Twilight Zone - Season 1 - Spoilers

[RJDiogenes]

And the new CBS All Access revival of Twilight Zone begins today. The first episode is available for free on YouTube-- maybe just today or maybe for a week, I'm not sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19GO8-Rrn0g

[scottydog]

Fingers crossed that it's good!

[scottydog]

Just watched it. It was good, but too long. I think TZ works best at 30-45 minutes.

The ending was not quite what I expected. I thought that the last person Samir would talk about during his set would be the legendary comedian at the bar. Making the legend disappear would be one way Samir could get all the people back whom he made disappear. But talking about himself worked well, too, and is probably the ending that is most TZ-ish.

[RJDiogenes]

I do think that the episode was a bit long for Twilight Zone, but that didn't make it bad-- just different from (most) Zones. TZ should have punch, and this was a slow-burning nightmare. Which was fine.

The cast was good (Samir's frenemy was a knockout) and the guy who played Samir was great with his face language at communicating the realization, horror, indulgence, and repentance that were swirling around in his head. After the dog and the nephew vanished, it didn't take him long to figure out what was happening-- he probably watched Twilight Zone as a kid-- and his first impulse was to use his newfound power to make the world a better place, which was the whole purpose behind his strident, humorless routine from the start. But then the negative consequences kicked in and when he lost his girlfriend he went completely off the rails. The montage of him shrieking his hatred of his former tormenters while the audience inexplicably laughed was both chilling and painful.

In true TZ fashion, the universe just decided to screw with Samir for no apparent reason, maybe just to see what would happen. We'll probably never know who TC Wheeler really was. He was introduced as a famous former comedian, but why did he show up now to mess with Samir? Did he sell his own soul once, and this is now his Hell? Was it a test? Did he succeed with Samir or fail?

The ending I expected-- or at least what I would have done-- is go out and do a routine about TC Wheeler. That would have undone all the events of the story, and perhaps a lot more. But Samir's redemption by self destruction, followed by the final twist of Wheeler moving on to his next victim, was classic TZ.

All in all, it was pretty good. Better than the last revival, perhaps as good as the 80s version. We'll see what they have in store for us.

[scottydog]

The montage of him shrieking his hatred of his former tormenters while the audience inexplicably laughed was both chilling and painful.

Yes. Their laughter was jarring, because at first, Samir was funny in his descriptions of people in his private life. It was indeed chilling when I realized the audience was now laughing inappropriately.

Once again, we have serious science fiction shows paralleling The Orville. Remember the 2 ways that The Walking Dead mimicked The Orville? (we had tests of loyalty with the evil leader asking someone to kill a favorite character (Primary testing Isaac and Alpha testing Lydia). Then we had a best friend from a major character's past revealing how the best friend had dramatically changed (Orin in The Orville and Jocylin from TWD)).

So in this episode of TZ, Samir learns that if you remove his girlfriend's mentor, she never goes to law school -- just like Gordon Malloy learning that if you remove Laura's boyfriend Greg, she never pursues a music career.

[RJDiogenes]

Wow, that's true. There's been a lot of coincidences lately, and that's just in the small group of shows that we watch. Very interesting.

[scottydog]

^^ I think it's great. All these shows are making me think. That's a rare feat

Because I liked this first episode of TZ, I'm going to have to subscribe to CBS access -- which is a good thing because it will finally get me watching ST: Discovery.

[RJDiogenes]

I'll subscribe to give TZ a chance, but I don't see myself watching Discovery.

[RJDiogenes]

Okay, let's see if I can finally watch episode 2 tonight.

[scottydog]

I'll try to watch this weekend

[RJDiogenes]

I got to watch it! And I enjoyed it. It mostly succeeded in achieving that fabled TZ vibe, but I'm not sure quite what to make of it overall. I loved seeing the creeping shadow of The Twilight Zone invade the modern world of podcasts and mobile devices and cockpit cameras (and possibly flights to Mars-- I didn't quite catch what that billboard was about). The sets and effects were unfortunately photorealistic, but the disorienting and claustrophobic camerawork more or less compensated for that. The casting was classic TZ, with the protagonist, the hijacker, the captain, and the air marshal all distinctive character actor types. Where did the spooky MP3 player come from? Who cares? This is the Twilight Zone, where the universe fucks with you for no apparent reason. (And also, why an MP3 player, which would be a retro touch right now, let alone in the day-after-tomorrow future of this episode?).

One thing that really made me happy was that this was not a remake of "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"-- the title was just an homage. They didn't even recycle the character names. Thank you, Jordan Peele. And the main character's performance was certainly an homage to William Shatner, as he not only made an increasing nuisance of himself to the flight crew, but also managed to sneak around the narrow confines of the aircraft and poke into people's belongings without being noticed. He even went a step further than Shatner-- instead of just shooting out a window, he managed to crash the plane.

But it was the ending that really kind of messed with the narrative. Throughout the episode, the podcast was pretty explicit about the aircraft being lost with all passengers and crew-- and yet when the journalist finds the MP3 on the beach (both conveniently located and still working), the narration reveals that everyone but him survived. This implies a change in the timeline, and that his actions saved everyone's lives. Yet all the passengers gang up on him (and apparently dispose of his body without a trace). The podcast doesn't mention the hijacker at all. Did he survive? Was he a stowaway? A ghost? The passengers and crew that attacked the journalist were actually behaving like vengeful EC Zombies, which would have made sense aside from that being at odds with the podcast. I think a better ending, more fitting to the mental and temporal disorientation of the episode, would have been just leaving him alone on the beach with the podcast telling him that everyone had been saved months later-- leaving him not only abandoned, but time displaced. As it was, it kind of felt like the first episode of a Lost reboot-- or parody.

[scottydog]

I also very much liked this episode. And I'm also glad we didn't see a creature on the wing of the plane. We get an entirely different kind of nightmare on a plane.

I agree that the ending was problematic, but that's okay. As you mention, the overall 'feel' and 'vibe' of the episode was very much classic Twilight Zone. So I'll keep watching

[RJDiogenes]

Me, too. And I got a coupon in my email good for 20% off for three months.

[RJDiogenes]

Apparently the new Twilight Zone is a big success, at least according to CBS All Access. They never release any actual numbers, but they're saying that it's doing better than Discovery did when it premiered.

[scottydog]

^ That's really good news.

The question is: Can it maintain its success?

Here's another question: What distinguishes Twilight Zone from other sub-genres of sci-fi and horror? While thinking about the last episode, it occurred to me that one answer is delicious irony. The last episode was classic -- the guy on the plane, in trying to avert the disaster, actually brings about the disaster.