The Big Tall Wish

Description: Season 1, Episode 27

Air Date: April 8, 1960

Plot Summary: A little boy's wish for an aging boxer to win a fight magically comes true.

Review: Despite this episode having a lot of interesting themes, the overall experience is a mess. It's like they tried to tackle too many topics all in one story. Individually, many of the plot points present here are fleshed out in other episodes that give more focus to that particular theme alone. I mean, you have the whole boxer passing his prime angle, a boy with magic powers, altering reality, and a sort of coming of age message. That's a lot to squeeze in with just 25 minutes or so. It would appear season one really was a kind of stomping ground to work out the show's kinks. Now, don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad episode--it just tries to be more than it could be.

The story follows a boxer, named Bolie, preparing for another fight, but it's definitely clear he's on his last leg as far as his career is concerned. At his apartment building, Bolie is friends with a little boy who's like his biggest fan. The little boy, Henry, is implied to have supernatural powers as told to us by his milfy mom. She claims that when Henry thinks real hard, making, what he refers to as, "the big tall wish," that whatever he thinks miraculously comes true. Okay, well she tells it in a whimsical way only half believing it, but we, as the audience, know it's real. Of course Bolie is thinking these people are fucking nuts, and he heads to his match. When Bolie realizes that his manager is betting against him, he tries to punch the guy in a fit of rage but ends up breaking his knuckles on a wall. Realizing he's all but lost the fight already, Bolie pushes forward into the match and is completely obliterated. As Henry watches the fight on live TV, he wishes for Bolie to win the fight. Somehow the universe freezes and reality warps to make Bolie the winner, and the guy kicking his ass is the one that goes down for the count. The trouble is that Bolie remembers the fight accurately but thinks it's a hallucination or something. When Bolie goes home and talks to Henry about the match, he starts to realize the truth. Henry and Bolie discuss that magic can only work as long as the person believes in it, but Bolie says he can't believe and tries to tell Henry to grow up. This disbelief eventually resets the changes Henry had made and Bolie goes back to losing the fight. However, realizing that he was wrong about magic, and the power of children's imagination, he tells Henry that maybe magic is real and that he should go on believing in it. The episode tries to be sentimental, but I don't know.

This episode could have been a classic if it simply employed true focus. Maybe drop the evil manager shit, and a few other plot points, and that would leave the room to touch on the whole Bolie/Henry relationship in greater detail. They wanted to emphasize the burnt out nature of Bolie and his life being in stark contrast to Henry's life, but this doesn't fully come to fruition. I like Bolie explaining how you can wish and wish but eventually you will realize it's all for nothing all the while Henry is saying it's all a matter of true belief. This kind of philosophical clash works to convey the themes better. Oh well. We will come back to all the themes introduced here in various other episodes that take the time to explore their true potential.