New version of The Twilight Zone to be on CBS All Access
- Thread starter Shaka Zulu
- Start date
Yeah, that's how I've been feeling about the show so far. I thought the first two episodes were decent enough but I now realize now that was despite the writing while everything else was great (acting, directing, cinematography).
Same thing with "A Traveler" everything was great but the writing. Great set of actors, terrific atmosphere, decent premise, terrible writing. At the end, I was left wondering what the point was.
I keep feeling like Jordan's summaries, both but especially the closers, don't really match with the story itself and often feels like they're trying to force fit the stories with summaries together and they're not meshing at all.
Glad you brought this up. I agree. I thought I was the only one who felt that way.
I transcribed the opening and closing narration.
Opening Narration: "Meet Sergeant Yuka Mongoyak. A woman with a knack for detecting the most subtle of mistruths. On this night, a night of most powerful of myths, that skill will be tested like never before. She is about to learn that the truth can take many different forms, depending on how you look at it because tonight Sergeant Yuka's vantage point is at the very heart of the twilight zone."
Closing narration: "The most dangerous lies come in the form of beautifully wrapped gifts. On this evening, Sergeant Yuka discovered that there is no difference between myth and mistruth. She unwrapped her fateful present far too late on this dark and silent night in the twilight zone."
Honestly, I feel like Jordan Peele just tossed a bunch of Twilight Zone cliches together. I am not super sure how the narrations fit the story.
Yeah, cliché. That's the word I was forgetting in my post. It feels like he's trying too hard to be parable-y and as a result, he sounds more cliché-y than anything else.
Also, what's this about myths in "A Traveler"? There's nothing in that story to suggest anything about myths other than what he says in the summaries. It's very jarring.
Also, what's this about myths in "A Traveler"? There's nothing in that story to suggest anything about myths other than what he says in the summaries. It's very jarring.
And now I've seen episode four, "A Traveler," which starred Glenn from Walking Dead. Again, it superficially captured the feel of The Twilight Zone, but the fragments never quite came together. And for a small police station in an out-of-the-way town, that place sure had long corridors and a big dungeon. Also, it was a Christmas episode-- did they not get the memo on when the series would air?
So, in classic TZ fashion, we've got an isolated spot with spooky and inexplicable goings-on going on. In essence, it seems, an alien has disguised himself as a human in order to get the secret location of a shed that controls the power supply to a nearby Air Force monitoring station, so that it can be shut down and open a window for the invading saucers to come. Okay then. Why did the alien choose to appear mysteriously inside a locked cell underneath the police station, raising all kinds of suspicions? Why was the sergeant the only one who was actually suspicious and the captain not even interested in how the guy got into the underground holding area? If the aliens have the power to appear in human form, why did the traveler use this power in such a lame-ass fashion? If the traveler has access to the inner secrets of the townspeople, why would he need to trick the captain into revealing the location of the shed? And if he is such a know-it-all, why does he lie sometimes and sometimes tell the truth? Why does he come at the time of the Christmas party and feign interest in the festivities, only to use his secrets to incite interpersonal conflicts that never go anywhere? Why does the sergeant try to arrest the captain even though no Russians show up and there's no evidence that the traveler was telling the truth? If the shed is so important, why do neither Russians nor space aliens show up to tamper with it, yet the saucers come down anyway? And why is that particular area so important to the aliens' invasion plans?
Why do the aliens even want to invade? And, from a storytelling perspective, what was the point of all this?
The Narrator's narration talks about a "night of the most powerful myth," presumably Christmas, and that "there is no difference between myth and mistruth." How does an alien invasion connect with Christmas being based on myth? Because the alien is a pathological liar? The town drunk says to the alien that "we might be better off with you in charge," even though nobody seems especially bad off, and the sergeant kind of hates the captain, because he has a somewhat overbearing personality even though he seems like a decent enough guy, so is the theme that banal aliens are no different than banal humans? Happy Holidays or Take Us To Your Leader-- six of one, half a dozen of the other. And how does that tie into the sergeant's alleged gift for sniffing out lies, which she didn't really demonstrate in any convincing fashion? Everything about this story was just half hearted and didn't link up in any kind of cohesive narrative.
