OSB once again, to great effect, uses historical and stock footage to add depth to a story which is just not that interesting.  We open with several shots of WWII Dunkirk and London in 1940 before we arrive at a bunker where a group of men cheer Winston Churchill’s rousing “finest hour” speech on the radio:

• ’bout time somebody give those Nazis what-for!
• Churchill’s a real British bulldog!
• He’s the leader we’ve been needing!
• It really gives one hope

Of course, in 5 years with the war over, these same blokes will be kicking him to the curb.  Bloody ingrates!

This is an odd assortment of a farmer, a coal miner, a chaplain, a bank teller, a chemist, a grocer, a retired one-armed WWI hero, a young volunteer, and the headmaster of a girl’s school.  It is a different time when this group of patriotic civilians would prefer to defend their country rather than going to work in their own jobs every day (well, except the headmaster, I imagine).

Charlie tells Hubert Blakely that he saw his wife Ethel in town.  She sends a message that he should wear a scarf, and that his tropical fish just had 28 babies.  Marlowe marvels that they still act like newlyweds even though they have been married 20 years.  Well, Blakely must have been 50 when he got married, because this guy is old! ^[1] In fact, except for one young guy, this whole crew looks like COVID-19’s dream smorgasbord.

Col. Marlowe tells Tim that he and the young man, Willie, are to man the outpost tonight.  Tim complains that Willie is not up to the task. In fact, Willie does seem a little twitchy and frightened.  The men know he was rejected from joining the service, but he won’t say why.  Blakely offers to take Tim’s place.  The men head out armed with . . . wait, what?  A sawed off oar and a pitchfork!  Wow, we really did save their arses.

At the outpost, Willie confesses that he really is scared.  Blakely assures him that is normal.  Willie reveals he was rejected from the service for “bad lungs”.  Willie’s confession about his bad lungs seems as if it should be significant, but why?  It’s not as if anyone thought he was rejected by the army for being scared — I don’t think they diagnose that at the induction center.  PTSD, I could see, but he was never actually in the army.  In fact, wouldn’t he want the guys to know he was rejected for a legitimate medical reason?

Strangely, almost halfway into this episode, we don’t really know who it is about.  Blakely and Willie have had the most screen time.  However, several others have had a line or even a scene such as the Colonel, the Chaplain, or Tim.

The elderly Blakely takes the first watch.  Nazis row the boat ashore, hallelujha — wait, that’s not how that goes!  But he has already dozed off.  He dreams of his wife Ethel, as well he might — she is only 35 years old!  Uh, wait a minute, Charlie said they had been married 20 years.  Oh well, it was the olden days, I guess.^[2]  He dreams of Ethel at home asleep in their bed as bombers release their load, which is more than he’s done lately.  The old guy is awakened by the whistling of the bombs, the explosions, and his enlarged prostate.  Good thing, too, because at that very second, a Nazi is peeking into their bunker.

Blakely kills him with the pitchfork and grabs his Luger.  He and Willie go to sound the alarm, but encounter another Nazi.  Blakely shoots this one, even though he still had that swell oar.  Willie picks up the Nazi’s machine gun.  Another Nazi inexplicably decides to wrestle zwei out of drei falls with Blakely.  Willie pulls him off — hee hee — then strangles him.  The rest of the Nazi’s are killed, thus concluding the comedy portion of tonight’s episode.

Back at the bunker, Blakely admits to Col. Marlowe that he fell asleep.  He says he awoke just in time to kill the Nazi because of the bombs exploding over his house in his dream.  Marlowe says no bombs were dropped in their town, but Blakely goes home to see for himself.

He finds it was indeed bombed.  He searches through the burned-out house, but there is no sign of Ethel.  Devastated, he returns to the bunker.  Blakely is overjoyed to find Ethel there.  She says she had a dream of him fighting Nazi’s.  That woke her up in time to hear the bombs and flee to the basement.  Wait, he didn’t go to the basement when he searched his house.  Wouldn’t that be the first place you checked after a bombing or tornado?

Another not particularly interesting — not even really a twist — but more of a gimmick or hook this week.  It really is a mixed bag though, with some great elements.  The episode had great potential with an large cast of defined characters, but didn’t know what to do with them.  Too many people were thrown at the viewer at once, and arcs were hinted at but never paid off.  The shaky kid did kill a Nazi, but that wasn’t really a satisfactory resolution.  Well, not for the kid.

On the other hand, OSB continues to astound with its production design.  It might start out in a one-room bunker, but it eventually moves outdoors (even if it was on a set) to show some effective fighting with the Nazis.  The devastated town that Blakely walks through is utterly convincing.  That and the bombed out home are worthy of a movie in that era.  Much as I love The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, they never matched the visuals on this series.  If it had not been so committed to such a narrow genre, this series might have been remembered as the equal of those classics.

Other Stuff:

• [1] This not an exaggeration — the actor is 72.
• [2] The actress playing Ethel was 37 years younger than Blakely.  The creepy scene of them in bed looks like the first 30 seconds of a Pornhub video except she doesn’t call him Step-Daddy.
• I honestly didn’t think WordPress could get worse after their previous update.  What I found after being away 6 months was an abomination.  Like Adobe and Microsoft, they seemed determined to make their products more freakin’ unusable with every update.