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

[Sam Favate]

Does anyone know what day of the week new episodes will drop for Twilight Zone? With Discovery, it's Thursdays, but I am unclear when TZ happens. Mondays?

 

[Nelson Au]

It was Monday last week. I just checked the CBS All Access app for Twilight Zone and it says new episodes stream on Thursday. That surprised me, I assumed Monday’s.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The premiere was a Monday special for April Fools Day. New episodes will be in Thursdays but I don’t think they’ve announced if it will appear at a specific time like Discovery.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Was there a streaming issue last night (Saturday)? I couldn't 'access' the second episode and got a message saying they were having a temporary problem.

 

[Kyrsten Brad]

Like Josh who selects a TOS Star Trek episode after watching the latest Star Trek Discovery, I chose to watch an episode of the original Twilight Zone. I chose Penny for Your Thoughts. It’s a favorite and it was a delightful story that wasn’t so dark like the two new episodes. There was supernatural elements with the coin, humor, intrigue and love and Hector Pool comes out the other end as a new man.

I’ll have to try that myself since I have all 5 TZ-TOS seasons on Blu. I picked “The Thirty Fathom Grave” last week for my TZ viewing.

Advice sought:
On another tack, I never got around to replacing my defective Season 1 disk under the original replacement program. Anyone know where I could go for a new dusk or maybe replace the whole S1 set with a newer set?

 

[The Drifter]

I'm a huge fan of the original b&w TZ series (which I first saw on re-runs late at night back in the '80's) - iconic & classic, with numerous incredible episodes. I also really enjoyed the 2nd TZ series (1985-1989) quite a bit; I actually experience more nostalgia when I re-watch the 2nd series - given that I saw many of these episodes as they were originally released.

The 2002 TZ series was decent (for the most part), though I didn't like it as much as the first two series.

So, given that I'm such a huge fan of the franchise - I recently watched both episodes of the new Twilight Zone series, the re-make of "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" and "Comedian". Both were decent & kept my interest.

-I liked how they completely modified the story for "Nightmare" & didn't make the storyline a simple re-hash of the original iconic '60's episode (with Bill Shatner); the '83 TZ film did try to recreate this story (with John Lithgow) and it wasn't that great.

In any case, this was an interesting & creepy storyline about someone who could apparently "see" the future due to a recording he had found. Truly bizarre and unsettling. As someone who hates flying anyway, I could really relate to the nervousness the main character felt, as well as the nervousness that the other passengers felt due to his strange behavior.

Spoiler: SPOILER

The ending was freaky - i.e., I don't see how all of the passengers on the plane could have survived the crash (on that desert island). Without something supernatural going on, it's obviously impossible they all lived without getting too injured - no way. And, obviously, they took out the AS character - and covered up the deed.

I thought it was weird that they were bickering over one specific copy of a magazine while there where at least a dozen more on the same shelf.

Yes, I thought that was odd, too. Plus, who reads magazines these days, anyway? Almost everything you need to read is online.

- "Comedian" was also a solid episode. I liked how it explored the world of stand-up comedy, humor, and comic timing. Obviously, the would-be comedian wasn't getting anywhere by talking about politics, etc. - he only started becoming popular when he talked about his own life (or an exaggeration of his life). Of course, the downside was that all of these people/things he talked about disappeared as if they had never existed.

Spoiler: SPOILER

I was surprised by the ending - i.e., when he talked about himself & then disappeared off the stage - not something I saw coming.

Elements of this episode reminded me of the underrated film Punchline (1988); a film about stand-up comics - starring Tom Hanks & Sally Field.

 

[Jason_V]

Finally caught up on the first two episodes. Not a whole lot to add to what you guys have said already. I was let down by "Nightmare;" every time I thought I figured the story out, it turned back in on itself (which is good), but it never earns the ending.

"The Comedian" was much better for me...but dang. These episodes don't need to be over thirty minutes long.

 

[TonyD]

Third ep has been up for almost a week.
No comments here yet.

Was the best of the three so far.

