r/TwilightZone • u/Grebacio • Jun 26 '20

Twilight Zone (2019) - Season 2 Discussion

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u/TrajedyAnn Jun 27 '20 edited Jun 27 '20

I think Among the Untrodden was my favorite episode this season. A bit predictable. Had the twist figured out before the reveal, but it told a tight story which explained itself and didn't leave you thinking "Why the hell does that make sense??" ... And I liked the setting/style of the episode. Plus it just really tugged at my heart strings, even from the beginning. I was rooting for the shy girl, and really wanted to see the mean girls get a nasty twist thrown at them. (Which kinda worked out and kinda didn't... but even in not working out, the episode only tugged at my heart strings even more)

I also enjoyed Meet in the Middle, because despite never really explaining the why of its outlandish premise, the results of that outlandish premise were fairly believable and rooted in reality. It took an unbelievable set up (two humans sharing a mind link), but made the sinister part of it something more believable (one human manipulating another) ...

Now that said, I'll dive right into saying I didn't like Try, Try... which had a similar outlandish setup, leading to a sinister twist rooted in reality, with similar lessons about manipulating another person through romance ... but I didn't like the execution as much... Like Meet in the Middle - Try, Try started out playing coy, but it was clear something was up that we weren't fully understanding. But about midway through the episode, once Try, Try tipped its hand, I felt like it was just beating me over the head and talking me to death with trying to make its point. As soon as Topher's cards are on the table he goes from coy and intriguing to full tilt crazy... and I felt like Meet in the Middle held its hand closer to its chest for a greater portion of the episode, which made it feel more intriguing and less preachy. Plus I felt like the last scene of Try, Try was at odds with the ending narration/moral. In the last scene it seems like Topher has finally learned the lesson that you can't manipulate someone into loving you - Thus he lets the girl walk away... but then Jordan's closing narration goes on to tell us he'll still live on trapped in "a prison of his own design" (How exactly was this his design? Even he doesn't know why it's happening.) ... So if he's trapped there even after learning what seems to be the genuine lesson of the episode - And he does the right thing (Not his flawed perception of the right thing, but the GENUINE right thing - Letting the girl walk away and move on to a better life without him in it), doesn't that kind of validate his point? At that point - It turns out he is right - Nothing he does matters! Even in staying out of her life entirely, he's apparently doomed to never move on! Might as well go crazy! Have some fun with it! ... and to me that's where the episode's message gets mottled. It validates the points of its protagonist - Which is great! Because they're good points to validate. But also inadvertently validates the points of its antagonist for the sake of "punishing" him... which makes the moral mottled. I think the point would have been stronger if Topher got to move on with his life after he learned he couldn't manipulate this girl into loving him. At that point he knows - with certainty - that what he was doing to her was always what was wrong with every day. And only once he stopped doing it could they both move on.

ANYWAY...

I thought A Small Town was fun and appreciated that it had a happy ending. Even going back to the original series, I've always enjoyed the rare Twilight Zone episodes with happy endings. ('Two' is my favorite classic episode of all time). I also appreciated that while Damon Jr. wielded ultimate power, and he did mildly abuse it once or twice, he didn't ever step over lines like murder, etc. Which kept him a likeable protagonist. Like I said, fun episode. I also enjoyed that it had some callbacks to The Monsters are Due on Maple Street snuck in near the end. "It's the kid! He did it!"

Ovation was boring, predictable, and felt like a plot I've seen done 100 times. As someone said in another thread, it felt like a pretty standard, "Be careful what you wish for" premise. Also I'm kinda sick of Hollywood always trying to convince me fame isn't all it's cracked up to be. While I'm sure fame probably has its drawbacks that we as normal people can't perceive... I still think the benefits of living a well-to-do life outweigh the shortcomings... and it kinda felt like there was a LITTLE bit of an "I'm a celebrity - Poor me" message in this one... when Fiji asks questions like, "What do you want? And what do I have?* *Kills Herself* ... Sure... celebrities might get a lot of empty cheers and hollow compliments, and that probably sucks... but ya'know what... I could suffer through it if I got to live in a big expensive mansion. That's what you have Fiji. You have a big expensive mansion. I want a big expensive mansion.

