The Twilight Zone (2020) episode review — 2.8 — A Small Town

Original air date: June 25, 2020
Director: Alonso Alvarez-Barreda
Writers: Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due

Rating: 4/10

What happens if you mix “A Stopover in a Quiet Town” with a small dash of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”? You get a pretty uneven episode called “A Small Town.”

A handyman (Damon Wayans, Jr.) finds a model of his local small town, and finds that whatever he does to the model affects the town, up to and including giant spiders.

It seems relatively promising, but the episode gets lost in what it’s trying to say. It’s clear it’s trying to be some kind of allegory, with the town going through a mayoral election, but when we get to our “Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” moment, it feels incredibly rushed.

Like a lot of other episodes in this series, this is the story of missed opportunities.