In Praise of Pip

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The Twilight Zone original series Season five (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1963 – Summer 1964 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: In Praise of Pip Steel Nightmare at 20,000 Feet A Kind of a Stopwatch The Last Night of a Jockey Living Doll The Old Man in the Cave Uncle Simon Probe 7, Over and Out The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain Ninety Years Without Slumbering Ring-a-Ding Girl You Drive The Long Morrow The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross Number 12 Looks Just Like You Black Leather Jackets Night Call From Agnes—With Love Spur of the Moment An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Queen of the Nile What's in the Box The Masks I Am the Night—Color Me Black Sounds and Silences Caesar and Me The Jeopardy Room Stopover in a Quiet Town The Encounter Mr. Garrity and the Graves The Brain Center at Whipple's Come Wander With Me The Fear The Bewitchin' Pool

“In Praise of Pip” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 121
Season: 5
Production code: 2607
Original air date: September 27, 1963
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Joseph M. Newman
Music: Rene Garriguenc, conducted by Lud Gluskin

[edit] Cast

Max Phillips: Jack Klugman
Pip Phillips: Billy Mumy

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Max Phillips is a bookie who finds out that his son is dying in Vietnam. After being wounded by gunfire, he stumbles into an amusement park and is surprised to meet his son who is now a child again. After having some fun, the son explains that he is dying and vanishes. Max makes a deal with God and dies so that his son may live.

[edit] Trivia

Filmed on location at the Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica, California.
Contains what is likely the first reference to an American casualty in Vietnam on dramatic television, especially significant for the line “There isn’t even supposed to be a war going on there, but my son is dying.” Serling’s original script had Pip serving in Laos. The network corrected him, noting that there were no American soldiers stationed in Laos, and suggested Vietnam as an alternative. There is a more explicit reference to Vietnam in “I Am the Night-Color Me Black”.
Jack Klugman's fourth and final Twilight Zone appearance.