You can smell Floyd “The Rock-A-Billy Kid” Burney’s desperation. His career might have held promise once, but he is seriously scuffling now. Hoping to emulate the success of others, Burney is scouring Appalachia in search of unrecorded (and uncopyrighted) folk songs that have a hooky, archetypal appeal. Of course, the proprietor of mist-shrouded general store is not very welcoming. The tombstone with his name inscribed on it is even more ominous, but Burney never sees it.
He is more interested in the waifish Mary Rachel, who is singing “Come Wander with Me,” a wistful ballad that sounds just like what the doctor ordered for Burney. He does not recognize her, but she thinks they are lovers—and their affair is doomed to end violently, because it always has before.
Arguably, “Wander” earns significant bragging rights an early forerunner of the time-loop genre, but writer Anthony Wilson does not emphasize its implied cyclical nature. Instead, director Richard Donner (famous for Superman and Lethal Weapon) invests the proceeding with an unearthly vibe, evocative of purgatory or an even less desirable post-death destination. This is maybe the most twilight-like atmosphere ever seen in The Twilight Zone. It is all very eerie and even more melancholy. Perhaps the fact this was the final episode produced of the original series (but the third to last broadcast as part of the final season) somehow further heightened the elegiac feeling.
