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 What is The Twilight Zone? The Twilight Zone is an anthology series that takes sci-fi, horror, the supernatural, comedy, and other genres and melds them with allegorical tales and morality plays designed to challenge the audience’s preconceptions. So far the franchise consists of the original series, the ‘84 movie by John Landis, a TV revival spawned by the success of the movie that ran from 1985-89, a UPN revival hosted by Forest Whitaker in 2002-03, a Disney World ride (it's so great), and a brand new West End play (which I saw last week and was… decent?). This will be the 4th incarnation of the show, produced, hosted, and narrated by Jordan Peele (Key & Peele, Get Out, Us). Well, who’s writing it and who’s in it? Information about the writer’s room has been scarce, but we do know that Peele is writing an episode, as well as Alex Rubens (Key & Peele, Community, Rick & Morty). What hasn’t been scarce is casting info, and the list is huge; Adam Scott, Kumail Nanjiani, John Cho, Allison Tolman, Jacob Tremblay, Steven Yeun, Greg Kinnear, Jessica Williams, Rhea Seehorn, James Frain, Tracy Morgan, Chris Diamantopoulos, Seth Rogen, Zazie Beetz, and Chris O’Dowd, among others. The first season will consist of ten episodes, including a remake of the William Shatner episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, this time starring Adam Scott. “The Comedian” will star Kumail Nanjiani with guest appearances by Tracy Morgan and Chris Diamantopoulos. Tremblay will appear “The Wunderkind”, and O’Dowd will star in “The Blue Scorpion”. Where can I watch it? And now, the bad news. The Twilight Zone will be a CBS All Access exclusive here in the states (If anyone knows how international viewers can see it, let me know and I will gladly add it to the OP), though I’m sure there will be plenty of ways for you to All Access it somewhere else. “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet” and “The Comedian” will premiere on 4/1, with an episode TBD returning on 4/11 and every week after. quote:In Canada The Twilight Zone will be carried by Citytv, it will premiere on Thursday April 4 at 9:00pm ET with the first two episodes, and then a new episode will be released weekly on Thursdays, starting April 11. Trailers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29_gA_GDGvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmCE17h6cO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnRda4EVHkQ This doesn’t air for a week, what am I supposed to do until then!? Well for starters, you should rewatch Get Out and go see Us in theaters, but you should also take a deep dive into the original series while it’s streaming on Netflix. The original series ran from 1959-1964, with series creator Rod Serling and veteran writers Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson writing the bulk of the series. Serling alone wrote or provided the story for 92 of the 156 original episodes, in addition to hosting and narrating. Here’s a few lists of episodes to watch: The ones everyone knows Season 1 Time Enough at Last, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street Season 2 The Eye of the Beholder, Nick of Time, The Invaders, Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?, The Obsolete Man Season 3 The Shelter, It’s a Good Life, Five Characters in Search of an Exit, To Serve Man, The Dummy Season 5 Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Living Doll, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Lesser-known Gems Season 1 One for The Angels, The Lonely, Third From the Sun, The Mighty Casey Season 2 King Nine Will Not Return, The Whole Truth, Mr Dingle, The Strong, The Rip Van Winkle Caper Season 3 A Game of Pool, Deaths-Head Revisited, Hocus-Pocus and Frisby Season 5 The Long Morrow, The Masks I haven't recommended anything from Season 4 because the format changed from half-hour to full-hour episodes, and as a result they're all full of filler and generally not very memorable. That should get you started though. I've never watched the '85 or '03 shows in their entirety, but if someone wants to toss out recommendations for those two (as well as any streaming availability), I'll gladly add it to the OP. 
Big Mean Jerk fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Mar 30, 2019 |
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Mar 25, 2019 21:16
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Escobarbarian posted:Great OP, thanks. I was thinking about hitting the West End Show up, is there any chance you could give a lil more info on how it works and what it adapts? Sure. The play adapts "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?", "The Shelter", "The Long Morrow", "Nightmare as a Child", "In Praise of Pip", "Eye of the Beholder", "Little Girl Lost", and "And When the Sky Was Opened". It doesn't do each episode at once, it does one scene at a time for each, weaving back and forth between narratives. Some are shortened, some are mostly full length, with Martian serving more or less as a framing device at the beginning and end. There's two songs that I felt were completely unnecessary, but YMMV. There's also (finale spoilers) an attempt at making Serling a character in his own story with mixed results. What I enjoyed most about it were the actual adaptations and how well some of them worked as a stage production. The set design is great and the way they portray the intro visuals is pretty clever. All the actors are dressed in shades of grey and given harsh makeup, so while they aren't literally painted in grey it still gives the feel of watching a B&W tv episode. Overall it was fairly well done, and I suspect some of the hiccups are due to the fact that it's only been running for a couple weeks. If you can see it for a reasonable price, I'd definitely recommend it.
