The First Available Episode of Jordan Peele’s New Twilight Zone Will Rattle You
It might be strange, in some ways, to refer to a title as recognizable and hallowed as The Twilight Zone as an underdog, but let us not forget that 2019 itself is a Twilight Zone; nothing is really that strange anymore, after all.
It would be difficult to find someone who hadn't at least heard of Rod Serling's classic series, and probably just as tricky to find another who didn't recognize that unmistakable theme music, yet it still feels distant in our collective memories. The Twilight Zone hasn't been dormant since the original five-season run that cemented a legacy, but it hasn't been a mainstay either. A reboot was tried for three seasons in 1985, with horror master Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream) at the helm for a number of episodes, and again for a single season in 2002, with Forest Whitaker as the host. The 2002 version had a cast that in some places, holds up surprisingly well by today's standards (modern day standouts like Penn Badgley, Jason Bateman, and Amber Tamblyn), and in some places, not quite (Jessica Simpson, Ethan Embry, and timeless Seinfeld and Space Jam legend, Wayne Knight, among others). Needless to say, the reboots didn't make quite the same stamp on the culture.
We also live in the age of Black Mirror, the episodic anthology giant that has only grown bigger with its move from BBC to Netflix. Black Mirror has become an 'event series,' something Netflix can drop with little warning, nuking the entire internet's discourse with what I assume is the push of a button. That's in addition to other lesser-seen series with similar intent of sucking your attention in and blowing it to pieces in a single episode, like Amazon's Electric Dreams and HBO's Room 104. The space is becoming saturated, and the fourth iteration of Serling's cultural touchstone has it's work cut out for it.
Launching on CBS All Access, yet another entry in the ever-crowded space of online-based subscription television, this Twilight Zone has an ace in the hole, however, and that's Jordan Peele. The former MADTv player and Comedy Central star is still in the midst of a round of dominating critical and commercial success for his second feature film, Us, and has been a presence at the Academy Awards for two consecutive years, winning Best Original Screenplay a year ago for Get Out, and being nominated this year for Best Picture as a producer of Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman. Peele's production company, Monkeypaw, is at the helm of The Twilight Zone, and Peele himself is front and center (though not quite as much as you might expect, based on his starring role in the series' promotion) in Serling's old role as the host, and proprietor, of the madness that each episode provides.
While Peele isn't writing or directing the episodes, it's also far from new territory for him. Outside of his burgeoning career as one of our most interesting auetor writer/directors, he's been dabbling with the weird and bizarre for years. Consider the piece "Continental Breakfast" from Key & Peele, the series that really launched his career into the mainstream. While much more obviously played for laughs, the skit functions also as something of a surreal universe version of a short film, with a twist ending quite literally out of The Shining. The closing shot from "Continental Breakfast" has long been Peele's Twitter avatar-it's clearly a piece of work from which he draws much pride.
As it launched Monday, two episodes of the new Twilight Zone have been released: one, starring Adam Scott, titled "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" is a take on William Shatner's classic turn in the original series, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." The other launch episode, "The Comedian," was given a much bigger platform-it was released simultaneously on YouTube, allowing potential viewers a taste before deciding whether or not to buy in for the rest of the mind-bending journey.
Nanjiani, who's seen his star rise in the last several years with his role in Silicon Valley and his hit comedy The Big Sick jettisoning him into mainstream acclaim, once again plays a comedian in "The Comedian," but make no mistake-this is a dramatic turn.
The show sets the tone early, and has to do a good job of sucking viewers in pretty much from the get-go; as soon as one clicks on the YouTube link, the 55-minute runtime is visible, significantly longer than the typical half-hour runtime of Serling's originals. Nanjiani plays Samir, a stand-up comedian who believes in "truth" in his act-jokes about the second amendment and 'the president' (whoever that may be in this zany world) don't quite play with audiences, ever distracted by their company and their mobile devices.
It's not until Samir runs into a mysterious, off-the-grid comedian played by Tracy Morgan (whose spoken backstory sounds an awful lot like another former Comedy Central star), that the episode starts to take the turn that we all expect is coming. When Samir finally decides to pull back the curtain and dip into his personal life, that's when things start to snowball and take a turn for the bizarre.
What proceeds is a statement not only on the nature of what one has to sacrifice in comedy, and the arts, for a chance at 'blowing up,' but further a commentary on the concept of 'selling out,' and what it means to bring real life into the public sphere for the sole purpose of personal advancement.
The episode takes a bit to really start rolling, and it wouldn't be surprising if audiences closed their YouTube window after the episode's lagged start. But for those who trust to stick through, by the time Peele's narrator (it's unclear if he's playing... himself, or Serling, or some all-knowing mental-torture monger) shows up for the second time, a rattled feeling is certainly a likely one. And if you're choosing to watch The Twilight Zone, a rattled feeling is probably just what you're looking for.
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