The Twilight Zone feels like something that
has always existed. It hasn't – it premiered in 1959 and has
had several revivals and a movie since then – but something about the ageless, ethereal
quality of The Twilight Zone and the moments that have been burned into popular culture
and learned through osmosis gives it that feeling, that quality. Getting on your plane and joking that you
see something on the wing has become as ritualistic as Sunday mass. The twist ending in film and television is
so intertwined this series that “Twilight Zone” is synonymous with this style of storytelling. It's the anthology series upon which all other
anthology series are compared, and because is, The Twilight Zone has this ancient and
timeless quality to it. But the truth is The Twilight Zone has very
much a product of its time. The social issues it tackled following the
largest world conflict in history and the emerging civil rights movement. The subsequent revivals did the same. The 1985 Twilight Zone had episodes about
Vietnam veterans only a few years removed from their conflict, underappreciated women
in the workplace, the Communist Party and other social concerns of its time. It was very much of the 80's. The 2002 Twilight Zone had episodes about
bigotry, paranoia about terror attacks and lots more. It was very much of that time. In 2019, a new revival of The Twilight Zone
premiered, continuing the anthology sci-fi/horror/fantasy stories mixed with social commentary. Critical appraisal was mostly positive. “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes and “Generally
Favorable” on Metacritic. And it received the now typical, tedious,
reactionary response from the chuds. “Oh no, they made The Twilight Zone WOKE!”
as if it hadn't already been for 60 years. Put a pin in that. We'll come back to it later. Let's go through arguably the best episodes
of the new series so far. Replay. Nina is escorting her son Dorian to college. During this journey, she discovers that her
old camcorder has the power to turn back time when she pressed rewind. Nina and Dorian are pulled over by a state
trooper named Lasky. Nina, probably having dealt with the police
her whole life, tells her son to follow Lasky's instructions. Dorian is less willing to speak to the trooper
deferentially, and Lasky fatally shoots Dorian. Nina uses the camcorder to reverse time. In this timeline, she and Dorian pull over
even before the trooper tells them to, but that still isn't enough to save themselves. Nina reverses time again and stops at a motel
to avoid Lasky, but he finds them anyway, and things go wrong. Again. This continues over and over again. No matter what they do, no matter how closely
they follow the instructions of Lasky, it's not enough to save Dorian. The narrative of the white police officer
taking liberties with people of color is common in film and television due to how closely
it resembles real life encounters. However, what this episode of The Twilight
Zone does is go after the counter-narrative that apologists tend to use whenever cases
like this make headlines. Apologists always say “Well, he should have
done what the police said! It's his own fault!” But these ignorant declarations do not take
into account a few important things. First, even if someone is rightfully suspected
of a crime, a disproportionate amount of force is not justified. Selling smokes without a license is not a
capital offense. Second, often is the case that force is used
even when the suspect does everything the officer says. Yet, even when these encounters are recorded,
apologists for the police will then invent some other justification – like something
that must have happened that was not recorded. But that just runs into the first issue. Even if someone is rightfully suspected, disproportionate
force is still not justified. Replay shows us these encounters and the arguments
of the apologists. No matter what Nina and Dorian do, no matter
how nice she is to Lasky, no matter how closely they follow instructions, no matter how closely
they follow the law, they are still subject to his pursuit and his wrath. Those who saw the episode and just thought
it was another “woke” story about the dangers of the police missed the very specific
facet of these encounters that sometimes goes unnoticed:
The apologia for the police and the false assumption by the apologists that there is
always a way to avoid said torment or mistreatment. Sometimes, no matter how much you try, no
matter what you do, if the police have it in their mind to torment you, they will do
that. If the police have it in their mind to hurt
you, they will do that. In the climax of the episode, Nina confronts
Lasky. With so many students recording the encounter,
he backs down. Ten years later, the camcorder is accidentally
broken, and after Dorian leaves the house, police lights reflect on her face. It will never stop. Even if we record mistreatment by the police,
they can still get away with it. The entire incident can be recorded and put
on the Internet for all to see, right there, clear as crystal, and sometimes the police
are exonerated. In addition to having a new take on police
and their apologists, the episode is highly suspenseful. Each time Nina hits rewind, we are left wondering
how she can change things to create a new result. Each time when Lasky shows up anyway, we are
heartbroken and terrified. The escape scene immediately prior to the
climax is tense, and just when we think the tension has been broken, Lasky appears, and
the tension is ramped up. A false ending...and then, in the epilogue,
another false ending. He never stopped. It will never stop. They have too much power, and there sometimes
there is nothing that can be done, no matter how many chances there are. A Traveler is the story of a police officer
named Yuka, her captain, a man named Pendleton, and a mysterious stranger who suddenly appears
in their jail. He claims to be an extreme tourist, and one
thing on his bucket list is to be pardoned by Pendleton. The captain, ready to believe this obvious
