Rod Serling: Joey Crown, musician with an odd, intense face, whose life is a quest for impossible things like flowers in concrete or like trying to pluck a note of music out of the air and put it under glass to treasure...Joey Crown, musician with an odd, intense face, who, in a moment, will try to leave the Earth and discover the middle ground - the place we call the Twilight Zone.
Air date: May 20, 1960
Joey Crown (Jack Klugman), a broke, alcoholic trumpet player on the streets, is forced to pawn off his trumpet for some petty cash. After getting drunk with said cash, he attempts suicide by stepping in front of a speeding truck. Joey survives the accident, but finds himself in a world where everything and everyone is moving, but no one can notice him. The exception is a fellow musician who calls himself "Gabe", who tells Joey that life isn't all black and white.
A Passage For Tropes:
- An Aesop: Don't throw your life away so quickly. Things may seem bad at some points, but they get better in due time.
- The Alcoholic: Joey's alcoholism has ruined his once promising career as a jazz trumpeter. The poor guy even pawns off his trumpet for some booze money.
- Despair Event Horizon: With no job prospects in store and no friends to vouch for him, Joey sells off his beloved trumpet to a pawn shop. This is what prompts him to attempt suicide.
- Driven to Suicide: Joey deliberately steps in front of a truck after he sells his trumpet. This gets the plot rolling.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After returning to life and buying back his trumpet, Joey meets a nice woman who admires his talent, and they start a relationship. Since she's new to the city, he offers to show her the sights, seeing his home life through new eyes. After a lifetime of nothing but rejection and lost opportunities, things are finally starting to look up for Joey Crown.
- Jesus Was Way Cool: The Archangel Gabriel is a real slick cat who blows a mean horn. Can you dig it, Daddy-o?
- Missing Reflection: Joey discovers that he does not have a reflection when he looks into a mirror. It is later revealed that this is because he is stuck in a state of limbo.
- Purgatory and Limbo: After the drunken Joey steps off the curb, he is hit by a truck and enters a state between life and death.
- The Reveal: Joey isn't dead: he's actually surrounded by dead people. The other musician he meets, Gabe, is really the Archangel Gabriel.
- Tuckerization:
- The Houghton & Co Truck Company is a reference to the series' producer Buck Houghton.
- Nan is named after Rod Serling's daughter Ann, whose nickname was Nan.
- Wham Line: The other trumpet player reveals himself to Joey by telling him: "Call me Gabe. Short for Gabriel."
- Wham Shot: As the other trumpet player reveals his name is Gabriel, he steps in front of a streetlight... which frames his head as a perfect halo.
Rod Serling: Joey Crown, who makes music, and who discovered something about life; that it can be rich and rewarding and full of beauty, just like the music he played, if a person would only pause to look and to listen. Joey Crown, who got his clue...in the Twilight Zone.
