Twenty Two (The Twilight Zone)

Infobox Television episode
Title = Twenty Two
Series = The Twilight Zone


Caption = In her dream, Liz Powell discovers that room 22 is the hospital morgue.
Season = 2
Episode = 53
Airdate =February 10, 1961
Production = 173-3664
Writer =Rod Serling
Director =Jack Smight
Guests =Barbara Nichols : Liz Powell
Jonathan Harris : The Doctor
Fredd Wayne : Barney Kamener
Arline Sax : The nurse in the morgue
Mary Adams : Day Nurse
Norma Connolly : Night Nurse (Miss Jameson)
Wesley Lau : Airline Agent
Angus Duncan : Ticket Clerk
Jay Overholts : Public address system announcer (voice) (uncredited)
Joseph Sargent : Uniformed clerk (uncredited)
Music = none credited
Episode list = List of Twilight Zone episodes
Prev = A Penny for Your Thoughts
Next = The Odyssey of Flight 33

"Twenty Two" is an episode of the American television series "The Twilight Zone".

Opening narration

In one uninterrupted shot, Liz Powell runs through the corridor of the hospital basement, pushes the elevator button and, as the doors open, lurches into the elevator. The elevator descends to the basement level; she exits and walks down the hall. She sees doors swinging, revealing the entrance into Room 22, as the nurse steps out and says, "Room for one more, honey." Liz screams and runs back into the elevator as the camera slowly pans to the left to reveal Rod Serling standing and speaking in front of the entrance:

ynopsis

While in a hospital, recuperating from stress, Liz Powell, whom her agent, Barney, describes as "the best little stripper-dancer that ever came down the pike", has a strange nightmare. Every night, she awakens at midnight. She turns and breaks a drinking glass full of water, and then hears strange footsteps outside her door. It is always the same person: a nurse who beckons Liz to follow her. When Liz does, she goes down into an elevator and nervously approaches room 22.

The strange nurse then emerges from the dark shadows of the room and, smiling wickedly, gives a message: "Room for one more, honey." Liz screams and runs back to her room, where she falls back to sleep. Her doctor claims that the dream is impossible, as there is no nurse who resembles the woman in the dream working in the hospital. The doctor then suggests that Liz change her actions in the dream, such as not to reach for the glass of water. Liz does this that night, and is happy to hear no footsteps, but when she turns to sleep, her blanket shatters the glass. The dream goes on in the same way, but this time Liz realizes that the room is a morgue.

The next morning, the doctor is shocked: Liz has never been downstairs to the morgue, and yet she described it with remarkable accuracy. Discharged from the hospital, Liz is at the airport, preparing to go home. While nervously twitching in the terminal, she bumps into a woman carrying a vase. It falls, making the same noise as the drinking glass in the dream. Liz's flight is then announced as "Flight 22", leaving immediately. In a long, slow shot, Liz walks up the runway, climbs the stairs, and approaches the plane.... and a stewardess who looks just like the dream-nurse appears, intoning her same terrifying message: "Room for one more, honey".

Screaming, Liz runs back down the stairs and into the airport, falling to the ground. A moment later, as the concerned airport staff rush towards the hysterical Liz, the plane explodes immediately after takeoff, killing everyone aboard. Liz's dream has warned her of her impending death, thus saving her life.

Closing narration

Preview for Next Week's Story

Episode notes

As the "Twilight Zone"'s second season began, the production was informed by CBS that, at about $65,000 per episode, the show was exceeding its budget. By November 1960, 16 episodes, more than half of the projected 29, were already filmed, and five of those had been broadcast. It was decided that six consecutive episodes would be videotaped at CBS Television City in the manner of a live drama and then transferred to 16-millimeter film for TV transmission. Eventual savings amounted to only about $30,000 for all six entries, which was judged to be insufficient to offset the loss of depth of visual perspective that, at the time, only film could offer. The shows wound up looking little better than set-bound soap operas and, as a result, the experiment was deemed a failure and never tried again.

Even though the six shows were taped in a row, through November and into mid-December, their broadcast dates were out of order and varied widely, with this, the fifth one, shown on February 10, 1961 as episode 17. The first, "The Lateness of the Hour", was seen on December 2, 1960 as episode 8; the second, "Static" appeared on March 10, 1961 as episode 20; the third, "The Whole Truth" was broadcast on January 20, 1961 as episode 14; the fourth was the Christmas show, "The Night of the Meek", shown as the 11th episode on December 23, 1960; and the last one, "Long Distance Call", was transmitted on March 3, 1961 as episode 22.

The title of this episode, frequently seen hyphenated ("Twenty-Two"), appears on-screen as "Twenty Two".

References

*DeVoe, Bill. (2008). "Trivia from The Twilight Zone". Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1593931360
*Grams, Martin. (2008). "The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic". Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0970331090

External links

*imdb title|id=0734685|title=Twenty Two
* [http://www.tv.com/the-twilight-zone/twenty-two/episode/12637/summary.html TV.com episode page]
* [http://www.cbs.com/classics/the_twilight_zone/video/video.php?cid=649555532&pid=CJWZiwVFrDOc3wwSh6C6Rq57m1v8mUQI&play=true&cc=1 Full video of the episode at CBS.com]

Twilight Zone links

*The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
*Episode List
*Season 2