fabrication because it suits his ego, releases the traveler and allows him the join the station
Christmas party. Yuka is unconvinced. Everything the traveler says turns out to
either be a lie or a means in which to turn the party-goers against one another. Even his truths are insincere. Eventually, Pendleton comes around and stuffs
the traveler back in his jail cell. Throughout the episode, there are references
to their town sharing a power grid with the nearby Air Force base and how close their
Alaskan home is to Russia. The traveler, in order to divide the captain
and Yuka further, spins a tale about Pendleton supplying intelligence to the Russians. Pendleton leaves to check on some equipment,
and Yuka, previously disbelieving everything the traveler said, accepts this spy business
as truth. She's sick of working for Pendleton, sick
of trying to assimilate into another culture so she can be accepted. The traveler's words might be lies, but these
are lies that she wants to hear. Lies that she is willing to believe, regardless
of the source. It's no coincidence that the background noise
of the episode is that of a conflict between the United States and Russia. The real battle isn't between the two powers
but between the people and those who would manipulate the people by telling them lies
that they are willing to believe. Fake News. Propaganda. Creating enemies where they don't exist. Dividing the people to take power. The traveler's alien nature is uncovered. The invasion begins. Yuka's brother, sitting in jail due to a drunk
and disorderly charge, not only accepts this foreign influence but applauds it because
even though they have bad intentions, they are fighting against people he doesn't like. It's a familiar sentiment if you have ever
heard someone suddenly believe in the goodness of dangerous entities because said entities
gave them what they wanted. There is no one-to-one allegory here. The aliens aren't Russia or the president. Rather, the episode is a melange of ideas
about truth and misinformation, about taking advantage of fear to assume power. The performances, particularly from Stephen
Yeun, are strong, and the mood it sets – the mystery – is highly suspenseful and worth
of The Twilight Zone name. Blurryman, the season finale, features Seth
Rogen seeing the end of the world and Jordan Peele playing...Jordan Peele. An excellent fake-out, the opening scene stops
in its tracks, and the episode becomes the story of Sophie, the writer of the episode-within-an-episode. The Twilight Zone goes meta and debates the
merits of sci-fi and horror that has a point to make and sci-fi and horror that exists
to frighten and let experience the nightmare without having to live in it. It was written by the same writer as the premiere
– The Comedian – which definitely had a point to make, but Blurryman takes the opposite
perspective and shows that there is value in simply letting the horror inside you. This is among the most widely-praised episodes,
though I personally preferred Six Degrees of Freedom for its claustrophobia and performances
as well as the aforementioned Replay for its more grounded horror over the meta-horror
of Blurryman. If I have one major complaint about the first
season of this Twilight Zone revival is that it spent too much time referencing the 1959
series. Not just by remaking Nightmare at 30,000 Feet
– a good episode that is indeed a completely different story. I mean the constant easter eggs and sly references
to famous episodes of the past. This is in service of diehard fans who want
their long-term stanning for Twilight Zone to be acknowledged, and frankly, I think we
can do without playing a game that amounts to letting viewers know who the so-called
“real fans” of the show are with this “I spy” silliness. Blurryman remarks on this, showing Rod Serling
as quite literally a shadow that haunts the new series. Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone can stand on
its own, and I hope they ditch the goofy fan service in season 2. Complaints about the series by others tend
to vary. One is that the episodes are “too long”
and that the are mandated to drag in the middle to suit the standard operating procedure of
the hour-long drama. The original Twilight Zone has only half an
hour with commercials, not counting season 4 which expanded to an hour. However, the idea that these episodes have
to fit neatly within a timeframe and a specific format is disproved by looking at the runtimes
for the season's episodes. Two episodes only run 37 minutes, two over
50 minutes and the rest around 40 minutes. The Twilight Zone is on the CBS streaming
service. The writers of this revival have more freedom
to tell their story as quickly or slowly as they please, unlike the confined, commercial-driven
format of the original series. The episodes aren't mandated to be long and
to drag. The scripts are as long as the writers wanted
them to be. Some episodes feel like movies, and movies
have down moments in the middle when the protagonist is at their lowest. The episodes don't drag. They're just...movies! The other common complaint about the revival
is that it isn't “subtle” enough, and that the message of each episode is too “blunt.” First of all, well, that's The Twilight Zone. This isn't a Panos Cosmatos nightmare or a
David Lynch puzzle to be solved. The Twilight Zone is a series of fables. Moral lessons made through narratives like
The Scorpion and the Frog or The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. A fable generally ends with an explicit message
to the reader, often in the form of some maxim. Episodes of The Twilight Zone generally end
with an explicit message to the viewer, originally told by Rod Serling and now by Jordan Peele. Is that too...blunt? Well, maybe, but after years of writing about
movies and watching “film bros” misinterpret Fight Club and Taxi Driver, getting the exact
opposite message and using said message to reinforce their toxic worldviews, I have become
100% OK with media being more blunt about its messaging. When someone derides a piece of media for
