Well, this episode was well done, but it didn't really have that Twilight Zone vibe to it. But, as a random episode of a fantastic-themed anthology series, it holds up pretty well. It was well cast and well acted, nicely directed with some artsy touches along the way, and the characters come to a satisfactory resolution without necessarily a happy ending-- the twist ending was pretty much off the shelf, though. The guy really should have known that throwing a supernatural object into a lake wouldn't be the end of it. If he had disassembled it and spread the pieces around, and then it came back, then the ending might have had more impact. Maybe.
But this being the show that it is, I have to wonder if there was supposed to be a moral to the story that they failed to communicate. The supernatural object in question being a gun, and the creators of this series being so simplistic and obvious, one would assume that it's about gun control. But what exactly was the message? Why was the anti-gun, lifelong Hippie father the first victim? Also, how did he come into possession of this strange weapon that only seven people have owned? What was the origin of the curse? What was the meaning of the gun's aversion to darkness? Why was the climax of the story Jeff's battle with the foreshadowed criminal, and why did the gun save him, leading to his estranged wife letting him have his dad's guitar? It doesn't really add up to an anti-gun message. Perhaps it was just supposed to be about, as the closing narration said, making objects more important than people. If so, it should have been more about the dad's beloved guitar rather than a random gun, so as not to cloud the issue. Who the hell knows with this show?
I did get a kick out of the part about animism versus anthropomorphism, because I'm just like that girl. Among other weird things, I always arrange the TV dinners in the freezer so that none of them are ever alone.
And now I've seen episode four, "A Traveler," which starred Glenn from Walking Dead. Again, it superficially captured the feel of The Twilight Zone, but the fragments never quite came together.
I finally got around to watching this episode. I agree with all your points, and it is true (so far, thru 4 eps) that this series is still struggling to tell coherent stories. The good news is that they're trying to produce good Twilight Zone and maybe they'll get it right eventually. Even mediocre Twilight Zone is better than no Twilight Zone at all.
This week we have episode five, "The Wunderkind" (starring that guy who was on the first season of Sleepy Hollow). This one was the most baffling yet. I think at this point we can safely say that this revival is aimed squarely at the Millennial Generation, because the levels of political naivete and thematic misfires are astonishing.
I liked this episode more than you did. Maybe because it was shorter -- only about 35 minutes, which is better TZ length than one hour -- and maybe because the hard lesson learned for the campaign manager is one of my favorite life lessons, namely, 'be careful what you wish for.' So in this sense, it is good Twilight Zone material because of the irony that getting what we want will kill us.
I finally got around to watching this episode. I agree with all your points, and it is true (so far, thru 4 eps) that this series is still struggling to tell coherent stories. The good news is that they're trying to produce good Twilight Zone and maybe they'll get it right eventually. Even mediocre Twilight Zone is better than no Twilight Zone at all.
I don't know about that. The attempt in the early 00s was pretty awful.
I liked this episode more than you did. Maybe because it was shorter -- only about 35 minutes, which is better TZ length than one hour -- and maybe because the hard lesson learned for the campaign manager is one of my favorite life lessons, namely, 'be careful what you wish for.' So in this sense, it is good Twilight Zone material because of the irony that getting what we want will kill us.
That's another way to look at it, I guess. The Donald allegory distracted from the real plot. Which is also fitting, I suppose.
Episode 10, "Blurryman," and I watched it in black and white.
Well, I have to say that I enjoyed this episode quite a bit for its wry metafictional introspection and well-intentioned homage. It was entertaining and suspenseful, and it made explicit the attributes that make Twilight Zone unique, both in design and in its place in cultural history. However, upon scrutiny, it didn't really illuminate so much as embody the problems that have plagued the show throughout the first season. It's intent and message are at best garbled and at worst contradictory.
Ironically, the faux Jordan Peele, whose role as the devil's advocate I assume to be satirical, said it explicitly at the beginning of the episode when he made a remark along the lines of, "Maybe we're saying something we don't really want to say." But apparently he wasn't referring to the juvenile and naive politics of the show, but rather the very concept of wrapping a message in a story. The fictional character of the writer was there to be the defender of the Zone against the pressure of mediocrity-- and yet it was her character, not Peele's, who the Zone singled out to learn some vague and obscure lesson, while Peele is left to blunder on obliviously.
At the end of the story, we get a wonderful scene where Rod Serling appears as the guardian and ferryman of the Twilight Zone-- literally a wondrous world of imagination-- to lead our beleaguered writer to the other side. It's very touching and very clearly meant as a loving tribute to the big guy, and it's beautiful to watch it unfold. But try to parse the journey that got her there, and there's nothing there but fragments of the Zone flung up in the air like Dada poetry.
