The Twilight Zone - The Fugitive

There was an interesting thread on the Twilight Zone IMDb message board back when it was still available (I so miss this more and more every day…) about The Fugitive proclaiming that this episode would in no way be made today. No way. It is certainly of its time. An alien from another world has taken the form of a kindly elderly man named Ben. He seems to spend all his time with the kids in the neighborhood. He is especially close to little Jenny who looks upon him as a sweet mentor. He’s really a grandfatherly type and the episode seems to indicate Jenny has no one of that effect in her life. Jenny has a brace on her leg and is in love with softball but is unable to play with all the boys who seem to rub in her face her malady. Jenny, though, not only faces that sort of scrutiny but returns home to a pariah aunt that scolds her, maintaining quite a nasty attitude and temper. So Ben is essentially all she has in the world. Two “agents” who look like plainclothes cops are looking for him, believing when Ben makes a pair of roller skates vanish that he’s the one they’ve been in search of. So the remainder of the episode has Ben and Jenny trying to remain one step ahead of the two suspicious guys and the attempts to undermine the aunt’s separation of them. Whether it be jealousy or simply disliking Ben for how Jenny takes to him, Aunt Agnes (Nancy Kulp, of Beverly Hillbillies fame, in quite a far different role here) is never without noising her orders to the kid under her care or loudly declaring the way things are under her roof. So Ben tries to avoid the agents out of find him and protect Jenny in any way he can. First by “fixing” her leg and later healing her of a weakening spell used by the agents to lure Ben back to Jenny as bait. Then comes the ending with Serling on a bed with a B&W photograph of what Ben *really* looks like, and that Jenny would eventually be his “queen”. Yuck. The ending aside, I think little Susan Gordon is a sweetheart (that she’s a girl with a brace on her leg used as an insult by a tall boy on the softball field, this would be reason for her to prove him and the other boys all wrong) and J Pat O’Malley (who appeared in several TZ episodes) is genial and caring. It makes sense really that these two have such a bond…the parental figure unavailable elsewhere and the child in dire need of someone who offers a modicum of friendliness. The codicil at the end with Serling does kind of give the episode this residue of icky but prior to that I saw the results as a grandfather and child embracing the idea of a happy family. The idea of shapeshifting certainly is used in some creative ways! Particularly in how Jenny comes up with a way to trick the agents so she can tag along with Ben on their way to a new home. How about Agnes, though? She might have some explaining to do…

---------
The controversial attachment to this episode is a grown man spending so much time with a girl, carrying her upstairs, alone with her in her bedroom. Although there's nothing at all inappropriate going on, we are now so jaded due to rotten behavior that innocent presentations such as this episode are undermined by the monsters in this world who have preyed on the young. This is where I first started my review and ventured into the synopsis.