“lacking subtlety” as the reason that it fails, they are effectively claiming that
subtlety is an essential quality of artistic media. Someone furiously writes “Well, that was
a bit on the nose.” in their article or their tweet, and everyone
crowds around and thanks that person for their big-brain thinking. But another way of saying that the metaphor
was a bit on the nose is to say that the metaphor was on target. The episode “Not All Men” is rather “on
the nose” but why shouldn't it be? The writer felt passionately about the subject
and wanted the audience to be under no illusions about her intentions. If the episode had been too subtle, then it
wouldn't have been as inspiring, wouldn't have skewered its target as well. It might have missed the target. Not All Men is the story about men seemingly
being affected by a fallen meteorite, but in classic Twilight Zone twist fashion, it
turns out that the meteorite was only giving the men a placebo effect and that their behavior
is learned and therefore under their control. The metaphor about aggressiveness among men
being partly cultural and not simply innate is, well, not subtle. It shouldn't have to be. It tells men that being aggressive toward
others can't be justified by saying it's in their nature and therefore unavoidable. It's not. People can choose to not be awful to each
other. It's a good lesson and a tense, exciting episode
held together by strong performances. Point of Origin is about a wealthy woman named
Eve whose housekeeper, Anna, is arrested and threatened with deportation. The sci-fi twist is that Eve is actually an
alien from another world, but she has lived on Earth. This is her home. She doesn't even remember the other world. Again, not subtle about the subject matter. Who cares? Snow White from Once Upon a Time is an alien,
and that's enough reason to abolish ice. I'm with you. Not every story needs a secret meaning, and
if you think it does, you have been watching too many YouTube videos along those lines. Some critics would say that to be unsubtle
denies us the joy of realization, but that assumes too much. It assumes, first, that the audience will
have that realization, and if you have ever seen someone miss the point while watching
Starship Troopers, you know that happens. Second, it assumes that this joy of realization
is always more important than communicating clearly to a wide audience. If something is communicated clearly, someone
leaps up and says that this piece of media is “talking down to us” but the point
of a novel or television series or movie is not to stroke your ego. This isn't about...you. That is not to say subtle = bad or subtle
= good. Only that there is room in fiction for fables,
for allegory, for communicating clearly. A lack of subtlety does not make a piece of
media bad. Mad Max Fury Road literally wrote its themes
on the wall, and that movie was awesome. A television episode is not a video game. You don't have to “solve it” in order
for it to be worthwhile. If the new Twilight Zone didn't do anything
for you, that's fine, your feelings are valid, and that doesn't mean you're automatically
a film bro. I'm just saying those guys...tend to not like
this revival. That's all. Its bluntness in some of its episodes is not
a failing, it's a strength. It's not as if the writers were trying to
code their intentions and social politics in some kind of inscrutable cypher and just
“accidentally” left the code key on the table. No. They had something to say, and then they said
it – in most cases, rather dramatically, profoundly and with stellar, award-nominated
performances that struck a lot of emotional resonance. If “film bros” on “film Twitter” consistently
say that something is “too woke” and they say that it lacks subtlety, the overlap suggests
something. In their demand for “more subtlety” they
are not actually asking not to be challenged. Instead, they are asking to be able to ignore
the social politics of the piece of media. A “subtle” message allows them to do this
– to ignore, to pretend the message is either not there or that the message is the opposite
of what it actually is, conforming to the worldview of the film bro. A piece of media with clear communication
is not insulting our intelligence. It's challenging us. It's making its point unavoidable and forcing
us to think about it. “Unsubtle” media is confrontational. It's supposed to make us uncomfortable and
challenge our preconceived notions in a way that is in ambiguous. It's bold, and it's risky, but sometimes,
it works. And I think it worked here. The Twilight Zone has always been this way. Always hammy in its delivery but always in
such a way that feels necessary. I don't think we're living in times when we
should be subtle or go on and on about how “both sides” are the same. I think we're living in a time when lines
in the sand need to be drawn and hopefully drawn clearly. Communicated clearly. No more dancing around the issues. It's getting very real out there, and our
fiction – our media – should be able to reflect that.
I was so pissed when I found out they put this behind the paywall for their streaming service because more people should see it.
As someone who has loved the old show almost all my life, and consider it one of the best pieces of television in history, would I like the new show? A lot of people told me Black Mirror was "the new TS" but I ended up mostly disliking it.
At least as good as the original, which had many great episodes but in total wasn't as good as people think it was.
The Rewind episode was one of the most chilling TV shows I've seen, while the meteors-in-the-water was a great mashup of Monsters on Maple Street and The Screwfly Solution.
I thought the new twilight zone was ok, they loaded the first half of the season with the good episodes so it felt disappointing towards the end IMO.
Side note I used to like renegade cut channel, but he's become so staunch in his interpretations and self-congratulatory in his very narrow analysis. That I really can't stand him anymore.