The Twilight Zone (CBS All Access) (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

Earlier, I watched the fifth episode ("Among the Untrodden"). I liked it a lot. It had a lot to say about the hopes, fears, and desires of teenage girls -- and the twist at the end was really elegant and earned.

 

[Jason_V]

I'm still muddling through Season 1 in the hopes the show gets better for Season 2. Does S2, in fact, get better or should I just abandon the show now?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Season 1 doesn’t get any better. The finale takes what might have been a mildly interesting premise and it turns it into something spectacularly bizarre with an incredibly unearned twist at the very end.

I’ve seen the first two episodes of the second season, which are better but by no means great. Each of those two had an interesting premise that got dragged out too long, to the point where I was so far ahead of the story that the ending revelations meant nothing by the time they came. I really wish they were targeting a 20ish minute runtime. TZ always worked best as a short story that came and went before you could start thinking ahead.

 

[Matt Hough]

From everything I've read, there are a few episodes in season two that are superior to anything in season one (admittedly a low bar to jump). I don't subscribe to CBSAA; I hope to be reviewing the season two box set (as I did season one) whenever it's released.

 

[Jason_V]

Season 1 doesn’t get any better. The finale takes what might have been a mildly interesting premise and it turns it into something spectacularly bizarre with an incredibly unearned twist at the very end.

I’ve seen the first two episodes of the second season, which are better but by no means great. Each of those two had an interesting premise that got dragged out too long, to the point where I was so far ahead of the story that the ending revelations meant nothing by the time they came. I really wish they were targeting a 20ish minute runtime. TZ always worked best as a short story that came and went before you could start thinking ahead.

Okally, thank you. I know these episodes are all stand alone, but I really don't like jumping around. I'd watch all of it and know I've watched all of them. There's only a few left in S1 for me, so I guess I'll soldier on.

And very much agreed. Even the classic TZ, when it expanded to an hour, lost a lot for me watching the reruns. They felt padded and bloated. The half hour shows didn't have time for useless information; it was get in, tell the story and get out.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Half hour seems a great format because it allows you to get away with a lot of shorthand without the audience feeling shortchanged. It’s little enough time that they were able to introduce us to a character, let us know all we needed to know about that person just from the situation we met them in, and is then able to send them off on an adventure that matches the character type we’ve already accepted.

I think the longer running times demand more detail and they go ahead and provide that, but it always feels to me like less than the sum of its parts. Maybe that’s because, at the end of the day, it’s not really about that individual but about what the strange thing that individual will encounter ultimately says about the human condition. Check out, say, “Nick of Time” (aka the other Shatner episode) from the original run. A newly-wed couple has to stop in a local town because their car has broken down on their honeymoon. While they wait for repairs, they stop in a diner. A simple table top doodad, the equivalent of a magic eight ball, spooks the husband as he starts to believe the device is actually clairvoyant, though deep down he should know better. The man contemplates staying in the diner where he can be certain of life’s answers, before he decides to leave and participate in his own life. The otherworldly part of the story is the surface level question of whether the device is really capable of telling the future. The below the surface subtext is about how life doesn’t give us all the answers in advance and cautions us of getting stuck waiting for an answer that may never come instead of seeking it out ourselves.

It’s simple, effective storytelling. We know enough about the characters to be able to picture ourselves walking in their shoes, enough to start to imagine what we’d do in their situation. And the plot is laid out simply and effectively, with each moment setting up the next. We don’t need to know about the man’s work history or the inner workings of the couple’s relationships. We don’t need to know about the history of the diner or the mystical origins of the future telling doodad. We don’t need to see more of the couple using the device or more of them contemplating whether to stay or go.

But if you double the length of the story, that time has to be filled somehow, either with more plot, which we don’t need, or more character, which we also don’t need.

I had a writing professor in film school that had a lesson that stuck with me. He explained that when you’re writing, you want to enter a scene at the latest possible moment, and get out of it at the earliest possible opportunity. The old TZs do that beautifully; the newer ones do not.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

I had a writing professor in film school that had a lesson that stuck with me. He explained that when you’re writing, you want to enter a scene at the latest possible moment, and get out of it at the earliest possible opportunity. The old TZs do that beautifully; the newer ones do not.

Was that my class? Just joking, but I taught that technique in my screenwriting classes at two universities. But then, I might have nicked it from Serling himself, who taught a writing class in Hollywood (among other places). But yes, the axiom is to come into a scene with something already happening between characters and try to get out before it's resolved. I still cringe where I see scenes where people actually introduce each other or meet and handshake (guess they won't be doing that anymore!).

