June 10, 2023- numbers 37, 38

Spoilers

“King Nine Will Not Return”

Season two kicked off with a couple of new details. One, the well known Twilight Zone theme was in the opening, standing out. I’m not sure if it was included on the first season intros, but it definitely stood out more this season.

Secondly, Rod Serling, who always spoke the opening narration, appeared on screen to deliver the narration.

“This is Africa, 1943. War spits out its violence overhead, and the sandy graveyard swallows it up. Her name is King Nine, B-25, medium bomber, Twelfth Air Force. On a hot, still morning, she took off from Tunisia to bomb the southern tip of Italy. An errant piece of flak tore a hole in the wing tank and, like a wounded bird, this is where she landed, not to return on this day, or any other day.”

We see the downed airplane in the desert and then the camera sweeps around to see the unconscious body of Captain James Embry. When Embry awakens, he starts looking desperately for the remainder of his crew.

Failing to find them, Embry continued to get more disheveled. He gets to the place where he is seeing images of his crew, who are not actually there.

At this point, Embry is breaking down in frustration and desperation. The scene shifts from the desert to a hospital where Embry is being taken care of after going into shock when seeing a newspaper with a headline about the King Nine being discovered after crashing during the war years ago. Embry was supposed to go on the mission, but backed out at the last instance and did not die as the rest of the crew did.

Embry wakes up and believes that he had dreamt the whole thing. However, the sand in his shoes implied that there was more real about the events he encountered than suspected.

This certainly deals with the idea of survivor’s guilt, which is a horribly insidious trauma.

Season two kicked off with a decent episode. The performance of Bob Cummings as Embry was very strong as the entire premise of the episode depended on his skills.

“The Man in the Bottle”

When I started the Daily Zone, I knew I had seen some episodes, although I have not seen near as many as I thought as only one was familiar in season one. However, there was one episode that I knew I had seen. I did not remember the overall concept behind it, but I knew it had to do with an older couple and a little shop. I also remembered something about the man becoming Adolf Hitler. Well, this is that episode.

The Man in the Bottle is, of course, a genie. When a struggling older couple with their antique shop come in possession of a bottle, it falls to the ground and opens. A genie appears offering 4 wishes.

Arthur and Edna Castle are unsure what to do. Edna was very anxious about making the wishes, saying that she did not like the look of the genie. When Arthur used the first wish to fix a broken glass on the display case, they saw that this was true and that they could do anything.

They wished for a million dollars. The genie provided and the Castles were extremely happy. They gave away $60,000 dollars to the people of the neighborhood only to find out that the IRS wanted their part. The tax turned out to be a HUGE piece of it. After taxes and the money they gave away, they had $5 dollars left.

Then Arthur tried to become the leader of a country and the genie turned him into Hitler at the end of WWII in the bunker. Arthur had to use the final wish to fix things and return to normal.

Poor Arthur, who was a kind man, did not deserve being messed with as the genie did. Arthur was kind, helping out an old lady at the beginning, giving her a dollar even though he could not pay his own bills. They showed him giving out money to people in a kind-hearted way. Yet, he was screwed over.

Obviously, the episode’s theme was ‘be careful what you wish for…’ but treating this kind old couple the way the show did, felt more cruel than just teaching a lesson. Even at the end, the Castles were able to just laugh off their experiences.