The writer character is depicted as the one who lives and breathes Twilight Zone since childhood, as shown not only on set but in a brief flashback-- to the exclusion of a real life, which is highlighted as her character flaw both in the past, by her father, and in the present, by her girlfriend. The main body of the story involves her running a gauntlet of randomly violent inanimate objects and assorted imagery from both the present and original versions of TZ, and being stalked by a sinister and shadowy figure, who turns out, inexplicably, to be the benign Serling, offering her an exit from the mundane world.
So what is the message here? To get a life? Apparently not, since her obsession with the Zone was rewarded with full immersion. She was already the defender of the Zone's artistic integrity, so there was no lesson to be learned there. What, then, was the purpose of the gauntlet and Serling's menacing coyness? What benefit to the character was there to be put through that danger and fear? What was the purpose of her parents' point and counterpoint about having both an imagination and a real life, and of her nagging girlfriend, who she abandoned in the end? What was the purpose of the debate about the importance of deeper meanings when it was never resolved in the story within a story?
Somewhere in the midst of the chaos, when the character is literally talking to herself-- another plot device used to no good effect-- she randomly shouts out that using the word crazy is no longer allowed because it stigmatizes the mentally ill. This had no internal connection to the narrative, so was the intention (of the remark and the story) to parody the awkward political correctness of previous episodes, or did the writers believe it to be significant somehow? With this bunch, it's hard to tell.
So, after a season of good ideas presented badly and bad ideas presented badly, we were given a finale of good ideas and bad ideas and non ideas presented badly-- but, like most of the previous episodes, stylishly and entertainingly, and with a coda that tells us that the Powers That Be were at least well intentioned. But, ultimately, this iteration of Twilight Zone turned out to be land of just shadow and no substance.
I need to get back to watching episodes, but the problem is I'm sleeping too well. Let's hope I get terrible insomnia tonight so that I can watch episode 6.
Well, I did the next best thing which is eat too much dinner and dessert. So there's a good chance that tonight I'll get terrible heartburn and will have to watch TV.
This week they released Episode 6, "Six Degrees of Freedom."
And that was actually a big improvement. The episode was mostly very well done and pretty much resembled a Twilight Zone story. It certainly helped that they made use of several tried-and-true TZ tropes, such as nuclear Armageddon and an isolated spaceship crew being driven slowly mad, but it also had a really decent TZ twist at the end.
Yes, I liked this one very much. Perhaps the best episode of the season for me (so far).
But that twist ending was actually pretty good. It was nicely ambiguous, so we don't really know if the aliens saved the astronaut, if the astronaut was actually an alien agent, or if the astronaut had been correct and the whole mission was just a simulation, albeit orchestrated by the alien agency.
It appeared to me that they did save the astronaut and applauded his ingenuity. He thought that NASA was testing them and didn't realize that alien life forms were testing our worthiness to remain in existence.
Yet it wasn't entirely a simulation -- I think some kind of nuclear Armageddon did occur at the launch. I think.
Pass through "The Great Filter" is a fascinating concept. Does it mean that the more technologically advanced a planet is, the smaller its chances of successfully reaching for the stars? And that somehow The Twilight Zone has confidence in us?
I'll rewatch this episode for sure and maybe gain further clarity.
It appeared to me that they did save the astronaut and applauded his ingenuity. He thought that NASA was testing them and didn't realize that alien life forms were testing our worthiness to remain in existence.
Yes, it was pointed out to me later that I missed a bit of dialogue clarifying that.
Yet it wasn't entirely a simulation -- I think some kind of nuclear Armageddon did occur at the launch. I think.
I think the nuclear Armageddon may have been real.
Pass through "The Great Filter" is a fascinating concept. Does it mean that the more technologically advanced a planet is, the smaller its chances of successfully reaching for the stars? And that somehow The Twilight Zone has confidence in us?
It's pretty much a variation of the Drake Equation where one of the factors is the survival ratio of civilizations.
Just watched both these episodes, and didn't care for either of them. They both had the same problem of sledge-hammering home a message about current social issues (the Me-Too movement and the Immigration debate).
I understand why Jordan Peele would want to get men thinking about their bad behavior and Americans thinking more compassionately about immigration. But I don't watch Twilight Zone for commentary on social issues; I watch it for clever, creepy storytelling. That's what I like about the Martian expedition episode.
It's not the social commentary that bothers me-- I was hoping for some decent social commentary along the lines of the original Twilight Zone. The problem is the inept and wrongheaded politics. "Not All Men" was almost comical in its anti-male chauvinism and "Point of Origin" went for the non-issue of the DACA kids rather than going for anything meaningful on the topic. Somebody on another board described it as aimed at high-school kids who feel cool because they just discovered social justice, but they don't actually understand any of it.
And read 