And I'm probably not going to catch this season of the new TZ, after the first season violated almost every other axiom of what Serling preached.

Another pearl, this one from Mike Nichols, is that a scene has to be either a negotiation, seduction, or a fight (conflict).

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I'm still muddling through Season 1 in the hopes the show gets better for Season 2. Does S2, in fact, get better or should I just abandon the show now?

I've watched a handful of episodes from the second season, and one episode from the first season. The episode from the first season was easily my least favorite.

And the black and white versions play better (for me) than the color versions.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Tonight I watched "A Human Face", the seventh episode of the second season. It was good, but it felt more like an "Outer Limits" episode than a Twilight Zone episode.

Christopher Meloni and Jenna Elfman play a married couple who are nearly done packing for a move. The husband is domineering and dismissive; the wife is still lost in her grief over the recent death of their daughter.

The radio warns that a cosmic wave is about to pass over the Earth, and when it does it leaves something behind.

There has always been a certain strangeness to Tavi Gevinson, and this story uses that to good effect.

 

[Dave Jessup]

It's probably well-known that the second season will see DVD release on January 12 '21.

Looking in on another forum, there will also be a BD-R (MOD) release, which is probably what I'll (blind) buy. Haven't budgeted for CBS streaming in-home; I'm content to bring in physical media for the originals I care about. Despite the programs' varying quality, no real regrets yet.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey guys, I just read that Paramount+ has cancelled this new Twilight Zone. I watched about 4 or 5 episodes in the first season and it just wasn’t grabbing me. So I guess it might not have been working for others? This is unfortunate. It’s been tried so often, it’s very hard to make it work for a modern audience it appears.

I’m right in the middle of revisiting the original TZ and it’s just much more engrossing and entertaining.

 

[Johnny Angell]

it’s very hard to make it work for a modern audience it appears.

Maybe it’s just hard to recreate lightening in a bottle.

 

[Matt Hough]

I reviewed both seasons of this new version of The Twilight Zone. They tried hard to capture the essence of the original series, and the second season did come a little closer to it than the first one did, but it never quite got there.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

It’s been tried so often, it’s very hard to make it work for a modern audience it appears.

I think it's less of a question of not working for a modern audience than it is not having a storyteller of Rod Serling's caliber to take up the reins.

This revival got the closest, with name actors and a sense of style that the other revivals lacked. But Simon Kinberg simply isn't anywhere close to Serling's level. If Jordan Peele had set aside his other projects and spearheaded this as showrunner instead of just producer and host, we might be having a very different conversation right now. Peele is a visionary, Kinberg is a workman. Both skill sets have their place, but Kinberg's wasn't well suited to this particular assignment.

The choice to target hour-long rather than half-hour episodes was a mistake, too; even the original series couldn't make it work when it experimented with the longer episodes during the fourth season. The concepts that make for great Twilight Zone stories aren't able to sustain the longer running time.

 

[Lord Dalek]

From what I understand, the decision to end the new new new Twilight Zone was entirely that of Peele and Kinberg and not Paramount+. This makes sense as the two never put much heart into this show as Rod did and probably wanted to get far away from it when the bad reviews started piling up. The problem for me is TZ 2019 came off as just a shallow attempt to capitalize on nostalgia than actually trying to carve its own path. See: random easter egg callbacks to the original! See: blatant pandering by allowing you to watch in black and white! See: the Blurryman!

But hey! At least it was better than New Outer Limits Season 8TZ 2002!

 

[Nelson Au]

It seems these attempts at revivals of The Twilight Zone are as dangerous as it was for Peter Hyams when he made 2010, the sequel to 2001. It will always be compared to the first film. I liked that 2010 didn’t try to duplicate the first film and made its own film.

On my current re-visit to the original Twilight Zone, I really had a strong understanding by Serling’s intros that these are stories that examine what-if scenarios. I didn’t get that sense from the new show. It was just a series of stories of horror and sci-fi that were kind of mean from the episodes that I saw.

I forgot to add, what was cool about the last revival was they got Bill Mumy to return to Its a Good Life. Maybe this revival didn’t want to go there again.

Edit, opps, I fixed the title of the Bill Mumy episodes.

 

[Lord Dalek]

. Maybe this revival didn’t want to go there again.

Well seeing as they brought the Kanamits back, yeah they went there again.

 

[Nelson Au]

Joel, I have only watched 4 or 5 first season episodes of the revival, so I don’t know what your spoiler refers to and I didn’t want to see spoiler in case I actually watch the rest of the revival episodes.