And every time this someone wakes up we die and when he goes back to sleep we are shuffled around, playing different parts than before?
shareThen I better run home and check if there is a roast in the oven or something else entirely.
shareHe can change what's in the oven but he can't turn death row into the playboy mansion? That actually makes the situation even more horrible because while maybe he can wish himself a playboy bunny or can transport himself to a lovely beach, mai tai in one hand, said playboy bunny nestled in his lap, at midnight he always finds himself riding the lightning. He could be in a rocket, on the other side of the universe, and when its midnight in the part of the world where his execution is slated to occur, no matter the distance he's put between himself and his fate, he still fries.
shareThe people in his dream question the same as they have memories and families. I guess it could be like the matrix and we are all apart of one man's dream.
shareThis episode very much has a "Matrix"-vibe.
I like Grant's response to the DA trying to shoot down his dream theory by bringing up all the people who never heard of him --- like his parents and their parents' parents: "Well, what about them Mr. Ritchie? A dream builds its own world, Mr. Ritchie. It's complete. With a past, and as long as you stay asleep, a future."
It also makes me wonder if an evening of dreaming for Grant is a lifetime for those in his dreams. Grant does promise the DA that if he keeps him alive he'll go on dreaming him every night the way he is meaning, I guess, that the dream can go on and on as long as it isn't discontinued by a jolt like Grant's execution. Or maybe, despite Grant's promise, the DA is only the DA one night. The next night he could be a juror, or the judge, or maybe Grant's lawyer. As Serling says in his outro to "Perchance to Dream": "They say a dream takes only as second or so, and yet in that second he can live a lifetime. He can suffer and die and who is to say what is the greater reality: the one we know or the one in dreams ..."
You make good points Turnip. I wonder though if he is lucid dreaming as he knows it's one why doesn't he switch it up? He could be the hero who stops the bad guy or even use his imagination for a glorious escape that puts scarface to shame. So I think his ending doesn't have to be seen as bleak.
shareI'm not certain but I think Grant is being punished like Carl Lanser in "Judgment Night"; and as a way of making Grant's punishment all the more agonizing those punishing him give him some control over his dream though not enough to change the big things. Then again "Shadow Play" is a glorious "Twilight Zone" because while "Judgment", which is good but not great, spells everything out, "Shadow" goes to great lengths to leave everything up to the viewer's interpretation. I've entertained the possibility that Grant is being punished. You could have a totally different take. That's why I rank Charles Beumont as possibly at the top of my favorite "TZ" writers: his episodes are so mysterious and open to various readings.
shareYes, Grant is being punished, A.T., but like certain characters on the Zone he appears to be fighting Fate, in his case death. The world Grant is creating in his mind is his way of pushing away the inevitable. Grant's fate is literally worse than death because he can't accept his own death. He can't let go, so he clings desperately to every shred of memory to remain alive. What the viewer doesn't know,--and this is rather cruel--is the degree to which Grant has control over his dream.
In other words, if he could just stop arguing and pleading with the people he imagines and just goes to the electric without protest, the nightmare would end. Right? Or maybe not. This is not made clear. In the Outer Limits episode The Guests the fate of the people who appear to be trapped in that big house created by the alien are, each in a different way, victims of their own choices, or of their ambivalence. They CANNOT LIVE due to their inability to choose free will rather than "live a dream". The alien himself makes this clear.
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