We're almost halfway through the first season of this revival, and so far the style is really nice-- but the substance has been lacking at best.
So, in classic TZ fashion, we've got an isolated spot with spooky and inexplicable goings-on going on. In essence, it seems, an alien has disguised himself as a human in order to get the secret location of a shed that controls the power supply to a nearby Air Force monitoring station, so that it can be shut down and open a window for the invading saucers to come. Okay then. Why did the alien choose to appear mysteriously inside a locked cell underneath the police station, raising all kinds of suspicions? Why was the sergeant the only one who was actually suspicious and the captain not even interested in how the guy got into the underground holding area? If the aliens have the power to appear in human form, why did the traveler use this power in such a lame-ass fashion? If the traveler has access to the inner secrets of the townspeople, why would he need to trick the captain into revealing the location of the shed? And if he is such a know-it-all, why does he lie sometimes and sometimes tell the truth? Why does he come at the time of the Christmas party and feign interest in the festivities, only to use his secrets to incite interpersonal conflicts that never go anywhere? Why does the sergeant try to arrest the captain even though no Russians show up and there's no evidence that the traveler was telling the truth? If the shed is so important, why do neither Russians nor space aliens show up to tamper with it, yet the saucers come down anyway? And why is that particular area so important to the aliens' invasion plans?
Why do the aliens even want to invade? And, from a storytelling perspective, what was the point of all this?
The Narrator's narration talks about a "night of the most powerful myth," presumably Christmas, and that "there is no difference between myth and mistruth." How does an alien invasion connect with Christmas being based on myth? Because the alien is a pathological liar? The town drunk says to the alien that "we might be better off with you in charge," even though nobody seems especially bad off, and the sergeant kind of hates the captain, because he has a somewhat overbearing personality even though he seems like a decent enough guy, so is the theme that banal aliens are no different than banal humans? Happy Holidays or Take Us To Your Leader-- six of one, half a dozen of the other. And how does that tie into the sergeant's alleged gift for sniffing out lies, which she didn't really demonstrate in any convincing fashion? Everything about this story was just half hearted and didn't link up in any kind of cohesive narrative.
We're almost halfway through the first season of this revival, and so far the style is really nice-- but the substance has been lacking at best.
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Honestly, so far, I don't think this show is that great.
This show has been really more of a downer. The Twilight Zone seems to hurt everyone it touches, and that wasn't true in the original or other incarnations.
Yes, sometimes that happened, but not always. Usually the Twilight Zone story, when it has a negative ending, involves a bad person getting some sort of comeuppance. They deserve their fate. Again, sometimes bad things happen to good people though in general, bad things happened to people that either were bad, or made some decisions that caused them to deserve their fate. Like they gave into a temptation for self betterment but they did something bad to someone else.
Often however, the Twilight Zone story involved someone ending up in a better position than before. Maybe the hero makes a great sacrifice for the betterment of others. Or the story takes a good person who was in a bad position and allows them to be better off in the end. A happy ending.
4 episodes in and we don't have that at all yet.
It's been a downer of a show so far.
This show has been really more of a downer. The Twilight Zone seems to hurt everyone it touches, and that wasn't true in the original or other incarnations.
Yes, sometimes that happened, but not always. Usually the Twilight Zone story, when it has a negative ending, involves a bad person getting some sort of comeuppance. They deserve their fate. Again, sometimes bad things happen to good people though in general, bad things happened to people that either were bad, or made some decisions that caused them to deserve their fate. Like they gave into a temptation for self betterment but they did something bad to someone else.
Often however, the Twilight Zone story involved someone ending up in a better position than before. Maybe the hero makes a great sacrifice for the betterment of others. Or the story takes a good person who was in a bad position and allows them to be better off in the end. A happy ending.
4 episodes in and we don't have that at all yet.
It's been a downer of a show so far.
