For the aging Ernest Truex, living in a retirement home around a bunch of sendiary cotton tops has made him feel older than what his brain is telling him he should be feeling like. Witnessing a children's game, he begins to fantasize about what it would like to be young and carefree again, and not feel the pain. Like the pied piper, he leads other seniors (among them Burt Mustin and Marjorie Bennett) outside to do just that. But is a second childhood with a popular child game really going to make them young again, or will it take them away to another world?
Enjoyable if simplistic episode could have been better had there been the comic visual of these seniors actually going around kicking the can. The finale gives an innuendo of something else, but that is never truly clear whether it is the seniors who have somehow morphed into a different form or the neighborhood children that Truex saw earlier. Still well intentioned, it lacks in conviction and that is what prevents it from becoming a true "Twilight Zone" classic.
Enjoyable if simplistic episode could have been better had there been the comic visual of these seniors actually going around kicking the can. The finale gives an innuendo of something else, but that is never truly clear whether it is the seniors who have somehow morphed into a different form or the neighborhood children that Truex saw earlier. Still well intentioned, it lacks in conviction and that is what prevents it from becoming a true "Twilight Zone" classic.