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Twilight zone night call7/26/2023 This was one of the first Twilight Zones where I was completely compelled by the fiction and not the figurative fact. Deep diving into the meaning is what the show exists for. I can’t say for certain if that was the episode’s intention overall, but this is The Twilight Zone, which has always put on multiple storytelling hats. While there are plenty of things that could be mined for social commentary, such as how a number of Grant’s fellow cellmates are black or if the death penalty is valid and/or ethical, the biggest thing I took from “Shadow Play” was the responsibility of storytelling and the burden of creativity. For if Grant is executed, the loop starts again, and all who exist cease to be. While Grant sits in his cell, explaining to whomever will listen that he is living an endless dream and he knows all too well what death by the electric chair feels like, Carson speaks to the District Attorney (Harry Townes) at his home and wonders whether Grant might be telling the truth, as crazy as it sounds.Īs the clock ticks towards Grant’s execution-something he seems to painfully repeat in a never-ending dream-Carson and the DA try to decide if they should provide Grant a stay of execution and, quite possibly, save their own existence. A perplexed courtroom looks on as a seemingly mad Grant, being hauled away to prison, screams at the press reporter Paul Carson (Wright King) that all this is a dream and if he dies, so will everyone else. It shows that dreams can be acts of god, literally creating whole worlds, entire memories, and even humans, from stray thoughts unbound by the logic and reality that exists in the waking world.Īdam Grant (Dennis Weaver) laughs when a jury finds him guilty of murder. Written by genre veteran Charles Beaumont and directed with claustrophobic tension by John Brahm, “Shadow Play” goes into the dream world, depicting the background noise of everyday life becoming sentient when we are at our most vulnerable: when we are sleeping. Serling, always good at producing content, did not disappoint in the Season 2 episode “Shadow Play”. “We know that a dream can be real, but whoever thought that reality could be a dream? We exist, of course, but how, in what way? As we believe, as flesh-and-blood human beings, or are we simply parts of someone’s feverish, complicated nightmare? Think about it, and then ask yourself, do you live here, in this country, in this world, or do you live, instead, – in The Twilight Zone?”Īs usual, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone manages to intrigue its audiences by putting into words the many thoughts that flow in our subconscious ideas that we often feel but can’t contextualize into physical form.
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