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| I'll bet a hundred years from now we will still have new Twilight Zone shows. |
While I was recovering from my second toe amputation I took it upon myself to watch every single episode of the new Jordan Peele Twilight Zone, and I fucking loved it. Not every episode was good, but some of them I would put up against almost any original TZ episode from the 'Sixties. I say that as someone who saw every episode of the original. Every episode (sadly) of the one with Forest Whitaker hosting. And I've seen a few of the episodes from the 'Eighties version because it's not out on DVD and no one cares to stream it.
(Side note: one of the 'Eighties ones was about JFK surviving that day in TX and how horrible the world turns out because of it. I'm almost certain Stephen King ripped it off for 11/22/63.)
So the new series. These things inevitably feel the need to remake an original episode. This one chose "Nightmare at 20000 Feet," cunningly retitled "Nightmare at 30000 Feet." This one has a special place in my heart because it guest stars Dan Carlin, the host of my favorite podcast of all time, Hardcore History. I liked the way it was updated so that instead of seeing a gremlin on the wing, the protagonist finds an mp3 player with a podcast on it about the doom of that very flight. It fucks with the guy until he's Shatner-crazy so that even though he's not aware of it, he's making the podcast become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It also stars Russ Hanneman from Silicon Valley as a stranger sympathetic to the main character's needs. And it never ceases to amaze me that this actor voices Mickey Mouse, especially considering how foul-mouthed he was on Silicon Valley. The ending of this episode made me laugh a lot, but I won't spoil it here.
"Six Degrees of Freedom" is a powerful episode that would lay waste to maybe half of the originals. A group of astronauts on their way to Mars discover that while they're in space the earth has been destroyed. They no longer have a home, and they are the first humans to go to Mars, so there is no terraforming or anything. The tension can't merely be cut with a knife. The tension would take that fucking knife and cut YOU.
I also enjoyed "Blurryman," but I suspect many of you would find that kinda cheesy mostly because of the reveal in the end. I dug it a lot, and it brings a writer back from the dead, so that's super cool. Again, no spoilers here.
But hands down, my absolute favorite is "Try, Try." Often a show will do a Groundhog Day episode, and this is certainly TZ's version of that. But no one ever asks, what if you are part of someone else's Groundhog Day? What if that person is obsessed with you? What things has this person done to you that you don't remember because the world resets every day? This episode asks those questions and more, and I'm delighted with the answers.
I'm pissed off that they ended the show after two seasons. That was a quality program, and I would have loved more episodes. Fucking . . . fucking shit. If you have Paramount+, I highly recommend you watch it. And don't forget the new Star Trek shows, which are awesome. And check out Strange Angel, while you're at it. It's the true and very weird story of Jack Parsons, a pioneering rocket engineer who, in his spare time, was involved in a sex cult. The show didn't get this far, but in real life he was scammed by L. Ron Hubbard, who took him for a couple thousand dollars, a boat and Parsons's wife. I don't know how people like that con artist. Hubbard was a good writer but not that good.
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