The Twilight Zone - The Comedian

Either this was a really bad episode to lead with, or, worse, this might actually be as good as it gets, in which case this series is going to be unbelievably bad.

This must have been a cheap one to film.

Samir is the titular comedian and his problem is that he's not funny. Well, they say that's his problem. Honestly he's fine. Like, I've seen worse. On TV even. But he's been doing comedy for five years now and he's not as successful as he'd like. And then after a show one night he meets a famous comedian who gives him some advice - to use things from his personal life. But the comedian warns him that if he uses personal things, he will be successful, but he'll lose those things.

It's not clear what the famous comedian is actually supposed to be. Some kind of genie maybe?

This being the Twilight Zone that's obviously not a metaphor. But obviously Samir takes it as one because he has no reason not to. And he takes the advice, switching from politics to jokes about his dog. It's actually a little less funny to me, but the audience finds it hilarious. Only when he gets home his dog is missing and his girlfriend insists that they never had a dog. Also he used to have pictures of the dog on his phone and social media, but they're all gone.

It's really hard to work out what everyone else is experiencing and remembering during this.

At this point he's still just confused about what's going on, so he's putting up lost dog posters and carrying on with his life. He brings his nephew to his show, and starts telling jokes about him. By the end of the show the boy is gone. Samir is worried, but not as worried as you'd expect, and everyone else is like "what kid? There was no kid here" and his girlfriend, when he gets home, is like "nephew? What are you talking about?"

"Weird how my dog vanished and there's no evidence he ever existed. Oh well."

So he begins to realise that he has the power to erase people from existence just by talking about them. It seems like it has to be people he knows though; his jokes about politics don't work. And at the same time, the audience always finds him hilarious as long as he's talking about people he knows who still exist. No matter what he says about them. He's not even telling jokes any more, just saying things about people.

Honestly there are not a lot of things to screencap in this episode.

So he starts using this power to erase people he thinks are bad. A guy who drove drunk and killed two people, a child molester, etc. At the same time, his act is getting really popular because of how it's magically funny. It's really not clear what point is being made and it's not going to get any clearer. Eventually, of course, he disappears the wrong person and it makes his life worse. He suspects (for no apparent reason) that his girlfriend is cheating on him with her mentor, and so disappears him. Only it turns out that without him his girlfriend never became a lawyer and is working as a waitress.

I guess it's just what she must do.

We don't really have time to see how this affects him though because then it's straight on to the next thing, which is that a fictional version of Saturday Night Live (or something like that) is looking to hire either him or his comedian friend who's been there since the start of the episode but I didn't mention before because she only existed for the sake of this last-minute rivalry. She always used to tease him about not being funny, but because of the magic he seems way funnier now and she's like "I'm not even going to be angry if they pick you, you're just super funny now." But he disappears her anyway, because I guess he's mad with power or something? It's a bit of a leap from "I can use this power to erase people who do terrible things" to "I can use this power to further my career".

Despite barely even having a point in the story, she's a way better character than the protagonist too.

The big problem here, to me, is that they just haven't established a connection between his character flaw and his downfall. His problem, originally, was supposedly that he was trying to make a difference instead of trying to be funny. He gets this power and uses it to make a difference. He even only used it to settle a personal grudge once, and immediately regretted it. And then suddenly he's disappearing someone he likes for the sake of securing a job he'd probably have gotten anyway?

For a story about comedians, there are surprisingly few actual jokes.

Then of course his girlfriend comes in, and she's got his notebook with the list of names of people he's disappeared on it, and she says he doesn't even have any jokes, he's just belittling people, which I guess she can notice even though no one else can because of the magic? Whatever. Magic. Anyway it makes him realise that he's bad and so he disappears himself and all the people he got rid of are back now. It's all incredibly predictable and there doesn't even seem to be a coherent point. And then it ends with the famous comedian/genie showing up to offer the same deal to Samir's friend/rival, because I guess that's part of the formula.

And she seems even less deserving of this weird gift/curse than Samir was.

The whole thing is just incredibly unsatisfying. I just find myself asking "What was the point of that? What was the point of any of that?" It wasn't getting the thing he wanted that brought him down. His eventual downfall didn't even fit his character. And worst of all, there was nothing fresh or surprising about this. It was as by-the-book as they come. It was sub-Goosebumps level. This is a really bad way to start the series.

She's not impressed either.

Nightmare at 30,000 Feet >>