"The Twilight Zone" (2019) – S01 E01-E04 Review

So it's been four episodes, which is hopefully enough to get a good idea of what the show is like. For those living under a rock, The Twilight Zone was created by Rod Serling in 1959 and ran for five seasons on CBS. For seasons one through three and five, the episodes were thirty minutes and told stories of the supernatural and science fiction. There were astronauts and genies and aliens and time travel and the Devil. In season four, the series was expanded to an hour. The Twilight Zone is perhaps best known for many of the episodes "twist" endings. There is some sudden surprise or revelation or ironic reveal. A man who wants to do nothing but read is the lone survivor of a nuclear war and breaks his glasses. The man locked away by monks who claims that he's the Devil is actually... The Devil. A jockey who wishes that he was tall becomes to tall that he can no longer compete. A man who can absorb the talents of others absorbs compassion from his father's fiancee, who then shoots him dead.

Serling wrote many of the episodes but not all of them. He also executive-produced the show and did the intros and outros. Other genre writers of the period like Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont also contributed to the show. The show had a number of directors, some of who did artsy-fartsy stuff and some who shot normally. The Twilight Zone dabbled briefly with being filmed on video to cut costs, on the orders of CBS. After the show was canceled, two attempts were made to revive the show, in 1985 (three seasons) and 2002 (one season). Serling died in 1975, after making one attempt to do something similar with Night Gallery in 1969 on NBC (three seasons). A lot of that series featured twist endings, although it often took a more comedic approach. Supposedly, Serling was often overruled by the network executives when he tried to ditch the comedy. Without Serling, the two remakes often paid homage to the original series. It's arguable whether they could survive without Serling at the helm.

One of the common themes Serling brought to TZ was exploring modern issues through metaphors. Supposedly the CBS executives wouldn't let TV producers and writers do that kind of thing in 1959, so Serling "disguised" his commentary with sci-fi and the supernatural. He did stories about war in general, the Vietnam War in particular, the replacements of men with machines, older men being bumped out of their jobs by younger men, the TV transforming of historical figures into palatable TV characters, and the terrors of the Nazis and fascism. But Serling also wasn't afraid of doing straight-out horror and shock, either. He would occasionally toss in comedy, but he wasn't very good at it.

It may have been the lack of that, in part, that doomed the first two TZ remakes as well as Night Gallery. Or maybe it was Serling's relative lack of involvement. Or, at least with the 2002 remake, the fact the market was glutted with other similar shows like The Outer Limits, Tales From the Darkside, and Monsters Or all of the above. Or something else.

That brings us to the 2019 remake, which is available on CBS All Access and created in part by comedian and movie director Jordan Peele. Peele also functions as the Serling-like unnamed Narrator, wandering in for the intro and outro and showing up in unusual situations. There's lots of commentary in the first four episodes: comedians and social commentary, travel restrictions and security, racial issues, and "fake news" paranoia.

The new Twilight Zone is competently done and the stories are interesting. Jordan Peele makes a better narrator than his non-Serling predecessors: Charles Aidman, Robin Ward, and Forrest Whittaker (and Burgess Meredith, if you count the 1983 theatrical movie). But then again, Peele only has to be on-camera for about a minute per episode. As long as an actor dresses well and speaks ominously, it's hard to mess up the "role".

The main problem with the new Twilight Zone is that it isn't that new or innovative. Besides the shows mentioned above, there are plenty of anthology series out there like Black Mirror and recent-but-cancelled efforts like Electric Dreams and Dimension 404. The growth of the streaming cable services have grown anthology series as well, and they're easy to make and watch. As a viewer there's no need for pesky things like continuity or following a plotline. You tune in for an hour, and if you miss one then you've missed nothing plot-wise because each hour is self-contained.

That's another problem: this new The Twilight Zone is an hour. Serling had it right that the show should only last a half-hour, and its failure at the hour mark back in the 60s is a big part of why the original series went back to 30 minutes for its final fifth season. The four new episodes so far are awfully... padded. Part of it is TV has become character driven, so the creative teams have to spend more time telling us about the characters. Part of it is the modern creative teams lack the talent for economical storytelling which Serling had. Part of it is the network obligations to fill an hour of time.

As a result, the new episodes seem a bit... flabby. There are times when the show uses the time to good effect, but more times when it doesn't. A good example is in "A Traveler": we get a driving/chase sequence that runs for a few minutes and seems to go on forever.

Another problem is that the new series seems mired in the original. All of the four episodes include homages to the past: "A Traveler" is stuffed with character names "borrowed" from the original series (Marius Constant, Douglas Hayes, Ida Lupino, Beaumont, and Matheson) and props (a ventriloquist doll, a gremlin, and a Talkie Tina). Heck, two of the characters have the last name Colchack, which sounds like Carl Kolchak, a character Matheson guided through two TV movies. But there are also injokes in other episodes: we get a gremlin doll in "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet", and the fortune telling machine in "Replay".

If there aren't props and names, then there are plot similarities. "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" is the most obvious, "borrowing" its title from the original "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". Previous incarnations of TZ and Night Gallery have taken on stand-up comedians and old-fashioned objects that can muck with time. "A Traveler" is a mash-up of the original series episodes "Will the Real Martian Stand Up?" and "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street".

Peele and the creative team do toss in a lot more modern-day social commentary. But it seems rather pasted on. The only time it really works is in "Replay", where it's instrumental to the plot. Some of the messages are just a modern-day gloss on a timeless issue: the comedian who gives away himself and goes too far is a reflection on the cost of success, the fact people are paranoid and will turn on each other on the slightest excuse. Still, it often feels like the creative team is trying too hard to make the newest TZ relevant.