Titled Replay.

A mom and her son are on the way to his first day at college.
She is recording them with her old fashioned camcorder
After eating at a diner a cop follows them out and pulls them over.
She discovers something about the camcorder that seems to offer a way out of the situation, or does it.

 

[Jason_V]

My plan is to be fully caught up tonight so I can do double shot of Discovery and Twilight Zone on Thursday. If the dogs let me...we'll see.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Sorry Tony - The first two episodes were so underwhelming that I hadn’t felt any urgency to watch the third.

I just finished it a moment ago. I’d agree that it’s the best of the three so far, but I was still disappointed. It had a good premise that wasn’t executed to its full potential despite the bloated length.

 

[Jason_V]

Caught up last night as I was hoping to. I understand why everyone had an issue with "The Comedian," but I still think that was the best of the three so far. "Replay" is a great concept and is grounded in real world concerns (both positives for me). I just don't buy Nina-or Dorian-wouldn't have used the camcorder for some other purpose like winning the lottery.

The message I came away with it you don't need a magic camcorder to change your present and future. That's why Neil comes into the story, half baked and ham fisted as it was. That's not a revelation or a twist. That's fact.

Add in the ending, which I'm taking to mean something happened to Dorian on his way out for ice cream and Nina can't change it. Has she been doing this ever since that day at school? If she's been changing history, that's the better story-showing the things she and Dorian avoided and how their lives would be different if she hadn't.

I want to like and love this show very badly. I'm just not feeling it yet.

 

[Carabimero]

I've seen the first four episodes now and it's not a bad show, but it's consistently tepid drama that seems overextended. Most of the episodes are way too long. The third episode with the camcorder hit the same beat over and over and should have been half as long, just like the first two. The fourth episode probably built suspense better than the first three, but its length gave me time to figure it out, so the ending seemed anticlimactic.

Like Jason, I want to like it. I don't hate it, but I'm certainly not waiting with anticipation for the next episode to drop. Too bad these episodes aren't half as long, because it's likely they'd be twice as good.

 

[Josh Dial]

I echo most of the comments in this thread about first four episodes being over-long. I get to the "big reveal" (in episodes 2 and 4) about an act before the protagonists, or predict the conclusion (episodes 1 and 3) at about the same point. The production design is high, and the acting is quite good (as you would expect with a star-studded cast), though.

I did like seeing an Inuit story--too bad it couldn't have been set in Canada

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I thought we had established TZ doesn’t work as an hour-ish length back in, what, 1964?

I think most of these new ones so far could have been pretty cool if they hadn’t outlasted their welcome.

 

[Malcolm R]

If they're on a streaming service, it seems unnecessary that they HAVE to be an hour long. They should be however long they need to be to tell the story with no padding. Be that 35 minutes or 75 minutes.

 

[Doug Wallen]

I actually liked episode number 4, A Traveller. This one didn't feel as long as the others even though the final act was not much of a surprise. Nice to see the Gremlin and Talky Tina on the tree. Still a half hour seems much better suited for this type of story.

Replay seemed one note and very heavy handed. I did like seeing the Nick of Time fortune telling device.

 

[Jason_V]

I don't know if this is a surprise or not, but TTZ renewed for Season 2.

https://deadline.com/2019/04/the-twilight-zone-renewed-season-2-cbs-all-access-1202603822/

 

[TonyD]

I didn’t watch ep 4 skipped to 5 and it was another dud.

John Cho is a presidential campaign manger and he gets an amazing unusual person elected president. And then. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Zzzzzzzzzz

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The John Cho one is another example of an episode where the length far outlasted the story content.

I think this would have worked fine as a 20 minute episode. By the time you get to the end of its 40 minute length, not only has the point being made been beaten into the ground, but the "twist" ending had been apparent for quite some time. It was probably too on the nose to begin with as a concept, but the execution really didn't help any.

 

[Carabimero]

I haven't watched episode 5 and not sure I even want to, to be honest. Especially after the comments. I'd kinda forgotten about the series...