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Jazzman-41
Reviews
The Rookie: True Crime (2021)
All eyes on Frankie Muniz
After the first five minutes, I was ready to give up - the cop cam pov was starting to make me dizzy. After that, it was easier to follow. There have been segments, usually in the openings, where the writers inject some fun humour into the proceedings and for this episode, they went all in. A fun diversion and it seemed like the cast was having fun with it, too, with Chen delivering some pointed social commentary to her T.O. Fun cameos, too.
The Twilight Zone: You Might Also Like (2020)
Too clever by half
It would seem that the writers were too busy trying to be clever with references to past Twilight Zone episodes instead of trying to come up with something original. My disappointment with this iteration of Twilight Zone overall is that it's just way too cynical for my taste. Everything in this Twilight Zone is so black and white and it doesn't address the shades of grey of the human experience that Rod Serling understood so well.
The Twilight Zone: Among the Untrodden (2020)
That was a wonderful Twilight Zone
It did what a Twilight Zone episode, the best of them anyway, is supposed to do. There was magic, and there were elements that kept you unsure of what was really going on and finally, there was a very human element at the core of the story without it being darkly cynical as so many of the other episodes have been so far. I hope that the rest of the episodes from this season embody the elements that made this one so good.
The Twilight Zone: Meet in the Middle (2020)
Good but too cynical for the Zone imo
I liked this episode, for the most part. In order for the ending to work, we had to have some misgiving about our main character: he's vain, superficial and self-centered based on his blind date and his interaction with his therapist. As he gets to know Annie, he starts to become more than that and there's a connection between them. We find out that she has secrets that she's kept from him and suddenly, she agrees they should meet. Things take on a desperate tone as he needs to rescue her and then we get to the twist ending that made me scratch my head. Yes, we've seen bad things happen to bad people in the Zone before but was Phil really that bad a person to deserve that fate? I found it very dark and cynical and disappointing to see that a special gift shared between two people could be used that way. That being said, I thought that the pacing of the episode worked fairly well compared with many from last season that had a lot of filler - I enjoyed getting to know the characters and watch their relationship develop so I didn't mind the one hour format.
The Twilight Zone: Downtime (2020)
What happened? Oh nothing happened.
These painful one hour episode require so much filler - how many shots were there of open-mouthed characters staring at the sky? Early on, we discover what has happened to the main character, she's not real and is in a simulation. She spends half the time confused and then half the time trying to remain in a world that in the end she concedes is probably not real. It reminded me a bit of A Matter of Minutes from the eighties but without any of the tension. In this one, she signs a form and stays in virtual reality and all I can do is shrug my shoulders and think, what was the point of that? Some of the dialogue was so wooden, too - if we know that she's not real, why do we care about her? We don't.