I inaugurated the Streaming section of this blog when I wrote a post about the one episode of the new Twilight Zone (episode 2) that’s a remake of an original series episode. After this other post (followed by this one and this one) I longed to watch more horror anthology films and came up with a perfect idea befitting this blog’s format.

I’ll break the remaining episodes of this Twilight Zone season into “blocks”, much like short films are broken into blocks when they’re shown at festivals. Since there are nine episodes left, it makes sense to split them into three blocks and accompany each of those posts with one about a horror anthology film featuring three stories.

So, let us begin 🙂

Episode 1: “The Comedian” – I previously mentioned my attitude towards this series was what might be best described as “cautiously optimistic”. That’s due to my disappointment with the early 2000s version and the short run of the mid-1980s version (to be fair, I’ve still never watched the latter). This first episode of the latest iteration had the potential to “make or break” my interest in the whole show. Which one did it do?

Make.

Not by a huge margin though.

The plot: a struggling comedian discovers that when he jokes about someone, that someone vanishes from existence. Very intriguing idea, in which the tension just continues to build…until the story just ends. In the most predictable way possible.

Still, I’d recommend it. Two things really make it worth your time. One is Kumal Naljini’s performance in the lead role. Although he’s best known as a comic actor in real life, the intensity he brings to the part is, (forgive my use of a cliché) so thick you can cut it with a knife. He really captures the raw emotions of this man so frustrated at being at the bottom of the hierarchy that he can’t help going berserk once he gets a superpower.

The other is the director’s stellar work. We really feel like we’re in the alcohol-filled and smoke-filled grittiness of the comedy club, almost as if it’s the pool hall in The Hustler*. Thus we can sense how badly the protagonist wants to get out of there and become someone big and notable who sells out concert venues. His frustration is palatable but are his actions justified? At least the specific way he goes about them?

It’s worth watching and finding out. Don’t set your expectations TOO high though.

Episode 3: “Replay” – Wow! The plot this time is that a black mother (played by the riveting Sanaa Lathan) is taking her aspiring film student son off to college but they cross paths with a white male cop. You can guess how well that turns out. The good thing is that the camera mom bought her son can actually rewind real time! The bad news is that’s a constant struggle for black males to not get shot and imagine what it must be like for a mother to watch her son attempt that ordeal over and over and over…

My neighbor/Twilight Zone viewing buddy and I agree that this is not only the best episode (out of at least the first six, the ones that we’ve already seen) but also the only great one and the only one to stick the landing, so to speak.

Episode 4: “A Traveler” – Another one that doesn’t stick the landing. The premise is fairly interesting. An indigenous woman on her local police force apprehends her intoxicated brother on Christmas Eve, not wanting him to be alone and thinking it won’t affect him because he’ll get the chief’s annual Christmas pardon. However, a random Asian guy played by Steven Yeun somehow ends up in a cell and talks about wanting the pardon from the chief (Greg Kinnear). This stranger turns out to be a lot stranger than they realized, including the fact that he’s apparently omniscient. It leads to an ending where the stranger gets the two main cops to inadvertently lead hostile foreign powers to nuclear weaponry the town has on hand….I think. Before you get mad that I spoiled the ending, I should make clear that I might be way off as far as what happened. My neighbor helped me make sense of it but he wasn’t certain either.

At this point in our viewing of the series my take was that the writers simply lacked the inspiration of Rod Serling, Richard Matheson, and Charles Beaumont, the three main writers of he original Twilight Zone. So far the remake had mostly given us great ideas that simply weren’t transformed into coherent, compelling narratives.

Did it get better? Eventual posts will tell you. First things first though.

Up Next: One of the horror movie trilogies I mentioned.

Bottom line: The Comedian – 77/100, Replay – 97/100, A Traveler – 33/100

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to comment.

*The original Twilight Zone episode “A Game of Pool” of course reminded many of The Hustler. The only portion of the 1980s TZ I’ve seen is, coincidentally, the alternate ending from the remake of “A Game of Pool”. I’m amazed that the 1980s remake had an ending completely different from the 1960s original yet they were equally powerful.

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