TV Review - The Twilight Zone (2019)

Simon Kinberg, Jordan Peele and Marco Ramirez have remade Rod Serling's 1959 series. This isn't the first time someone has remade the classic TV program. It was revived the first time in 1985 and then again in 2002. Each time, the series was able to come up with short stories that were interesting or exciting. There were hits and there were misses, which is generally the case with any anthology series. Short stories or short films can be difficult. It can be even more difficult when there's some science-fiction or fantasy element to it because often more time is needed to explore the sci-fi or fantasy element, as well as establish and develop character. Often, one has to accept that fact, but Serling was able for the most part to find a nice balance. He was more a master of efficient story-telling than he was exploring sci-fi or fantasy.

This series loses that idea. Because it's online and on a streaming service, this series isn't constrained by commercial TV time limits. Each episode here is kept to about a hour, but even that amount feels too long. Serling's series kept each episode under 30 minutes. Most of the time though, he never left the audience wanting for more. Each episode mostly felt like it was the right amount of time to tell whatever story or tale. Here, the writers feel like they drag or indulge, taking too long to tell their stories. It feels like the opposite of efficient story-telling. It feels like spinning its wheels. At the same time, I felt like for certain stories, more time could have been utilized.

Otherwise, a lot of the stories or concepts didn't make sense or land for me. The first episode felt like it stumbled in that regard because I'm not sure what the point or what the moral was. Serling's stories always had clear morals or messages that he was trying to convey. They were clear in the sense that good versus bad where literally black-and-white. What a person should do and what it shouldn't do were boldly communicated without much confusion or equivocation. Serling sometimes would just build to a cruel or shocking twist of fate, but even in those stories where there were no moral, there was a cleverness, presenting an idea that one hadn't seen before. I can't really say that that's the case here.

Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick and Silicon Valley) stars in the first episode as Samir, a stand-up comedian who is cursed so that the only time he gets laughs are when he does jokes that are about his own life or people that he personally knows. The down-side is that after he does so, those people about whom he jokes disappear from his life completely and it becomes as if those people never existed. At first, he does so with people he doesn't like, but eventually he starts joking about people he loves and they disappear.

Yet, I'm not sure what the point of the episode is. It could be saying that comedians shouldn't joke about people in their lives, but this is ridiculous because the best comedians in the world do exactly that. Maybe, it's meant to underscore how stand-up comedy affects the comedian or maybe it's meant to underscore how far a comedian will go in order to get a laugh, even if it means erasing people from existence. It doesn't make sense because the jokes that Samir crafts about the various people aren't funny. He's basically just name-checking them, so maybe the critique is of audiences, but I wasn't sure.

Adam Scott (Big Little Lies and Parks and Recreation) also stars in the second episode as Justin Sanderson, a passenger on an airplane. Justin finds a MP3 player that plays a podcast that tells him the future and that future is that the plane he's on will disappear. He then becomes paranoid. The episode is a riff on Serling's episode starring William Shatner. This episode is a bit clearer in that it shows how irrational xenophobia is. It also exposes the bias to believe or trust a white guy as a prejudice or bigotry to be examined.

The rest of the episodes are all examples of what I mentioned before of spinning its wheels. The only saving grace is the diversity in casting that the series obviously emphasized. Women of color lead three of the episodes. Men of color, particularly Asian men, lead three of the episodes. This means more than half the season is led by people of color, which is beautiful and wonderful. In two of those episodes, it allows for stories to be told that are specific to those people of color.

Sanaa Lathan (The Affair and Love & Basketball) also stars as Nina Harrison, a mother driving with her son in Virginia to drop him off at college. Along the way, they're pulled over and her son is shot by a state trooper. Yet, she learns she has an old camcorder that can take her back in time to save her son, but every time she tries, her son still ends up dead. This episode is a clear commentary on Black Lives Matter. Yet, it's an example of how the episode doesn't find a nice balance of the sci-fi element and the character study.

The only episode that had any impact for me was the fifth episode titled "The Wunderkind." Like the second episode, it felt very much like a Serling episode from over 50 years ago. The episode was about a young boy named Oliver Foley, played by Jacob Tremblay (Wonder and Room) who runs for President of the United States. It reminded me of "It's a Good Life" from the third season of Serling's series. It starred Billy Mumy who had the power to do anything he wanted. It was a dangerous, supernatural power, which had the adults terrified and obeying his every command. Here, Oliver doesn't have a supernatural power, but the power of the presidency is tantamount.

I think the episode was a brilliant re-imagining of that 1961 episode. It was also a brilliant commentary on America's current politics. Oliver could also be a metaphor for Donald Trump. However, if Oliver is the proxy for Trump, the proxy for Steve Bannon is Raff Hanks, played by John Cho (Star Trek and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle). It's probably the best episode of the season.

Rated TV-MA-LV
Running Time: 1 hr. / 10 eps.

Available on CBS All Access.