The Twilight Zone (2019) – 01×01
New Series, my musings. – Very quick reviews.
A worthy update
Whilst having a flick through Morpheus tv app, (good app). I discovered eps 1 & 2 had been released, quickly downloaded them. Twilight Zone has always equalled a quality show to my mind, this series, so far, has upheld the tradition.
Rotton Tomatoes – IMDB
The Comedian starts off with a rather unfunny comedian, down on his luck, relationship issues when he comes across legendary comedian “J.C. Wheeler” upon a stool at a small little comedy club. Thus begins his journey into the twilight zone.
Without going into the story, the style and visuals are pleasing, soft orange lights, (I do miss the smoke of a nightclub) and the story builds nicely as the journey into the twilight zone begins. I was surprised that this episode was an hour long. Not sure 1 hr episodes suit the twilight zone, but for this episode yes it did.
As the Comedian realised his power he first makes jokes on random people he finds on social media, bad people, but it always came back to being personal and the people in his life. A small portion of the show dealt with altered reality / the Comedians awareness of where he was. Nice. (Especially in this day and age of spiritual & science questioning of reality.)
And that is what the Twilight Zone has always been about.
The Comedian, (and I cannot find his character name or actor name on line?) Didn’t deserve his fate, and that is one of the beauties of Rod Serlings twilight zone. It’s a cruel place.
I did think the tale was going to go another way and was pleased to be wrong.
Opening credits, Mmm, too fast, slow it all down, we don’t need a ton of CGI graphics chucked in our face. (Think a fade shot of Rod would be worthy)
Opening Theme: Yeah fine.
DISCLAIMER! I'm a comedian. 22 years of wrestling with the double-edged creative sword of trying to say something to an audience and trying to make them laugh. It's not an either/or proposition, as it seems to be with Samir in this episode, but the metaphorical aspect of what you give to the audience no longer being yours, is certainly a truism.
I've long been a fan of The Twilight Zone, and the eighties revival was a must-watch for me in my teenage years, when I was devouring the works of Harlan Ellison and Richard Matheson, as well as Alan Moore's wonderful short comic strips in 2000AD. In our world of ongoing narrative, where even cinema releases require a knowledge of twenty preceding films, it is wonderful to wallow in an hour of television that asks many questions, and when it is over, it is over.
I thoroughly enjoyed Tracy Jordan's enigmatic appearance in a vaping cloud, and I thought all of the performances were uniformly excellent. The depiction of standup comedy was, like in The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, necessarily unrealistic (there's only one club in these TV towns because they're expensive to build...), but effective in its simplicity. The laboured adherence to a potentially funny bit, that is delivered in a woefully unfunny way, is something I have personally seen thousands of times over the past two decades, and hearing Samir launch into it every night gave me PTSD from hosting shitty tryout nights.
I hope the rest of this series is as skilfully handled as this first installment. It's not a big showboating episode, and I am grateful for that. Along with Love, Death & Robots and Black Mirror, I'm glad the single-episode anthology is making a comeback.
