Bunny caught in a storm.
"Ring-a-ding!"
Rod Serling: Introduction to Bunny Blake. Occupation: film actress. Residence: Hollywood, California, or anywhere in the world that cameras happen to be grinding. Bunny Blake is a public figure; what she wears, eats, thinks, says is news. But underneath the glamour, the makeup, the publicity, the buildup, the costuming, is a flesh-and-blood person, a beautiful girl about to take a long and bizarre journey into the Twilight Zone.
Air date: December 27, 1963
Barbara "Bunny" Blake (Maggie McNamara) is a Hollywood star born and raised in the town of Howardsville, Virginia. She is to fly for Rome but suddenly finds herself in her native town.
Ring-a-Ding Tropes:
- Alliterative Name: The protagonist's name is Barbara "Bunny" Blake, while the manager of the Howardsville television station is Ben Braden.
- Armor-Piercing Question: As Hildy frantically tries to find out where Bunny went, a news reporter covering the crash asks how many people would've died had they attended the picnic instead of Bunny's announced show. That's when it starts to dawn on Hildy what really happened.
- Astral Projection: Bunny is seemingly able to astrally project herself to Howardsville while her physical body is on a plane. She does so in order to save as many townspeople as possible when the plane crashes during the Founders Day's picnic.
- Attention Whore: Hildy accuses Bunny of this when she learns she's manipulating everyone to attend the latter's one-woman pageant rather than attend the town's annual picnic.
- Awful Wedded Life: This is what Bunny believes would have happened to her, had she remained in her hometown instead of becoming a movie star.
- Celebrity Is Overrated: Discussed by Bunny Blake and deconstructed. She does not believe it and thinks that it is good that she became a star. * Character Catchphrase: Bunny's is "Ring-a-ding!"
- Chekhov's Gun: Just as Bunny arrives at the house, a storm starts brewing, and it slowly becomes more noticeable. The plane that Bunny is on is ultimately downed by a severe storm.
- The City vs. the Country: Invoked and aggravated by the fact that the city this time is LA, or, more exactly, Hollywood.
- Foreshadowing: When Bunny arrives in Howardsville, Hildy wonders how she was able to enter her house without her hearing her.
- Ghost Story: That's what this episode appears to be in general. The ghost of Bunny Blake saves the day then she embraces Hildy, whispers "goodbye, Hildy", leaves the house and disappears into thin air.
- Genre Savvy: Bunny Blake who lampshades to a doctor Floyd that he is supposed to play a good old gruffy doctor.
- Go Out with a Smile: Before fading away, Bunny smiles. The news report highlighting how a number of people were at her announced show instead of at the site of the plane crash explains why.
- I Owe You My Life: Bunny feels she owes her life of stardom to Howardsville, saying the locals fully supported her ambitions and even paid for her transportation to Hollywood when she couldn't afford it. The ending reveals everything she did was to try to save as many of them as possible.
- Manipulative Bitch: Reconstructed. While it seems selfish outside of context to convince her hometown to miss out on their annual picnic just to attend her pageant, there's more to it than meets the eye. She did it because she foresaw that the storm would cause a plane crash that would kill all the attendees at the picnic, and so had to keep them away somehow.
- Ring of Power: The ring where the ghost of Bunny sees what happens on the plane by which the real Bunny travels.
- Rule of Three: It thunders three times. The third time it then starts to shower.
- Shout-Out: Bunny Blake says as she sees Bud, her nephew that she thinks he might be Rock or Cary.
- Title Drop: Played with. Bunny confessed that in her Hollywood house she takes off all her clothes and swims like "a ring-a-ding fish". Later she simply puts out "ring-a-ding" as an interjection.
- Thunder Equals Down Pour: It thunders three times. The first two times it is averted. The third time this trope is of course played straight.
- We All Die Someday: Invoked in the closing narration.
- Wham Shot: After Bunny leaves the house and walks into the rain, she suddenly vanishes into thin air.
Rod Serling: We are all travelers. The trip starts in a place called birth, and ends in that lonely town called death. And that's the end of the journey, unless you happen to exist for a few hours, like Bunny Blake, in the misty regions of the Twilight Zone.
