Air date: May 29, 1964
The 156th and last episode of the original 1959-64 edition of The Twilight Zone.
Sport Sharewood (Mary Badham; voice dubbed by June Foray in some scenes) and her brother Jeb (Tim Stafford) live in a large, expensive house, but their parents (Gil [Tod Andrews] and Gloria [Dee Hartford]) are both cold, insensitive and self-centered.
While Sport and Jeb are sitting beside their pool, Whitt (Kim Hector), a young boy in a Huckleberry Finn straw hat, pops up from the deep end of their pool and invites them to follow him to a "secret place". The children follow him by diving underwater, only to come back up in a lake bordering a rustic, simple homestead. All around them are children swimming, fishing and playing. In contrast to their lavish home of neglect and insults, they are welcomed and loved from the moment they arrive at this children's paradise. There is only one adult there, "Aunt T" (Georgia Simmons)—a sweet, gentle and kind elderly woman who loves children; she explains she has many children there who came from parents who didn't deserve them.
When Sport and Jeb decide to go home, for fear that their parents will be worried, Aunt T asks why they must. Sport tells her that their parents love them and will miss them. Aunt T agrees these reasons, if true, are quite valid, so they must go home. Sport promises they come visit. Aunt T tells them she imagines this is their goodbye because children who leave her find it difficult to impossible to come back again. They go home to their bickering parents.
Jeb goes alone to Aunt T's and Sport retrieves him. They return home anyway and are scolded by their selfish parents, accused of lying, and punished.
The next morning, Gloria looks for the children and finds Sport alone by the pool. She demands to know where Jeb is, because she and Gil have something to tell the children. Sport asks if things will be different. Gloria snarkily answers things will. Sport volunteers to go get her brother. She dives into the pool, coming up once again in Aunt T's lake, and tells him to come home because their mother said things will be different. Sport took this to mean there will be less fighting and more togetherness, making them a happy family again. Telling her brother this convinces Jeb to return with her.
But when they come out of the pool again, the children learn the truth. Gloria and Gil hem and haw for a moment before Gloria spits it out: they're going to divorce. When the parents tell the children the news, they give them the choice of either living with their mother or their father. The children have an epiphany that their parents do not genuinely love them and never will.
Ignoring their parents' shouts, Sport and Jeb race back to the pool, dive in, disappear and escape back to Aunt T. Gloria and Gil stand on the edge, looking bewildered before a worried Gloria prompts Gil to dive for them. He does, and searches the bottom of the pool, only to surface with the astonishing realization that their children are not at the bottom of the pool.
In the end, the children are happily living with Aunt T, whose love is unconditional. Sport hears the increasingly distant voice of her mother, but, after a moment of regret, ignores her and focuses on her new life.
The Bewitchin' Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Gil and Gloria aren't physically abusive towards Sport and Jeb, but they are emotionally. They often snap at their kids for being "noisy" and in one instance, openly accuse that their "lying" will land them in hell. Another key example is dropping the divorce news on them and then, not even giving them time to absorb the news, pushing them to immediately choose which parent they want to live with. When the kids (reeling from the divorce reveal) hesitate, the parents chide them.
- Accents Aren't Hereditary: Sport and Jeb have southern accents, while Gil and Gloria don’t (Gloria has a bit of one, suggesting she's tried to "educate" herself out of it).
- Awful Wedded Life: Gil and Gloria are not happily married. Every interaction they have on screen has them either bickering about each other's careers or blaming their kids for their unhappiness.
- Bigger on the Inside: Aunt T's little house. It's barely a one-room shack on the outside, but the minute Sport and Jeb arrives, they are warmly welcomed and she promises to show them to their room. There are dozens of other children on the property as well.
- Book Ends: The episode begins and ends with Sport and Jeb diving into the pool, calling for Aunt T to help them, then vanishing inexplicably into the bottom of the pool.
- Cool Old Lady: Aunt T is a sweet, kind-hearted elderly woman who adores children and is endlessly patient with them. Her realm is a paradise for children such as Sport and Jeb whose parents are neglectful and do not deserve them. Although the children have to do chores, they don't seem to mind very much and spend a great deal of their time playing and helping Aunt T to make cakes. When Sport threatens to beat the tar out of Whitt for laughing at Jeb, Aunt T passes them a pair of boxing gloves and tells them to fight fair. They decide they'd rather work on the cake.
