Ive seen four episodes ofthe newTwilight Zone, coming to CBS All-Access on Monday, April 1.
Statistically, at least one episode should be good.
Temper your expectations, is what Im saying.
Credit: Robert Falconer/CBS
Then throw them out the window.
A couple sharp performances cant triumph against nonstop plot contrivance.
This is one of 2019s first great disappointments.
Both films are theme-chomping science-fiction freakouts, horrific Americana set in a Twilight-adjacent zone.
Peele appears onscreen as the Serling-ish narrator.
Notably, every executive producer listed after Peele is worrisome.
As for the actors: Never has such an exciting and diverse cast been wasted so much.
The first two episodes both arrive on April 1, and they are just awful.
Nightmare at 30,000 Feet threemakes the paranoid tale of a man going in-flight crazy.
Instead of a nightmarish gremlin, Scotts tormented by (sigh) a podcast predicting his own deadly future.
The new Nightmare exemplifies the series problems.
Aspects of the story are immediately unbelievable.
Scotts traveler is on a flight from D.C. to Tel Aviv.
On the planes screens, travelers can see footage of the pilots flying the plane.
A commercial plane that lets passengers watch the pilots?
In what world??
And thats not part of some surveillance-state twist, to be clear.
The Comedian is even worse.Kumail Nanjianiplays a stand-up comic, Samir.
When we meet him, hes a striving Important Comedian ranting about the Second Amendment.
After meeting a mysterious funnyman (Tracy Morgan), things take a Faustian turn.
Samir starts to tell new jokes, and strange things start to happen.
Now, the melodramatic sociopolitical seriousness of stand-up comedy has become a done-to-death cliche this decade.
Any comedian who would say that out loud must be terrible at his job.
Nanjiani a comedian himself, yeesh, an Oscar-nominated writer!
looks lost in the ludicrous melodrama.
Sanaa Lathan plays a proud mom driving her son (Damson Idris) to college.
But beyond the goofy techno-contrivance lies legitimate fear.
Their drive is haunted by a racist policeman, played by Glenn Fleshler with monolithic quiet.
Lathans performance is great, powerful even when shes fully unglued.
Replay turns painfully speechy, though, as if worried youre missing the point.
Theres something just a little tooniceabout this version ofTwilight Zone,a sentimentality that feels less retro than archaic.
Maybe this ground has just been covered too much?
Yuen radiates the same vampiric glee that powered his magnificent performance in 2018sBurning.
Will the episodes get better?
I have my doubts.
Should we blame Peele for thisTwilight Zones failure?
But the newTwilight Zonefeels like a collective failure.
