Episode no. Season 5
Episode 36 Written by Earl Hamner Jr. Original air date June 19, 1964 | Directed by Joseph M. Newman Production code 2619 | |
"The Bewitchin' Pool" is the 156th and last episode of the American anthology television series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on June 19, 1964 on CBS.
Contents
Plot
Sport Sharewood (Mary Badham) and her younger brother Jeb (Jeffrey Byron) live in a large, expensive house, but their parents are both cold, insensitive and self-centered.
While Sport and Jeb are sitting beside their swimming 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. The children follow him by diving underwater only to come back up in a swimming hole bordering a rustic, simple homestead. An assortment of children are playing in the yard of the house. In contrast to their lavish home of neglect and insults, they are welcomed and loved from the moment they arrive at this humble children's paradise. There is only one adult there. "Aunt T." (Georgia Simmons) is a kind and patient elderly woman who loves children; she explains that she has many children there who came from parents who did not deserve them.
When Sport and Jeb decide to go home, for fear that their parents will be worried, they learn that their parents have decided to divorce and hadn't even missed them while they were gone. When the parents tell the children the news, they demand that they decide which parent they will live with, and berate them for their hesitation. The children have an epiphany that neither parent truly loves them. Ignoring their parents' shouts, Sport and Jeb race back to the pool and dive in. When, after a few moments, the children do not reemerge, their father jumps in to rescue them, but discovers that they have disappeared. He and their mother shout their children's names in despair.
Sport and Jeb are now happily living with Aunt T., whose love is unconditional and everlasting.
Sport hears the increasingly distant and remorseful voice of her mother, but—after a moment of regret—ignores her, and focuses on her new life.
Rod Serling, in his closing narration, asks the audience to consider how "real" an unhappy child's world of escape might become as the final shot shows children playing in Aunt T's yard.