Kick the Can

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The Twilight Zone original series
Season three (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5)
Fall 1961 – Summer 1962
List of The Twilight Zone episodes

Episodes:

  1. Two
  2. The Arrival
  3. The Shelter
  4. The Passersby
  5. A Game of Pool
  6. The Mirror
  7. The Grave
  8. It's a Good Life
  9. Deaths-Head Revisited
  10. The Midnight Sun
  11. Still Valley
  12. The Jungle
  13. Once Upon a Time
  14. Five Characters in Search of an Exit
  15. A Quality of Mercy
  16. Nothing in the Dark
  17. One More Pallbearer
  18. Dead Man's Shoes
  19. The Hunt
  20. Showdown With Rance McGrew
  21. Kick the Can
  22. A Piano in the House
  23. The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank
  24. To Serve Man
  25. The Fugitive
  26. Little Girl Lost
  27. Person or Persons Unknown
  28. The Little People
  29. Four O'Clock
  30. Hocus-Pocus and Frisby
  31. The Trade-Ins
  32. The Gift
  33. The Dummy
  34. Young Man's Fancy
  35. I Sing the Body Electric
  36. Cavender Is Coming
  37. The Changing of the Guard

“Kick the Can” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

[edit] Cast

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Charles Whitley, a retiree at the Sunnyvale Rest Home, thinks that he has discovered the secret of youth. He is convinced that if he acts young he will become young. The game of kick the can transforms him and his friends back into children, except for his best friend, Ben Conroy, who didn’t see the point.

[edit] Quotes

    • “We’ve got to be a little crazy, to make the magic work!”
    • “That’s the secret of youth! Look! Think! Feel! Run! Jump! Grass! Wake up! Oh, this is your last chance!”
    • “There is magic in the world. I know there is.”
    • Rod Serling: “A dying place for those who have forgotten the magic of youth, who have somehow forgotten that childhood, youth, and age are curiously intertwined.”

[edit] Trivia

  • Charles Whitley's son is played by Barry Truex, Ernest Truex’s son.
  • Shortly after this episode aired, George Clayton Johnson got an idea for an expanded ending to the story: “What will become of these children who have been magically transformed from old to young?” he asked. “I propose adding the following scenes:”
At first the playing children run excitedly as they play kick the can. But now it begins to grow late. They are tired. They are hungry. However, there are no beds for them in this town, since they lived here as children many decades ago. One of the children wants to go to the bathroom. The smallest one begins to cry. All the fun is gone.
There is only one place for them to seek refuge from the cold and the night: the old folks’ home. They sneak back inside to sleep. One of them asks fearfully, “Will it be all right, Charles? Are we doing the right thing?”
“Yes,” says Charles, realizing what will happen, “It will be all right.”
They say their prayers: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep...”
As they close their eyes, we see another transformation as the children once again become old people.
And now Mr. Conroy and Mr. Cox return from looking for the old people to discover them sleeping soundly in their beds. Mr. Conroy, who was convinced that his friends had become children, now reverts to his practical-minded self. With relief they tiptoe away so that the old people can get their well-deserved rest.
—George Clayton Johnson, excerpt from “An Afterward” published in the October 1983 edition of The Twilight Zone Magazine
A variant of Johnson's new ending was eventually filmed as Steven Spielberg’s segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie.

[edit] Themes

Similar themes are explored in “Ninety Years Without Slumbering” and “The Big Tall Wish”.

[edit] References

  • Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)

[edit] External link

[edit] Twilight Zone links

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