June 15, 2023- numbers 53, 54

Spoilers

“Twenty-Two”

Premonition. The feeling that something is not right. Twenty-Two is a Twilight Zone episode that looks at the phenomenon, even though we do not know that until the very end.

“This is Miss Liz Powell. She’s a professional dancer and she’s in the hospital as a result of overwork and nervous fatigue. And at this moment we have just finished walking with her in a nightmare. In a moment she’ll wake up and we’ll remain at her side. The problem here is that both Miss Powell and you will reach a point where it might be difficult to decide which is reality and which is nightmare, a problem uncommon perhaps but rather peculiar to the Twilight Zone.”

There was some really strong, subtle hints throughout this episode, especially when dealing with the character of Liz Powell. I enjoyed this character piece as she went through the creepy hospital and had to deal with her slimy agent. You’re never quite sure what is going on, much like a dream in actuality. I’m sure, just like I did, everyone thought that this dream was foretelling something tragic at the hospital itself. Liz’s insistence that it was not a dream, despite the evidence to the contrary, kept the audience wondering what was going on.

It was strange after she had left the hospital and was on her way on a plane because the hospital was not involved any longer. However, as things started happening in the waking world as they happened in Liz’s dream, I had the idea of what was happening.

The metaphor of the morgue being the doomed airplane and the sinister flight attendant with her line, “Room for one more, honey” representing death itself was more apparent once it was out of the hospital. I actually expected the plane to crash, but the explosion in mid-air did surprise me.

There was a surreal feel to the episode and the dream-like state worked very well.

“The Odyssey of Flight 22”

“Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue…“

That line is one of the best from 1980’s Airplane! and this episode of The Twilight Zone made me think about that. Mainly because the voice of actor, John Anderson, who was the pilot Captain Farver, sounded a lot like Robert Stack who appeared in that movie.

His voice and the setting aboard an airplane were the only connections I had to Airplane! though as this episode dealt with a much more sci-fi aspect than the parody/comedy of Airplane!.

The crew aboard the plane (which they called a ‘ship’ which I found funny) were very competent and were flying easily on their way to New York. Strange occurrences began to happen. Captain Farver noticed a feeling in the plane, something like picking up of speed. The radio could not contact anyone and other instruments were out of whack.

When they went through a bizarre light and what felt like terrible turbulence and they were not sure what was going on. The glance out of the window as they approached Manhattan Island revealed what had happened to the plane.

Time travel pokes its head back into another Twilight Zone episode and was another very effective use of it. The crew decided to try and go back through the light again, this time ending up in 1939.

A Global jet airliner, en route from London to New York on an uneventful afternoon in the year 1961, but now reported overdue and missing, and by now, searched for on land, sea, and air by anguished human beings, fearful of what they’ll find. But you and I know where she is. You and I know what’s happened. So if some moment, any moment, you hear the sound of jet engines flying atop the overcast—engines that sound searching and lost—engines that sound desperate—shoot up a flare or do something. That would be Global 33 trying to get home—from The Twilight Zone. “

I loved the idea of this plane just lost in time, flying around for as long as it could, trying desperately to find its way home. This episode was Airplane! crossed with a sprinkling of Quantum Leap.