Jordan Peele’s ‘Twilight Zone’ is Off to a Good Start
I’m not an avid fan of the original Twilight Zone, but I don’t think that has to be a precursor for liking the new one, hosted by Jordan Peele.
CBS All Access has released 2 episodes so far, “The Comedian” and “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet” and I’m ready to talk about them rather than try to fill this introduction with fluff about Jordan Peele and the Twilight Zone and the political climate we live in.
The Comedian
Starring: Kumail Nanjiani, Tracy Morgan, Diarra Kilpatrick
What I liked:
— The message of when you give a piece of yourself or your art to the world, it no longer belongs to you. You have to give yourself to the world for success, but it’s costly.
— Kumail is a very good sociopath
— Diarra Kilpatrick was the best part of the episode
— Vaping Tracy Morgan gave me shades of Dave Chappelle
— “Weaponize that shit, bring the mother fucking house down.”
— Kumail was a bad guy from the fucking JUMP. He told shitty jokes to prove how smart he was, wanted notes on how to improve his act while simultaneously rejecting those notes because he didn’t think he could do any wrong, and he offed innocent people at an alarming rate for any and every reason.
— The Shining reference at the end
What I didn’t like:
— The episode was entirely too long
— Pacing was completely off. It would hit boring stretches periodically, which relates to the length of the episode because we have to spend 10 minutes waiting for him to solve a mystery we already know.
— Devoting time to talking about Eddies and the apostrophe, and then not doing anything with it at the end.
— The girlfriend subplot arrived at a cheesy conclusion
FINAL RATING:
5/10
The episode would’ve been more powerful had it been about 20 minutes shorter. But I did enjoy that Eddies WITHOUT the apostrophe changes the entire ending. Without it, Eddies becomes a group of people, a group of comedians painted on the wall that had fallen victim to Tracy Morgan’s character. The twist would’ve been better had Kumail’s character actually brought down the mother fucking house, however.
Nightmare at 30,000 Feet
Starring: Adam Scott, Chris Diamantopoulos, Dan Carlin
What I liked:
— Adam Scott is great in everything
— Chris Diamantopoulos is the MVP of the episode
— Kudos on the set-up and execution, I got a lot of Final Destination vibes
— “He was the pilot.”
— The scene where Adam Scott has to steal from the sleeping Russian soccer players was legitimately tense. I felt every heartbeat during that sequence
— I thought the message that this investigative journalist, a celebrated one, gave into his worst instincts and suspected minorities being the cause of the plane going down, when in actuality it was himself, was a powerful statement given the current climate of the country
— The ending was DARK.
— I love Dan Carlin
What I didn’t like:
— Continuity at the end. The podcaster claimed there was only one person from the flight not found, but it should’ve been two if we include “The Pilot.”
FINAL RATING:
9/10
The episode was great, thrilling, and a worthy update to a classic Twilight Zone episode. Jordan Peele is sufficiently creepy as The Narrator and I’m fucking ready for more.