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Mar 25, 2019 22:36
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mangler103 posted:There are some great Season 4 episodes. Don't sleep on those. I'll have to give S4 another watch someday, I guess. I vaguely remember the Meredith episode, but I'm drawing a blank on the others. TrekMovie has a writeup of the first four episodes and the consensus is a little mixed on two of them, but in general shows promise. I've also added info on how to watch the show in Canada to the OP.
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Mar 30, 2019 22:06
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I thought this was going to drop at a set time like Discovery, but it appears that the first two episodes are streaming on the CBS app now. I watched the first ten minutes of The Comedian just to see Peele’s intro and the new theme. Seems decent enough.
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Apr 1, 2019 16:06
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Croatoan posted:Just finished the free episode. I liked it but it made me realize we already had a Twilight Zone reboot. They just called it Black Mirror. Nah, Black Mirror owes way more to 90’s Outer Limits than TZ. Black Mirror and Outer Limits are all about how humanity will misuse New Technology [X] or become corrupted by it. Twilight Zone all boils down to “is man inherently good or inherently evil?” or “can man overcome his flaws?” regardless of setting or props. Because of that, Twilight Zone can tell stories dealing with sci-fi, horror, comedy, the supernatural, historicals, etc. BM and Outer Limits are limited in the scope of stories they can tell because of their central premise.
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Apr 1, 2019 20:01
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Finally watched both. - The Comedian definitely ran long and could have easily cut half the disappearances. One little easter egg I noticed was the masks on either side of the stage were the son’s mask from “The Masks”. - Nightmare was excellent, more of that please. - Peele nailed the cadence of the narration and he looks great as the host. - I’m definitely down for more of this, it shows real promise and it looks great for a tv show. It’s already nailed the Twilight Zone tone better than I thought it would. - It’s a little thing, but I love that the outro theme is the same as the original series.
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Apr 2, 2019 05:36
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General Dog posted:What’s the episode where Earth is getting closer and closer to the sun, and then it turns out it’s a dream and the Earth is actually getting further away from the sun? That’s a classic “gently caress you” ending. “The Midnight Sun”
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Apr 2, 2019 06:47
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Croatoan posted:Nightmare at 30,000 Feet The podcast said that Adam Scott's character was the only one to go missing. What about the pilot dude who tried to kill everybody? So the passengers are gonna kill the paranoid dude but the dude that tried to actually kill them, they're fine with? Or the other pilot was entirely in Adam Scott’s head and he was the one who actually crashed the plane. I can’t remember if anyone else interacts with the other guy at all.
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Apr 4, 2019 16:22
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Phenotype posted:Huh, that makes sense. Maybe it was Adam Scott the whole time. But I still don't see how he overpowered both pilots with his hands cuffed. I really liked that transition, when the "pilot" goes through the cockpit door, and it's triumphant at first and then... man, that's a lot more violence than I pictured. Hm. Just use a good ol’ fashioned Kirk doublefist slam to the back. Instant knockout.
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Apr 5, 2019 03:15
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New episode is up and it’s decent. It’s nice to see Steven Yeun enjoy a role after sleepwalking through all those terrible Walking Dead seasons. Not sure what to make of next week’s episode.
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Apr 18, 2019 20:58
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I liked the episode, but the only way I can figure the plot makes sense is if you take Traveler at his word and he really is a popular YouTuber with a weird location bucketlist who knew the invasion was coming but just wanted to gently caress with some dumb humans before it began.
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Apr 20, 2019 06:58
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It felt like this episode really wanted to be a spiritual successor to “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”, but the writer didn’t fully commit and instead spent the additional 30 minutes allotted teasing two other, more interesting explanations. If they’d given the script one more pass and a leaner 22-30 minute runtime we’d have had a solid contender for ‘best episode thus far’.
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Apr 21, 2019 05:42
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I watched it a second time and, while still a mess, Traveler’s plan made a bit more sense. - He ingratiates himself at the party so they’ll believe everything he says later - He lies about Yuka’s brother to exploit the existing divide between her and Pendleton and pit them against each other - He sets the townsfolk against each other to get them (and the other deputies) out of the station - He knows there’s a shed somewhere but he doesn’t seem to know the exact location, so he threatens Pendleton to scare him into driving right to it He doesn’t seem to know where the shed is, only that it exists, and he could easily have just deduced that from what he already knew about the Air Force and the town sharing a power grid. The plot makes sense if you squint and stare and assume these powerful invading aliens can’t just scan for the power grid connection.
