The Twilight Zone (2019) Season 2: Downtime

When The Twilight Zone season 2 was being hyped up, early on CBS didn't reveal much about the episodes beyond who was acting in it and who the writer was. Makes sense but that only made me more interested in “Downtime”. Why? Because it was an episode that was written by Jordan Peele. For as much as Jordan Peele was plastered all over the marketing and his stance as both executive producer and host he hasn't actually penned any of the epsiodes. Well kind of, he helped wit “Nightmare at 50'000 feet” but that was co-written, he didn't work on it by himself. “Downtime” though is entirely his own creation. I am not familiar with Jordan Peele's work, particularly the two horror films he directed Get Out and Us. I haven't seen them yet and I have heard mixed things about his work. Some say he's a creative genius while others say he's more style over substance. I can't make a value judgement myself but if this episode is any indication, I lean more to the latter category than the former. Warning, there will be spoilers.

“Downtime” follows a woman named Michelle who works at a pretty swanky looking hotel and has just been promoted to manager. We see she's very good at her job, helps the staff, courteous when needed and is great at dealing with a pair of Karens. It's a hotel, I expect they get a lot of Karens. Things are looking up for Michelle. But when she goes to get a coffee she gets a splitting headache out of nowhere. When she recovers she discovers a giant mechanical eye is the sky that everyone is mesmerised by. After returning home to her husband she finds him speaking in a strong Irish accent, he's an African American not Irish, who informs her that what is going on is an event called Downtime. After he also enters into a trance two skateboarders show up claiming to be customer service it turns out that Michelle isn't Michelle at all but a man named Phineas who was playing her in a virtual reality videogame called Sleepaway and that Downtime is basically a form of maintenance where every player logs out. It seems like Phineas had a heart attack while playing the game and is now trapped as Michelle as his real body is now in a coma. To make matters worse, if they don't force a desync before Downtime ends then Phineas will be trapped as Michelle forever. But with Michelle not remembering any of this and possessing a strong will of her own, that's gonna be harder than it sounds.

What I've summarised is roughly the first fifteen minutes of the episode. The episode runs about 31 minutes, though if we discount end credits and the opening title its roughly 30 minutes, so I've recapped about half the episode. That first half, has everything interesting the episode has. All the cool and interesting things happen in the first half and after that the episode quickly becomes dull and boring. The episode plays it's hand far too early and when you figure everything out and you think the episode is about to wrap up, it keeps going. “Downtime” is an example of an episode that says a lot without saying anything at all. The episode's main theme is one of identity and such a story requires us to be intimately aware of the main character. You need to know them in order for the story to work and it's here where “Downtime” ultimately drops the ball. While we know enough about Michelle to find her likable enough, Michelle is also a façade. A character in a videogame being played by Phineas in the real world. Phineas, therefore, is the person we need to know the most about but we're only given hints at what he is actually like.

This is where the episode loses me. We're only given small tidbits on Phineas, he's married, he feels like he isn't in control which is why he wanted to be Michelle and we learn at the end that he was suicidal. The heart attack was self inflicted. While all of this is good to know there's several questions Jordan Peele didn't answer when writing. And these aren't complicated questions either, they're the most basic questions imaginable. Why was Phineas suicidal? Why did he feel a lack of control? What caused him to feel this way? These are questions that need answers. Maybe Jordan kept it vague so we could infer our own reasons but I don't like that idea because it basically forces the audience to write the episode for him. We don't know enough about what Phineas is like which makes it hard to care for anything that happens.

But maybe I'm overthinking this. Phineas isn't the main character after all, Michelle is. But there in lies the problem. Michelle, isn't real. Her world, isn't real. Her life is fake. Her relationships are fake. The episode wants us to feel bad for Michelle but why would I feel bad for a character, when there's nothing real about the character. What does it matter? This isn't the first time I've seen this twist. I've seen “the world is a videogame” twist before and it has never, not once, worked. Everytime it shows up it destroys the story. Because once I find out that nothing of consequence happened, why should I care? Michelle doesn't even defend herself with the tired old “I think therefore I am” trope. She just sort of accepts everything is fake and moves on. The episode thinks it's making a profound statement on the nature of reality but it really isn't. I've seen stories that can do this, the Matrix and Star Trek come to mind, but “Downtime” lacks any kind of intrigue or philosphical discussions while acting under the pretense that it does. It doesn't really say anything which makes it incredibly boring to watch.

Even the world is uninteresting. I get that Sleepaway is meant to feel so real that the people playing it don't know it's fake but why did it have to look so boring. Why would anyone play this game when it's so mundane? It's basically an MMO for normies. They don't do anything interesting with the world either. We're told that the game has a glitch that transports players across the map but we never see anything like that. There's a chase scene near the end where that would have been cool to see that kind of teleporting but, nope, nothing like that happens. The only thing we get are a few glitches here and there and they don't look that cool. Maybe they didn't have the budget to do it effectively but I wasn't impressed with the world the show presented regardless.

Now I want to talk about length. It's a common complaint with the 2019 Twilight Zone that the episodes are often too long. One counter argument I've seen in regards to this criticism is that episodes are only as long as the writer wants them to be since there isn't a set length the episodes have to be. Here's the thing though, it's not that the episodes are too long, it's that they're longer than they need to be. There were episodes in season 1 that ran for 45 minutes and they didn't feel too long because they use their time effectively. Conversly, “Downtime” is only 31 minutes in length, making it one of the shorter episodes in this particular run, and yet it feels like it goes on for ten minutes longer than it needs to. As I said everything interesting happens in the first 15 minutes after which the episode drags on and on. It doesn't build up to anything and when you finally get to the ending it just stops with a whimper and because I didn't care for what was going on it just made the whole thing felt like a waste of time.

If I could praise one thing about this episode it's the acting. Really though that's not surprising because having good acting is the norm for this series. Even the worst episodes had great acting so it's par for the course at this point. “Downtime” is an episode with a fascinating premise that it does nothing with. The idea of a virtual world where you can be whoever you want is a good one that's been done before and done better. “Downtime” ultimately wastes it's premise by not saying anything truly profound and what is there isn't entertaining enough to be a simple fun romp either. It sits there begging for you to care but when all is said and done, you just feel empty. I have been told that this is the worst episode of season 2 which means it can only get better from here. Let's hope it does so. Until next time, remember to stay safe and have fun.