlets still available—in the Twilight Zone.

Episode notes

By November 1960, The Twilight Zone's second season had already broadcast five episodes and finished filming sixteen. However, at a cost of about $65,000 per episode, the show was exceeding its budget. As a result, six consecutive episodes were videotaped and then transferred to 16-millimeter film for TV transmission. Total savings on editing and cinematography amounted to around $30,000 for all six entries, not enough to justify the loss of depth of visual perspective, which made the shows look like stagebound live TV dramas. The experiment was therefore deemed a failure and never attempted again.

Even though the six shows were taped in a row, through November and into mid-December, their broadcast dates were out of order and varied widely, with this, the first one, shown on December 2, 1960 as episode 8. The second one, Static was shown on March 10, 1961 as episode 20; the third, The Whole Truth appeared on January 20, 1961 as episode 14; the fourth was the Christmas entry Night of the Meek shown as the 11th episode on December 23, 1960; the fifth, Twenty-Two was seen on February 10, 1961 as episode 17; and the last one, Long Distance Call was transmitted on March 3, 1961 as episode 22.

• This was the second of two TZ starring roles for TV's Swedish Farmer's Daughter, Inger Stevens, who had a busy schedule of television guest appearances during her final decade, the 1960s. Her earlier performance was in one of the first season's most unsettling episodes, The Hitch-Hiker, in which she played another tormented character, a lone driver who meets her inexorable fate.

• Familiar character actor John Hoyt's other TZ appearance, twenty episodes later, was as one of the most memorable personalities in the history of the show—the dismayed Martian who is one-upped by the diner-counterman-turned-Venusian in the rival-Earth-invasions surprise ending of the season's penultimate episode, Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?.

• Busy character actress Irene Tedrow played a busybody neighbor on CBS' Dennis the Menace during its entire 1959-63 run, while on TZ, her first appearance was in another one of the first season's top episodes, Walking Distance, where she was the young Gig Young's mother.

• Small-part actress Mary Gregory was also in the first season's The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street and the third season's The Shelter.

• Doris Karnes appears to have had no acting career other than small roles in two TZ episodes. Here, she's the third maid and in the first season's What You Need, she has the unbilled part of one of sidewalk salesman Ernest Truex's customers.

• Jason Johnson, another small-part player who was in numerous TV shows of the 1960s and 70s likewise appeared in The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.

External links

• The Lateness of the Hour at IMDb

Twilight Zone links

• The Twilight Zone
• Episode List
• Season 2