[2Wycked]

“The Bewitchin’ Pool” was the final episode of the Twilight Zone aired. It is an episode that causes much consternation of those who view it. To be sure, the dubbing of the voice of the female child is annoying & the opening scene is rerun again verbatim again in the episode. However, it is a fascinating episode that highlights some serious issues in America that began to take off with abandon around the time it was aired. Do note limited funding & the like hindered the production of the episode.

Watch the full episode here.

A brief recap is needed. After the opener, the episode opens with a rich family of a successful father, a bored, histrionic wife & two young children, a daughter & son. It is clear from the outset the mother is a pure histrionic female who takes to new identities as she feels fit. The father is a cold, narcissistic man. Both are dismissive of the children and are very cruel & self-centered in dealing with them.

After yet another clash between the two parents, the children are approached, by the pool, by a young boy swimming around claiming there is a better life for them if they just follow him to the other side. Eventually the two kids agree, jump into the pool and come out into a different world. It is a fantasy world of happy children with a compassionate, loving maternal grandmother who unconditionally loves them all.

Eventually, they hear the voices of their parents and are worried their parents are missing them & concerned for their safety. They go back to reality and, once again, realize their parents are still all about themselves and their victim complexes. They desperately seek out the other world and eventually make it back, ignoring the cries of their self-absorbed parents.



The episode is “A Stop At Willoughby” for children. In “A Stop At Willoughby,” a man escapes a job he hates & a cruel, domineering socially-climbing wife by dreaming of the idyllic town of Willoughby. As Days of Broken Arrows points out, that episode has some serious red-pill knowledge in it; but understand that episode is a post for another day.

In “The Bewitchin’ Pool” the two kids sought out an alternate reality to their sufferings at the hands of terribly cruel parents. Like any other kid, they seek out a world where a parental figure gives them unconditional love and allows them the space to be a kid.

This is a typical fantasy of a child whose life has been supremely deficient from a parenting standpoint. They dream of life in which they don’t have to negotiate complicated relationships between two parents fraught with tension & anger. They desire a life where they get the unconditional love that will very much help them become well-adjusted adults. The twist, here, is that world isn’t just a fantasy but a reality if they can let go of the relationship with their parents.

This letting go has ruffled some feathers of those reviewing for many reasons, but let’s just talk about the relationship a child will have with parents like these. The views of the child are going to purely black & white – either they love their parents with no qualifications or they hate their parents to their very core. This supreme vacillation is emblematic of an unhealthy relationship. In his book “No More Mister Nice Guy,” Dr. Robert Glover notes this in his sessions with husbands talking about their wives. One second they are praising their wives to the Heavens, then muttering, “Fucking bitch.”

Back on point, towards the end when the parents give them the good news they are divorcing the daughter says they will be good now & she understands that the kid’s misbehavior is the cause of the divorce. This is a stereotypical response of a child upon learning their parents are getting divorced. Say what you will about divorce, but no matter how well intentioned by the parents, a child will always blame themselves for the divorce. The parents laugh and it represents the kids are no more than window-dressing. Sure, the kid’s existence strained relations but didn’t create any new tensions than those that were already there.

The culture of divorce is rooted in narcissism & a denial of psychological issues.

It most assuredly has its deepest foundation in hypergamy. However, it is worsened by our narcissistic society. Note the first benefit of divorce – happiness for both parents. In “The Bewitchin’ Pool” both parents are presented as highly dissatisfied with the relationship. The mother overestimates her potential – a proto-feminist – and a dismissive male who cares only about his own success. This is an unusual relationship, as most divorces are a female leaving a male who loves them.

This episode highlights the delusions around how divorce goes down. It presents two equally dissatisfied parties that would prefer divorce over working the relationship out. Further, it highlights the delusions around how personal psychology. Rarely is somebody simply a product an unhappy relationship. That assumes issues in a marriage stem merely from being matched with the wrong person. That is incredibly naïve & reeks of female delusion about how relationships work.

While often times, personal psychological issues get magnified in a given relationship - it is up to every person to handle their responses. It is one thing to admit your partner is making a certain trait of yours more obvious; however, it is up to you to decide whether to express it or not.

Chalk it up to our society’s desire to have everybody express their emotions – it is good that everybody be aware of what they are feeling , however, having them express it isn’t always a good idea. It is best to have people be honest with themselves above all else.



Back to my overarching point of female-driven divorce, the rhetoric & analysis around divorce is centered around female concerns. Always consider appearances. Women need to keep up appearances in the event of them choosing to divorce. They need social support networks to help them, they need court systems to ensure fiscal solvency and they need forces in the media assuring anybody who would judge them that the divorcing woman is making the right choice. Children, husbands, etc. are secondary or less concerns when it comes to their personal happiness. Always remember that their happiness is predicated on social approval of their decisions.

However, understand the impetus of these kids desire to flee their reality. Their parents were both awful and they craved the unconditional love any child deserves. In The Twilight Zone they got a real option to flee the reality of their situation; in America they just would have languished in the shadow of their parent’s issues.

I can personally attest to this situation. My parents had a horrid relationship in which I would spend much time in my room alone, playing with toys, reading & writing. My imagination took me places I could never go in real life. However, the call of your parents will always be there. You can only immerse yourself in your action figures or Legos for so long before the spell is broken by the barking of your mother.

Part of the reaction to this episode is people who have no idea what it is like to be in this situation. It can be very tiring talking about this episode with people who constantly bang on about how creepy the grandmother figure is & how they would never leave their parents, no matter how cruel. I completely understand the supreme reticence about leaving your parents, but this episode did & does speak to me about wanting to leave horrible parents.

I understand the wandering of any kid’s imagination in response to their deficient upbringing – their dependency necessitates understanding their parent’s issues insofar as it relates to their ability to survive. The problem is that everybody will at least, in theory, have the ability to support themselves independently when they become adults. The issue is that those complexes that carried a child through to adulthood are no longer necessary because they are no longer dependent on that parent.

In the end, “The Bewitchin’ Pool” was first aired in the summer of 1964, in the middle of the emerging Sexual Revolution. It is a conflicted episode, one that highlights the issues that will & still are fiercely debated in America.

It focused on the children who would be the primary victims of the slowly emerging divorce culture. It showed some kids who were subject to terrible parenting & needed to have an escape from that.
It has been said that this episode was a horrible episode to end the Twilight Zone series on because there was no twist in the ending.

There was a twist in the ending, alright.

Those two kids came into happiness when most American children won’t or will ever come close to that happiness.