The Fugitive

Description: Season 3, Episode 25

Air Date: March 9, 1962

Plot Summary: An alien, hiding on earth, spends a little too much time "playing" with kids.

Review: Man, they must have been smoking one too many crack-laced Chesterfields when writing this one! This is definitely the most pedoriffic episode--making "One for the Angels" and "Nightmare as a Child" look like Disneyland. I get it, things were different back then, but come on! Even if I set aside the flirting, groping, kissing, and other shenanigans, you can't deny that the plot is essentially about an adult alien picking up a girlfriend who is probably like 10 years old (the actress was apparently 12 at the time). And she's handicapped to boot? My goodness...

The episode kicks things off with a group of little kids playing baseball with every kid's best friend...a creepy old man. One kid even remarks "don't be a dirty old man" so they even know what's up! There is only one girl in this group, named Jenny, and I'll give you one guess which kid the old man favors the most. Give up? After hitting a baseball into orbit, the kids play another game in which we realize the old man is a shapeshifter and an alien. Later on, the alien, named Old Ben (Kenobi), is straight up flirting with Jenny--talking about how she's his girlfriend or whatever--as he carries her about since she has a crippled leg. Jenny's bitch aunt doesn't like Jenny hanging out with old Benny-boy; not because he's an obvious child molester though but because she's a bitch. Other aliens show up looking for Benny-boy and Jenny tries to warn her apparent boyfriend. He finally explains to her that he's not really an old man, that he's an alien, and that he's fleeing from the other aliens for whatever reason; I suppose he just likes to look like a child molester for the lulz? After, what looks like full on groping, Benny-boy repairs Jenny's leg, but the other aliens say hell no to that. It is then revealed that Benny-boy is the king of these aliens and he was bored of doing it after a thousand years. The aliens won't let their king hang out with humans--or they probably suspect his pedo ways--and forbid Jenny from coming with them. In order to have his girlfriend, Benny takes the form of Jenny so that the other aliens can't tell which is which. The episode then ends with the two seemingly living happily ever after as Mr. Serling tries to downplay the creepy factor by showing that the real Benny looks like a young man...yeah, not gonna cut it. Okay, okay, if I ignore the unsettling plot line, this wasn't the worst of episodes. It's sort of meh with a few decent ideas. If they had just made the real Benny-boy a kid as well this might have been avoidable. The episode sure is memorable I'll give it that.