Charlie Finnegan (Burgess Meredith) is serving a life sentence but dreams of escape. He sees jet planes fly over the yard he’s spent most of his life in. Yet Pete Tuttle (Cameron Mitchell), a fellow inmate, claims he can help him to get out.

“Finnegan’s Flight” is directed by Gene R. Kearney and written by Rod Serling, who has always turned to Meredith for big roles, like “Time Enough at Last” and “The Obsolete Man” on The Twilight Zone and “The Little Black Bag” from the first season of Night Gallery.

The first hypnotic trick that Tuttle tries on Finnegan is to convince him that his hands are indestructible and that he can punch his way out of the walls. This leads to a stay in the infirmary as Finnegan breaks both his hands. Prison psychiatrist Dr. Simsich (Barry Sullivan) is amazed by the power of suggestion that Tuttle can employ and arranges for the two men to experiment in his office.

Convinced that he’s flying a plane high into the clouds, Finnegan starts to run out of air and eventually crashes his plane, causing a real explosion. But at the end of it all, despite this tragedy, Tuttle knows that his friend is somewhere else, hopefully somewhere happier than living his life inside a jail.

This episode is interesting but feels not as important as past Serling tales. Yet by this point, it feels like he’d been pretty beat up by this show and perhaps was just doing his best to finish the script.