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Apr 22, 2019 04:02
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Finally watched the last two episodes. Didn’t care for Wunderkind, not because it was so on the nose, but because it didn’t do anything clever with the premise. It was like an extended SNL bit played mostly straight. At least The Waldo Moment was lucky enough to air pre-Trump. Doing the same thing now just elicits ambivalence because the real life inspiration isn’t that far removed from the scenario presented. This week’s episode was better, but the twist (or at least some version of it) was obvious and as a result the plot became predictable. Decent enough, but nothing memorable. It’s too bad, because the initial premise of the crew having to decide between aborting and staying on earth to die or launching as a means of permanent escape could have been interesting. This week never felt like a Twilight Zone episode, more like something from the 90’s Outer Limits. Next week looks like it has potential though 
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May 3, 2019 07:30
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Former Human posted:When your show is a platform for activism it isn't conducive to much creativity. Is this your first exposure to The Twilight Zone or something? The original show already covered almost every single topic you mentioned (if you broaden ‘gun control’ to cover violence and the horrors of war). The original show wasn’t exactly subtle either. Sometimes you need to beat people over the head with the moral of the story. Criticizing the show for weak plots and bad dialogue is fine, god knows there have been poo poo episodes this season. But if you’re taking issue with the show trying to tackle social issues then you either don’t understand what the Twilight Zone has been about since its original incarnation or you’re the target audience for the moral and you feel personally attacked. Big Mean Jerk fucked around with this message at 10:27 on May 17, 2019 |
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May 17, 2019 10:19
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I just find it bizarre that CBS didn’t really promote this season at all. No news about casting or writers or anything until a week before the whole thing dropped.
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Jul 3, 2020 03:33
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I’m still working through the season and I’m enjoying it (for the most part) more than the first season, but I also appreciate that they’ve toned the references to the original series down a tad instead of just literally shoving gremlin toys and Mystic Seers into every episode. I’m on “A Human Face” right now and the moving company in it is named after one of my favorite “dumb” episodes, “Mr. Dingle, The Strong”. It’s not a reference I ever expected to see.  I swear I also saw a toy of the clown from “Five Characters in Search of an Exit”, but I may be wrong.
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Jul 10, 2020 07:07
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Of course i just got done praising their restraint on directly referencing the original series... and then You Might Also Like happened.  Random thoughts on each episode: - Meet in The Middle: This one played it straighter than I expected, to its own detriment imo. Instead of having Gillian Barnes manipulate Jimmi Simpson into killing her husband, I kinda thought it was heading towards an allegory about toxic guys trying to "save" women in bad relationships expecting to play The Hero. Average episode, a bit on the dull side though. - Downtime: This one felt like it was constantly in search of a larger plot. The big reveal came way too soon and should have been saved til the very end with Tony Hale's character. It only paid basic lip service to any of the issues raised within the episode, like what value Morena Baccarin's character's life had disconnected from her user, or the morality of a company forcing a sentient AI to sign away liability in that situation, etc. And then it just ended with a big storytelling shrug. I was shocked to see this one was written by Peele, but I guess he's an extremely busy dude and sometimes you just have to phone one in. - The Who of You: This one was solid, and the goofy premise and somewhat bleak ending felt appropriately Twilight Zone. - Ovation: Felt very underbaked beyond the surface-level "fame is a double-edged sword" message. - Among the Untrodden: Liked this one quite a bit. It would have been very easy for this to veer too far into Carrie territory, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it avoid that pitfall. - 8: I have no idea what the gently caress this episode was trying to say. Glen Morgan always turned in solid X-Files scripts, but I guess a lot of that must have been his writing partnership with James Wong. Just a giant mess that Joel McHale sleep-walked through. - A Human Face: Another solid one, but the resolution felt a bit rushed. - A Small Town: This would be the best episode of the season (and the revival series thus far) if not for the episode that came after. I've never seen New Girl or Happy Endings, so I don't think I've ever seen Damon Wayans Jr in anything before this, but he was great. This fit right into the long pantheon of quirky small town Twilight Zone episodes and I really enjoyed it. - Try, Try: This one worked perfectly. I found the opening act charming as hell and it suckered me in, so that slow reveal of what a creep Mark was really upped the tension in each scene. "Groundhog Day, but used as a metaphor for toxic partners and white guy privilege" is not a plot I expected to work this well, but Mark's descent into incel menace was really well done and Claudia beating the piss out of him felt genuinely cathartic. This is the kind of episode I was hoping the revival would lean into more. - You Might Also Like: This episode could have been improved with one simple change; exchange the Kanimits for some other alien race. They add nothing beyond a "Hey remember THEM? Remember THAT episode??" factor and actively distract from whatever this episode was trying to say. It even grinds to a halt in their big reveal so that they can make a bunch of aggressively unfunny KFC jokes. Their plan doesn't even make sense if the show wants us to believe they're the same aliens from the original episode. Why bother with all the subterfuge just to kill humanity off with a convoluted marketing scheme when the whole thing they're remembered for is that they loving eat us? Why bother? Still, it's definitely a better crop of episodes than season 1. The near-total lack of marketing for this season has me a bit worried about the show's future but I'm really hopeful it'll be renewed. It feels like the show has finally found its groove.
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Jul 11, 2020 03:31
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