So what are the four episodes in the new series? First up is "The Comedian", which has comedian Samir Wassan (Kumail Nanjiani) bombing when he tries to tell relevant Second Amendment jokes. A sinister stand-up comic (Tracy Morgan) tells him people want to connect with Samir on a personal level and hear stories about him, not his political opinions. Samir soon discovers that when he does so and mentions someone's name, they're wiped out of reality in return for big laughs. When he realizes the audience wants more and will never stop, Samir says his own name and wipes himself from reality, restoring all of the people he eliminated because he never existed to eliminate them.

"The Comedian" is a fairly effective story, with good performances by Nanjiani, Morgan, and Amara Karan as Samir's girlfriend. It tends to go in a few too many directions, though: there's the typical TZ "deal with the devil" story, there's Samir doing anything to get a laugh and discovering that he can't turn it off (also a part of NG's "Make Me Laugh"), there's Samir's quest for fame putting him at odds with his girlfriend. There are some pretty effective parts: I like how the girlfriend can't stop laughing because she's caught up in Samir's spell, even though he's doing the same thing she condemned when he wasn't telling jokes. Nanjiani also does a good job with the slowly growing panic and self-disgust as he realizes what is happening and the price he has to pay.

"Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" is probably the worst of the lot, because it doesn't make sense. Investigative reporter Justin Sanderson (Adam Scott) boards a plane and finds a podcast machine that plays a podcast from the future about how the plane disappears. The reporter, who has PTSD, descends into paranoia as he tries to find the reason for the disappearance based on the clues in the podcast. He fails to stop the crash (and causes it in large part because of his own actions) and is hoist on his own petard.

"Nightmare" tries a lot, but it seems to have a message and an intended ending that the creative team want to shove through no matter what. So at the end, an entire plane's worth of passengers act out of character to give them the ending they want. Sanderson continues acting weird and paranoid even after he gets called on it, never makes any real attempt to have anyone listen to the podcast, and is essentially arrested. They should have stuck to the gremlin on the wing of the plane that was in the original episode and in the movie remake.

"Replay" is probably the best of the four first, because it has a message and sticks the ending. Judging from the movie Get Out, it's also a subject near and dear to Peele's heart. Nina Harrison (Sanaa Lathan) is taking her son to college and discovers her old camcorder rewinds time when she hits the rewind button. A racist trooper pursues them and finds excuses to pull them over, and each time Nina rewinds time and tries to avoid her and her son's fate. In the last rewind, the son is shot and killed and Nina turns to her brother for help. He believes her, leads her and the son through some old sewer tunnels to the college, and the trooper shows up anyway. This time all of the students and their parents capture the encounter on phone video, and the trooper backs down after Nina calls him out for his racism. The end takes place ten years later, when the son goes out for ice cream and an older Nina watches as police lights shine through the window.

Besides the obvious commentary on racism, there's several other things going on here. There's Lathan's excellently-portrayed desperation as she soon discovers she's caught in a trap that destiny has set for her. The episode goes off on a few tangents that end up nowhere, like a scene where Nina learns the coming lottery numbers. The problem with the rewind concept is that it eradicates much of the character development. There's a certain growing horror for Nina being the only one who can remember, but it also means that the bond she builds with her son "rewinds" each time as well. The "real" ending with the trooper getting called out for his racism is a bit trite, but the "ten years later" ending helps redeem it as it's implied that the son still gets shot and killed by the police.

The last episode, "A Traveler", has a mysterious man in a suit (Steven Yeun) appear in a cell in a small police station in an Alaskan town on Christmas Eve. He identifies himself as "A. Traveler" and claims that he's an extreme traveler there to get local police chief Lane Pendleton (Greg Kinnear)'s traditional Christmas pardon. Sergeant Yuka Mongoyak (Marika Sila) suspects there's more to Traveler's story than meets the eye, like... how did he get into the cell in the first place? Meanwhile, Traveler insinuates himself with the locals and then turns them against each other by revealing their secrets. It turns out Traveler is an alien sent to trick Lane into revealing the location of a nearby Air Force listening post's power source so that his fellow aliens can destroy it and invade Earth.

There's some commentary about how the local Inuits have had their way of life destroyed by the invading white men, and how they'll fare better under the alien invaders. But a lot of the reassurances that will happen come from Traveler, who the episode goes to great lengths to establish lies constantly. So it's mostly about an inveterate liar lying, getting called out on his lying, and then being believed by the various people who said he was a liar.

There are good performances by Yeun, Kinnear, and Sila, but the story is weak: no one except Yuka seems to wonder, or care, how Traveler appears in the cell or why he has a super high-tech phone. The fact the aliens need to take out one American listening post doesn't make much sense: plenty of other countries have listening posts, too. It's like that part of the plot came from the 60s when anti-Russian fear was big. Or maybe it's a reference to the pro/anti-Russian back and forth.

And, as I noted earlier, it's awfully padded. There are scenes of Yuka chasing Lane, and Traveler celebrating Christmas with the townspeople, that seem to go on forever. As I observed earlier, "A Traveler" in particular could use some of the narrative shorthand that Serling brought so easily to the original TZ. Even the remakes and NG had 5 minute episodes and 15-minute episodes and 30-minute episodes. Granted some of them like the comedy blackouts in NG are horrible. But at least the creative teams knew not to overstay their warning. Set up the story, tell the punchline, and get out. "A Traveler" takes forever to set up the story and the punchline is rather muddy.

Overall, I'd say that the new TZ is worth watching. It suffers in comparison to the original, but it's at least as good as the various remakes and genre anthologies that have come since. Except maybe Black Mirror, because it's pretty difficult to top Black Mirror. Will TZ improve in the weeks to come? We'll see. Does it need to improve? That's an IMO question.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?