Healer (The Twilight Zone)

"Healer"
The Twilight Zone episode

Scene from "Healer"
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 3a
Directed by Sigmund Neufeld Jr.
Written by Michael Bryant
Original air date October 11, 1985
Guest appearance(s)

Eric Bogosian: Jackie Thompson
Vincent Gardenia: Harry
Joaquin Martinez: Duende
Robert Costanzo: Joseph Rubello
Adam Ferris: Deaf Boy
Charles Aidman: Narrator

Episode chronology

"Healer" is the first segment of the third episode of the first season (1985–86) of the television series The Twilight Zone.

Opening narration

“ Ah, Jackie, Jackie. You're a small-timer, a roof-crawler, a poke pincher, a nickel-and-dime grifter with salt in your dreams and ashes in your pockets. Don't cut that wire, Jackie. Don't open that window. You won't be able to jimmy yourself out as easily as you got in. That's not the big score in there...it's the Twilight Zone. ”

Plot

Cat burglar Jackie Thompson breaks into a museum late one night and steals a rare stone from a display case. He trips the alarm and gets shot by a guard, but the stone heals him. Once back in his apartment, Jackie begins to study the stone, but hears a commotion out in the hall. He discovers that his neighbor and friend Harry is having a heart attack. One of the other neighbors is attempting CPR on Harry, but to no avail. Thinking quickly, Jackie runs over to Harry and, while grasping the stone, touches Harry's chest and begs for healing. Before long, Harry is awake and talking.

Harry tells Jackie everything he saw while he was unconscious. He tells of floating over the neighbors and Jackie while he's working on him and how he seemed to be pulled back into his body. Harry tells Jackie that they could make a fortune with that kind of power. Jackie soon becomes "Brother John" and heals others on a TV ministry. Harry, who is only interested in the money, acts as his business manager, but Jackie truly feels altruistic and enjoys helping others. A Native American man, Duende, appears and says his people loaned the stone to the museum and warns that Jackie is traveling down the wrong path; Jackie is inclined to return the stone, but Harry scoffs.

Living in a palatial house and having more money than he needs, Jackie truly wants to give back the stone, but Harry continues to convince him otherwise. A call comes in and a man named Joseph Rubello, a drug lord from Jackie's past, begs for healing of his terminal cancer. Because Rubello treated him horribly in the past, Jackie demands $2 million to heal him. Rubello agrees, but the stone no longer works. Later at the TV ministry, Harry pulls a boy who was deaf from birth from the waiting line to test Jackie's power. Jackie fails to heal the boy, and his old bullet wound opens up and bleeds profusely. Duende reappears and explains that the stone only works permanently when used unselfishly. Harry refuses to help Jackie, instead planning to take all the money himself. The deaf boy follows Jackie out back and he hands the stone to the boy, who heals him. In turn, Jackie enables the boy's hearing and, with his redemption complete, gives the stone to Duende to return to his people. Duende takes the boy to his mother and Jackie smiles knowing he did the right thing.

Closing narration

“ Now he is John, no longer Jackie. Perhaps not Brother John, brother to all men, but at least fit to walk among men who care. Because caring is part of the secret, the secret we all learn. That the heart cannot heal what the eye cannot see. Not even...in the Twilight Zone. ”

See also

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