New version of The Twilight Zone to be on CBS All Access

I stand corrected!

 

By the way, while the moral of the prime episode was quite clear ("Careful what you wish for" or "Don't sacrifice others to your ambitions" or whatever), I'm not sure what would be the lesson to be learned from the second one. Don't believe to random podcast you find on an airplane? Don't forget to take your pills?

 

The monster in our head is the most dangerous.

 

so, "Don't forget to take your pills"..? Because I believe che protagonist had already had a previous mental breakdown...

 

I think it would've been a stronger story without the mental illness angle. Though I understand why they included it, as it was a central element of the original story.

 

I was unsatisfied. There was some good stuff there but the episodes were too long, too vague and felt like it took short cuts to get to the end and to resolve the episode. I know nobody does 25-minute dramas but The Twilight Zone worked up the perfect formula for that. I don't mind so stories being longer if they're justified but The Comedian was bloated and Nightmare also needed to have a tightened up pace.

 

Agreed. I think once facet of the original TZ's greatness lay in it's half-hour format. The stories were very tight and concise. "The Comedian" dragged as a result of having to stretch to fill 56 minutes.

Will watch this episode today. I resisted mainly because it bugs that this is at least the 2nd remake of a classic episode. WHY? At least in the 2003 TZ they took "It's A Good Life" and gave us a sequel.

 

I wish CBS AA also had the original TZ in its library. After seeing these new episodes I feel like watching some of the old ones.

 

Agreed. They knew how to work their half-hour (really 25 minutes) format and the new show shouldn't be afraid of that.

Like I said, I don't mind an episode being longer as long as the story justifies it. Season 4 of The Twilight Zone gets a bad rap. While the format didn't work in the long run, they still had a number of excellent one-hour episodes.

 

They do have the original Twilight Zone (Well, except for season 4 I think). So enjoy!

 

Every episode was like a parable. A simple story in which to examine the human condition and perhaps make commentary. It's hard to go an hour when the story is pretty basic and straightforward whereby the audience gets your message early. I think it was in the 1980s version they went an hour, however, each episode contained 2 or 3 stories. Past 25 minutes and I think you hit a point of diminishing returns.

Thanks for pointing out S4 of the original was an hour. I guess that explains why it is not in the CBS AA inventory.

 

No problem. Yeah, unfortunately Season 4 was never syndicated back in the day because of its one-hour runtime. Syfy got the rights to Season 4 and you'll see that during the marathon though I find it odd that Netflix and particularly CBS All Access would not have Season 4 streaming.

Agreed on the half-hour shows...it's hard to maintain that tension with a longer runtime. The resolution of The Comedian was pretty obvious halfway through.

 

I'm watching the first episode.

The premise here is kind of in Buffy Metaphor category. "You put something in your act...and it's NO LONGER YOURS!" The premise works as a TZ premise though seems vanity project-esque for Jordan Peele. The writing was fine but the casting didn't work for the material. He's a comedian and acts like a comedian, not like an actor playing a comedian.

 

Why no Hitler jokes, Lee Harvey Oswald Jokes, or Jesus Jokes?

A tight set on any of those characters would have completely upended the Time line?

The Genghis Khan gene is in 1/2 a percent of the entire race.

 

He tried a President joke. It didn't worked. Whatever spell he was under, it seems people laughed only if:
1) he personally knew (even briefly) the people who was talking about
2) he knew their name

 

Okay, I finally got to watch episode two. I enjoyed it, and it mostly succeeded in achieving that fabled TZ vibe, but I'm not sure quite what to make of it overall. I loved seeing the creeping shadow of The Twilight Zone invade the modern world of podcasts and mobile devices and cockpit cameras (and possibly flights to Mars-- I didn't quite catch what that billboard was about). The sets and effects were unfortunately photorealistic, but the disorienting and claustrophobic camerawork more or less compensated for that. The casting was classic TZ, with the protagonist, the hijacker, the captain, and the air marshal all distinctive character actor types. Where did the spooky MP3 player come from? Who cares? This is the Twilight Zone, where the universe fucks with you for no apparent reason. (And also, why an MP3 player, which would be a retro touch right now, let alone in the day-after-tomorrow future of this episode?).

One thing that really made me happy was that this was not a remake of "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"-- the title was just an homage. They didn't even recycle the character names. Thank you, Jordan Peele. And the main character's performance was certainly an homage to William Shatner, as he not only made an increasing nuisance of himself to the flight crew, but also managed to sneak around the narrow confines of the aircraft and poke into people's belongings without being noticed. He even went a step further than Shatner-- instead of just shooting out a window, he managed to crash the plane.

But it was the ending that really kind of messed with the narrative. Throughout the episode, the podcast was pretty explicit about the aircraft being lost with all passengers and crew-- and yet when the journalist finds the MP3 on the beach (both conveniently located and still working), the narration reveals that everyone but him survived. This implies a change in the timeline, and that his actions saved everyone's lives. Yet all the passengers gang up on him (and apparently dispose of his body without a trace). The podcast doesn't mention the hijacker at all. Did he survive? Was he a stowaway? A ghost? The passengers and crew that attacked the journalist were actually behaving like vengeful EC Zombies, which would have made sense aside from that being at odds with the podcast. I think a better ending, more fitting to the mental and temporal disorientation of the episode, would have been just leaving him alone on the beach with the podcast telling him that everyone had been saved months later-- leaving him not only abandoned, but time displaced. As it was, it kind of felt like the first episode of a Lost reboot-- or parody.

Overall, though, it was an entertaining episode, successfully accomplishing the old TZ vibe, ending aside. Not quite as successful as the first episode, but punchier and still well done.

 

I don’t think it’s fair to compare it to the original TZ.

But I think it’s fair to compare it to Black Mirror.

 

This. And in my opinion the average episode of BM is way better of these two episodes combined.

 

Thank you. Last time I checked I didn't see it, but it is there now. And it does have season 4 too.

 

Not to bring STD into the discussion, but this remake does manage to capture the format and style of the original while telling more modern stories. I wish STD would do the same.