Games - The Fugitive

Home > Listing Index > Games > The Fugitive (Twilight Zone)

	Games - The Fugitive

Cast

Old Ben: J. Pat O'Malley
Jenny: Susan Gordon
Mrs. Gann: Nancy Kulp
First Pursuer: Wesley Lau
Second Pursuer: Paul Tripp
Doctor: Russ Bender
Howie Gutliff: Stephen Talbott
Pitcher: Johnny Eiman

Synopsis

The story opens at a public park, where a group of children are playing a softball game, accompanied by Old Ben, a kindly, grandfatherly-type of gentleman, whom the kids adore. When it is Old Ben’s turn at bat, his first swing at the ball connects, smacking it clean out of sight. The game can’t continue from that point on, because their only ball is gone. So, Howie, who was umpiring the softball game, suggests everyone assembled play “Spaceman,” one of their favorite games. Old Ben, who usually plays the spaceman, agrees, but suggests that Jenny be the one to play the outer space visitor this time. Jenny declines, claiming she can’t make herself into as convincing a spaceman as Old Ben can. The other kids unanimously agree, so Old Ben says he will once again be the spaceman, and runs behind a huge tree to prepare.

When Old Ben emerges from behind the tree in the park (looking like a gruesome monster from Mars), the children “zap” him by using their hands as pretend guns, and Old Ben’s creation is dispatched to the next life. Old Ben then reappears from behind the tree and announces that the spaceman is gone, and the camera then pans to series host Rod Serling, who, while seated on a park bench, introduces this episode, noting that it combines science-fiction (“the improbable made possible”) with fantasy (“the impossible made probable”).

Old Ben takes Jenny home, where Jenny lives with her mean Aunt Agnes Gann. But as Jenny is being carried upstairs by Old Ben (due to Jenny’s crippled right leg), they are observed by a couple of mysterious strangers across the street. The two men are interested in Old Ben, and want him for some reason.

The two strangers enter the apartment building, question Jenny and her aunt, then leave. Jenny goes upstairs to Old Ben’s apartment to warn him about the two men. It is then that Old Ben tells Jenny he is actually from another planet, and his senior-citizen appearance is strictly a disguise, worn to hide from the two men pursuing him. Old Ben decides that it is time for him to skedaddle again, but before departing, he uses a strange device to heal Jenny’s bad leg. But the two strangers, noticing that Jenny is now walking around without her brace, hatch a scheme to make Jenny temporarily deathly ill, so Old Ben will be forced to return to her bedroom, to save her.

When Old Ben returns to rescue Jenny, he is confronted by the two strange men, and it is revealed to Jenny that Old Ben really isn’t any kind of criminal, but rather a king on his home planet, who merely got tired of ruling and decided to leave. But the strangers tell Jenny that Old Ben’s people love him as much as she does, and want him to return and continue his 4,000-year reign over them. Old Ben realizes that he must go back to his home planet, but regrets that it would be against the rules for Jenny to go with him.

But Jenny is an incredibly bright little girl, and comes up with a plan that will force Old Ben’s pursuers to take her back with them despite the rules. After being granted one minute alone with Jenny to say good-bye to her, Old Ben, following Jenny’s suggestion, changes himself into her identical twin. When Old Ben’s subjects return to Jenny’s room, they are confronted with two Jennys and, not being able to tell them apart, are forced into taking both of them back to their home planet, where they live happily ever after, with Jenny eventually growing up to become Old Ben’s queen.

Themes

Trivia

At the end of the story, Serling holds up an 8x10 glossy of a young man and says that it represents Old Ben’s true appearance. The man in the photograph is uncredited, and there are two theories about his identity, that he is a relative of Serling's thus given national recognition, and that Serling was paying a lost wager.

Reference

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Fugitive (Twilight Zone) ]