- Down the Rabbit Hole: How Sport and Jeb get to Aunt T. They dive into the deep end of their pool, at which there exists a portal that is child-sized and only visible to children.
- Dramatic Irony: Given the opening showed ahead of time how Jeb and Sport's parents are going to get a divorce, the audience is in on it. Meanwhile, the story itself shows Jeb told by her mother that things are going to be different, and then relaying misinformation to her brother that their parents won't fight anymore. One can't help but feel sorry for the children at seeing them get their hopes up their parents will not only stop fighting, but also that they will be loving towards their children.
- Happy Ending: Sport and Jeb choose to live with Aunt T, where she will provide them the unconditional love they've been starved of. Although slightly dampened by the prospect their parents will have regrets about their children disappearing, the kids are all the more happier for it.
- Hope Spot: Sport misreads her mother's words that "things will be different" to mean that their parents will stop arguing and they will be a loving family from now on. If the parents' announcement of divorcing is any indication, Sport and Jeb got their hopes up too high.
- How We Got Here: The Teaser is an argument scene that reappears near the end of the episode. This was because the production was short of usable footage.
- Idle Rich: Gloria occupies herself with varying hobbies before getting bored after a week.
- Kids Are Cruel: Gloria and Gil have this attitude about their own children. They scold the children for lying, and for being noisy. But the truth is that Sport and Jeb are fairly well-behaved and extremely well-mannered.
- Lonely Rich Kid: Jeb and Sport are continually ignored and neglected by their wealthy parents, who are too concerned with their own lives and sniping at each other to even notice the children except when they scold them.
- Magical Land: Aunt T's realm.
- Mama Bear: Aunt T is a non-aggressive example, as a woman who took it upon herself to create a realm where unwanted and unhappy children could be given the option to escape from their abusive or neglectful parents and thus live with someone who genuinely cares about them and their well being.
- Parental Neglect: Jeb and Sport's parents, Gloria and Gil, are more concerned with their own lives than their children. Sport can predict how long their arguments last. Gloria has to prompt Gil to dive for the kids when they vanish into the pool, and Gloria only worries about them once it looks like they might have drowned.
- Portal Pool: The family's backyard swimming pool leads the children to Aunt T's haven.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The episode's writer, Earl Hamner Jr, got the story idea from the increasing divorce rate for married couples and its effects on children in the San Fernando Valley of California.
- Rule of Three:
- Gil and Gloria are nasty and bicker on camera three times before they announce their divorce.
- Jeb and Sport visit Aunt T three times:
- The first to find out who Aunt T is and what she's about, and how hard it is to get back to her realm.
- The second, Sport goes back to get Jeb who went without her, and to learn that while children get there many different ways, they get chores but they also get love.
- The third and last time, Sport and Jeb react to their parents' impending divorce by diving back into their pool. They can't get where they want to go but call out to Aunt T for help, and finally vanish altogether.
- Same Language Dub: June Foray dubbed a few of Mary Badham's lines, in which her accent was deemed unintelligible in outdoor scenes. The difference is jarring.
- Take a Third Option: In response to the folks' ultimatum. For the kids, living with Aunt T is infinitely preferable to either Gil or Gloria.
- Vanishing Village: Played with. Aunt T's country home is accessible through a number of different means. Sport and Jeb get there through the bottom of their swimming pool, but Aunt T says they arrive by coming down chimneys, showing up on corners or doorsteps, or just behind doors. She also advises that children who leave her once and return home in response to their parents' call find it difficult to impossible to return. Further, no undeserving adults can follow their escaping children.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Sport and Jeb, though it’s possible they’re nicknames instead of given names.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: It's one thing for their parents to tell Sport and Jeb "things will be different", only for it to mean they're getting a divorce. It's another thing that it prompted these two children to sacrifice a chance to be raised by the kindly Aunt T, in hopes that their parents would change their ways and care for them... only for them to announce they're splitting up, and not even for the sake of their kids.
