Fish Night (🌌⬆️🎣) is the twelfth episode of the first volume of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS.
3 Symbols:
- Night
- Road Sign
- Fish Hook
Episode Synopsis[]
After their car breaks down in the desert, two salesmen take a dreamlike voyage to the dawn of time.
Plot[]
In a desert filled with canyons in some part of Arizona, a car for two salesmen breaks down in the middle of the road, the radiator dying. The two men argue about the cause, with the old man claiming that if the young man's statement of the water being fine in Phoenix was true then the radiator wouldn't be dead at that point. The young man joking mocks the old man in return, and the old man returns with a bottle of water. The young man suggests they put it in the radiator, but the old man says there is no point as it is already dead.
The men decide to rest where they are and wait until early next morning before the Sun rises, when it is cooler, to start walking back to the previous station. The old man rests, sitting down on the road with his back against the car, while the young man paces back and forth and kicks the air, unable to calm his temper.
Eventually, the young man has calmed down, and is fidgeting with dice on the hood of the car. The old man approaches him and apologizes for blaming him earlier. The men discuss sales, then as night starts to set in, shimmers of light reflect across the desert landscape. The old man remarks that it reminds him of the sea, and tells the young man that the desert they are in used to be a sea bottom millions of years back. He poses the question that if the ghosts of people can haunt houses, why can't the ghosts of creatures haunt where they once lived? The young man dismisses the hypothetical, and goes to sleep in the back seat of the car.
Later that night, a strange light wakes up the old man. He looks outside the windshield of the car to see ghosts, of various colors, of the ancient aquatic species that once inhabited the desert. He wakes up the young man, and they both exit the car and stare at the sights, mesmerized and in disbelief. The ghosts are able to pass through the two men, and the young man undresses. He runs, and the old man asks him what he is doing. The young man replies "I wanna swim!", then leaps into the air. He begins to fly, or, rather, swim through the invisible water that he has now joined as a part of. The pigmentation of skin changes, and he becomes a translucent orange, now being one of the ghosts himself.
The old man notices a megalodon shark swim through the air, and calls out to warn the young man, but is unsuccessful. The young man plays with the ghosts of fish with glee, and then gets eaten by the shark as the old man looks on in horror.
The desert landscape, without the ghosts, is shown from a distance. The old man is seen looking up to where the young man had been eaten, but the young man and the ghosts are nowhere to be seen.
Cast[]
Kirk Thornton at the Internet Movie Database as Old Man- Yuri Lowenthal at the Internet Movie Database as Young Man
Trivia[]
- The most likely explanation for the episode is that by believing in the possibility and pondering the question, the old man made the ghosts of the desert real.
- The most likely explanation for the ending is that the young man joined the ghosts and became one of them, and was eaten and killed by the shark. The ending shot showing the old man looking up and none of the ghosts hints that the ghosts are real, but just not visible, and that in that moment, only the old man can see them. The young man is gone from this world, having become a ghost and then been killed as one, ceasing to exist.
- The young man swimming through the air up to the glowing moon and subsequently dying is likely a reference to the classic myth in which Icarus flies too close to the Sun.