The genius of the classic TZ was that they were short parables, usually with a twist of irony at the end to drive home a point. They were 20 minutes short stories with a singular, focused message ("mob rule is self-destructive" or "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"). This new TZ would do well to follow that formula. The main problem with "A Traveler" is that it did the exact opposite. It was an hour long episode that tried to do too many things and ended up being all over the place. It tried to be a Christmas story, a mystery about the identity of a man wanting a pardon, a parable about truth and mistruths, a story about a spy trying to get information, and an alien invasion story. It would have been much better if it had been shorter and focused on only one of those themes.
I think if it was an XMas story, it would have had a happier ending.
Even the one episode that seemed to have a happy ending, last week, they made a strong implication that it did not at the very last second.
Even the one episode that seemed to have a happy ending, last week, they made a strong implication that it did not at the very last second.
Personally, I liked the idea that "A Traveler" seemed to start with, of a mysterious man asking for a pardon on Christmas eve. If they had not gone the alien route and instead just explored whether he deserved a pardon or not, I think that would have been a much better story. It could have explored themes of mercy and who deserves mercy.
Yes, this is something the 2002 Twilight Zone seemed to forget. Everyone remembers the twist endings of the original Twilight Zone and rightfully so. But it was also very much about giving people a second chance. Rod liked doing that with characters he liked. This TZ so far seems as uninterested in doing that as the 2002 Twilight Zone often was.
This show is not only a downer but an incoherent mess. The weakest episodes of Black Mirror are better than this new Twilight Zone and it isn't even close.
This ^. And honestly, Mr. j and I watched it last night and then this morning I was trying to remember WTF we had seen on the screen. That does not bode well at all, seeing as I can remember so much of the original TZ - Masks, The Obsolete Man, Death's Head Revisited, Eye of the Beholder and on and on and on, with virtually no prompting.
It could have been a terrific episode about who deserves good treatment. And the subplot about the Inuit culture being disrespected could have come into play as well. We know the sheriff is a jackass. What if it turned into a racist back and forth of pardoning a member of this minority versus a member of that minority? Anything other than Alien of the Week. How many times are they going to go to that well?
The first 3 had supernatural elements to them -- the killer act, the omniscient podcast, and the time-erasing camcorder. So the writers could have gone in a direction that wasn't toward an alien invasion. When AT manipulates the residents into fighting with each other, it got interesting. And then it turned into weird spyish stuff and went off the rails.
For me a lot of the best original eps were downers so I don't mind that aspect of this new one. Henry Bemis from Time Enough at Last had a cruel wife & boss and then after surviving he lost his only reason to live. In It's a Good Life all the characters seem like good enough people but were tormented by that kid sending them to the cornfield.
I was disappointed by the latest episode, like others have said the story is just a jumble of elements. I don't have much hope for the rest of the series and pretty sure I'm going to look back at it like the last two reboots
I was disappointed by the latest episode, like others have said the story is just a jumble of elements. I don't have much hope for the rest of the series and pretty sure I'm going to look back at it like the last two reboots
The problem is -- ALL of the episodes have been downers. 4 for 4. In some cases, good people got hurt undeservedly so. So far, the TZ has essentially been an evil entity. I honestly have no desire to watch next week, and I may skip it until the one after comes out. The preview really didn't show much other than a kid--didn't we see the powerful evil kid tormenting people before?
Saw this...
More racist Cops who's racism is also more determined than Time Travel.
More racist Cops who's racism is also more determined than Time Travel.
This is a false narrative that Hollywood is shoving on people to cause more racial division.
Hollywood?
It's a B-Movie made by a couple indie no-ones on their way up.
Harmless wish fulfillment.
It's a B-Movie made by a couple indie no-ones on their way up.
Harmless wish fulfillment.
Pretty much the biggest cliche in time travel stories.
Smells like another Teen President.
Well, that was awful.
Blunt Trump metaphor.
"Sigh".
Well, that was awful.
Blunt Trump metaphor.
"Sigh".
Well, that was 40 minutes of my life I'd like back. The Trump as immature 11 year old brat metaphor was like getting hit upside the head with a brick. Ow. I can read his Twitter feed if I want that.