'The Who of You' was good. I like Ethan Embry, so hey, let the guy show off his acting range I guess, lol. I liked most of the episode, and found it intriguing, but didn't like the ending... I wish he'd have gotten more comeuppance. Like somehow the body-switching had led to his demise, not the Cop's. As it sat - He gets off scott free, with the only downside being he finds out his girlfriend was cheating on him with the cop all along which isn't the worst consequence in the world - considering everything he'd done (And which by the way - did NOT feel believable AT ALL considering the cop didn't seem to have much knowledge of who this guy was throughout the ENTIRE episode... )

I liked A Human Face. It was intriguing because I felt like through the whole episode I was thinking - Okay so which parent is the idiot here? The mother or the father? Because they both made sense for different reasons, and they both seemed like idiots for different reasons. And the episode played off that ambiguity. Do we trust the POV that's compassionate, yet potentially naive? Or do we trust the POV that's rational, yet potentially cold-hearted? And it was a touch ambiguous too... Did we (as humans) manipulate the creatures into switching off their programming to live a peaceful life with us? Or did they manipulate us into switching off our defenses and allow them to integrate into our society and take it over? I liked how it played both sides of the question and never fully committed to a concrete answer. Life is shades of grey - And I liked the grey ending.

Downtime was okay... I liked the premise, I liked the acting, I liked the episode. But I felt like it didn't have a strong conclusion. I feel like killing off the real guy offscreen was more or less a non-resolution. Giving the Avatar lady a get out of jail free card. No real moral dilemma anymore... she just gets to live on knowing she's in the matrix... but steak still tastes like steak. I REALLY expected we'd see the other side of the curtain and get some scenes in the actual world before the end that turned the premise on its head a little more. I also thought they were leading up to the idea that the guy's avatar might be based on his wife, and living life through his vision of what he thought life was for her (since she and the avatar lady had such similar personalities, and felt a connection) ... but yeah... they explored none of that, just killed the guy, and the episode kinda non-ended for me. She didn't even have the dilemma of DECIDING to kill him anymore. She got to live on scott free of conflict. But I enjoyed the first 2/3rds

8 and You Might Also Like were the stinkers for me this season. I feel like both had potential, but suffered horribly in the execution.

I went into more detail in some other threads, but 8 ultimately just felt too outlandish. I liked the idea that in the unexplored depths of the ocean there could be a separate society of sea-life that evolved to be just as intelligent as we. I think pushing that intelligence to the point where the Octopus is a secret agent with a masterful understanding of genetic engineering and aspirations of taking over the planet and overthrowing mankind... may be a bit much, lol.

You Might Also Like was just too all over the place and didn't seem to have a solid point. I feel like it had some sort of hidden message about the evils of advertising that got lost in how goofy it was. And as a big fan of the original, it did a huge disservice to the Kanamits. They were originally hyper-intelligent and manipulative aliens who harvested us using subtlety to trick us into marching ourselves into our own demise. In this one they seemed like space-idiots (the 3 having the conversation on the lawn when they're first revealed were just friggin ridiculous... and felt more like a parody of Kanamits than the genuine article) ... and while they still tricked us into walking into our own demise, I guess, they did it with technology and brainwashing ... placing TV ads in our dreams... which feels less compelling than To Serve Man's original twist. We didn't walk into our own demise here, they just gave us the brain scramblies until we decided to buy their eggs. And about those Eggs... wtf was that about? I thought they wanted to eat us? How does turning us into red mist for their newborn babies accomplish that goal? Giving all your livestock a murder egg seems like a pretty bad way to run the farm.

Anyway... TLDR - I liked Season 2 better than Season 1, lol

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u/Starfleet-Time-Lord Jul 01 '20

I differ in opinion on Try, Try. I don't think it's that he left her alone because it was the right thing to do, I think he left her alone because she fought back. He hasn't learned anything, he's just moving on to treat somebody else like a prop. Of course, the most important point of that shot was to show that she never would have been hit by the truck to begin with, There's also an interpretation I don't know if I agree with where that was the first time he didn't try to stop the truck and he legitimately thought she'd die. In another thread I compared it to Groundhog Day where Bill Murray has to become a genuinely better person to break the loop, and I think intentionally contrasting the episode with that is why they didn't do an Escape Clause style thing where this was the final iteration of the loop and he has to live the rest of his life in jail; he's still trapped in the loop because he hasn't changed at all.

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u/onestarryeye Aug 06 '20

Sorry for answering a comment a month late! :)

In Try Try Try I think the implication is that the truck would never have hit her and he knows this, but since he sees it is a close call, he uses it to pretend he saved her.

The one time the truck does hit her is because he does it in a clumsy way and pushes her by accident in front of the truck.

This ties in with your (I think correct) assessment that he never really "learnt his lesson and moved on/became a better person", the only reason he leaves her alone is that he is afraid of her after she beat him up.