The Twilight Zone (2019) -- Season 1 Episode 1 (The Comedian)

I remember seeing the coming attractions for the new Twilight Zone series.  I was excited until I realized that it was going to be on CBS All Access.  Granted, I also wanted to watch Star Trek: Picard, but it still wasn’t enough to get me to pay.  I don’t have a lot of money to spare.  Since the outbreak of Coronavirus, it looks like I have a free month to watch the first season.

Samir Wassan is the titular comedian.  He has an act about The Second Amendment that comes off more like a lecture than a comedy routine.  He gets no laughs.  That’s when he’s approached by a famous comedian, J.C. Wheeler.  J.C. hasn’t been seen for a while, but is apparently good enough that Samir asks for any pointers.

J.C. tells him that he has to put himself out there and he’ll get the laughs he wants.  But it comes with a catch.  He can never get that part of him back.  That might seem like an innocuous warning, but this is The Twilight Zone.  Nothing comes for free.

It starts simply.  Samir makes fun of Rena’s dog, aptly named Cat.  When he returns home to his girlfriend, Rena, she doesn’t recall ever having a dog.  All pictures of Cat are gone from Samir’s phone.  No one recalls Cat.

Therein lies the rub.  If he mentions a person’s name, that person disappears, but Samir delivers a popular routine.  Samir runs up against two further conditions.  First, he has to use the person’s actual name.  Sort of getting it right only to realize it might be an alias doesn’t work.  Second, he can’t use the same person twice.  He has to make a new person disappear each time he’s on stage.

At first, this seems great.  He can get rid of people he doesn’t like.  Fellow comedian Joe Donner hit a mother and child sitting at a bus bench.  When Samir makes Joe go away, the bus bench is restored and the mother and child are presumably still alive.

He goes through a list of people who wronged him, from bullies to a pervy school coach.  Eventually, he starts towards the petty.  He gets rid of Rena’s mentor.  She goes from being a lawyer to being a waitress.  He also makes her nephew disappear.  Not only does Rena not remember the nephew, but her sister is unable to have children.

Samir has an ethical debate.  He’s using people for his own advantage.  They did exist.  He remembers them.  But he’s the only one.  As J.C. points out, there’s no grieving mother.  No one really cares except for Samir.  When Rena finally calls him on it, there’s only one thing for Samir to do.

It might seem that this is exclusively about the Law of Unintended Consequences.  However, not each action has a downside that’s readily apparent.  Samir did save two people, which has to count for something.  Of course, just because we’re not aware of it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.  We don’t know if Joe had kids or was helping people on the side.

It’s more about responsibility.  Samir points out that The Second Amendment states “well-regulated”, implying that not all restrictions are off limits.  The key here, though, is regulating yourself.  Samir doesn’t ever really try to hold back.  He’s aware of what he’s doing, but he does it anyway.  Sure, some good did come of it.  It’s not until the end that Samir realizes how much harm he’s caused, even if no one else knows it.  This is a solid entry for the new series.

IMDb page

 

What Men Want (2019)

Every so often, I see a TV show or movie that makes me think that there are no original ideas left.  I ask myself if we’re almost at the point where it will be impossible to write a script that doesn’t borrow heavily from something else.  A few years pass and something else comes up.

To be fair, I don’t get the impression that What Men Want is presenting itself as anything new.  It’s a remake of What Women Want, except the genders of the main characters are reversed.  Instead of a man being able to hear women’s thoughts, a woman is able to hear men’s thoughts.

Ali Davis is the woman who gains psychic powers.  She’s a sports agent that wants to make partner.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t quite get how to connect with men.  This is a problem, since most of her coworkers are male, as is the big star her agency wants to recruit.

As is usually the case with newfound thought-reading abilities, the inability to control the ability proves too much.  Ali is hit with all manner of male thoughts from getting a prostate checked to the usual lewd thoughts.  She’s scared until she realizes that she now has an in.  She can sneak into the secret card game that no one wants her to attend.  She can read the mind of Jamal Barry, the would-be client.  She can even read the mind of her hot neighbor with the patently adult nickname.

Ali wants to get an edge only to realize that many of the men are just as worried and insecure as she is.  The movie plays the concept for laughs, though.  There’s a doctor with a drug habit.  Ali is able to get two male coworkers together.  She even takes the lead at a meeting to recruit Jamal.  Stuff like that.  If you’ve seen the trailers you’re going to be in for absolutely zero surprises.  There’s even a case where Ali lies and it comes back to ruin a potential relationship.

Most of my problem with the movie is that it wasn’t as nuanced as it could have been.  Even if say it’s a comedy, jokes tend to be better when there are several layers of meaning.  Here, there’s very little that you could understand differently on a second viewing.  It’s a fun movie, but I don’t think there’s going ot be a lot of replay value here.  I’d wait to rent it on DVD.

IMDb page