Blurryman

After a pretty bad start to the series, I had thought the episodes were getting better. A bit heavy handed in the morality, lacking the finesse of the original series. Then comes this pretentious, incomprehensible episode (that actually started out promising). I'm about ready to give up on the series.

Everyone is so obssesed with it being PC or not, they simply are unable to have an opinion for themselves, it has to be all black or white, republican or liberal. Pretty much none of the reviewers in here are able to separate this, the episode was confusing in a bad way, the ending was overly ambiguous, overwritten, too much dialogue trying to explain the philosophy behind it instead of showing us. But, it has nothing to do with political correctness or not, the ¨Not all men¨ episode is one of the most solid ones narratively and yet is the lowest score in here. They got big shoes to fill, thats what I understood from this episode and that is fine, i hope they do this better on the next attempt, 40 mins episodes are a no go for me. Go back to telling your story in 23 minutes.

I'm using the last episode of this remake of the iconic "The Twilight Zone" to review the whole series. I'm concurrently working my way slowly through the original black and white series produced by Rod Serling so it was interesting to compare the two. I do like that the 2019 version retains the original title font, theme music and the introductory and closing narration. The choice of acting talent and production values of the show are high and the new episodes are normally at least fifteen minutes longer. However I think the latter point works against the show's effectiveness as the shorter running time of the original tended to make the stories being told punchier and faster-paced.

Many have commented here on the reboot's political agenda and certainly a few of the episodes put polemic over thrills, I'm thinking particularly of the episodes with the racist policeman terrorising the black mother and her son, the one where an all-American housewife and mother was abducted from her family, the too-obvious Trump satire which puts a kid into the White House or the one where a form of man-rage in a small town apparently attributable to a meteorite storm turned out to be nothing of the kind. Some were just slow and boring like the sub-2001 episode about the tensions aboard a mission-to-Mars rocket crew, the series opener concerning an aspirant comedian whose act in the telling seems to edit out significant people in his life or the show featuring the arrival at Christmas time of a mysterious stranger at an Alaskan police station.

That really just leaves the ones that I did like such as the remake of the famous "Nightmare At 30000 Feet" episode starring Adam Scott, the Chris O'Dowd-starrer concerning a haunted gun and the series closer, a thoughtful, daring existential story within a story, which broke the fourth wall throughout and sought to link up the preceding episodes with an ominous-seeming "blurry-man" whose identity I guessed before the reveal. I also really liked the time-shifting premise of the "Replay" episode but as stated it overdid the right-on P.C. anti-racism message. It made me think of the Rosa Parks episode from the last Dr Who series which brilliantly and more daringly took on a similar subject.

I agree with others that few if any of these new episodes will live as long in the memory as many of those from the Serling era but i saw enough to persuade me to watch the second series which I see has now been commissioned.

The nuclear storyline would of been more interesting.

The "TZ" 2019 series closed out pretty well with it's final episode called "Blurryman" as it's a throwback and has a vibe and feel to honor the classic series. The tale involves Sophie Gelson(Zazie Beetz "Atlanta", and "Joker") who as a writer on the current 2019 "TZ" series starts to feel something just isn't right as she's under pressure from the boss Jordan Peele. Only as she struggles with the episode script she starts to see a strange and shadowy like figure on the set of the episode is it real or is she losing her mind? She even remembers back to her past and younger years as she enjoyed and like the classic "Twilight Zone". I don't want to spoil this episode twist with a sentimental feel as after the shadowy figure is revealed it's a classic icon of the series it's like the past comes into the present for Sophie as she's calmed and at ease with her current project and now feels right at home to write and finish her script. Overall better episode of the 2019 season nice how it blended old with new as it was a classic nice sentimental feel and touch!