The Twilight Zone (2019) Season 2: Try, Try

Well folks, it's official. The second season of Twilight Zone 2019 is a failure. You might be thinking I'm jumping the gun a bit considering we have one episode left but it doesn't matter. Even if that last episode is good, this season will still have more bad episodes than good ones. It needed these last two episodes to be good just to break even and it couldn't even do that. If you haven't gathered by now, this episode sucks. But enough prattling on, let's dig in shall we. Warning, spoilers ahead.

The plot this time concerns a woman named Claudia. She meets a man named Marc when visiting a museum to research masks for some study she's doing on reincarnation or something, it's not important. She finds Marc charming at frst but soon begins to pick up on weird things Marc does. He catches a water bottle thrown at him with perfect timing, he knows exactly what the security guard will do, he even offers her some gum right before someone drops their gum next to them. She confronts Marc on this and he reveals that he's stuck in a Groundhog Day like time loop. He's living the same day over and over again and he wants to make it the perfect date. Seems he's smitten with Claudia and is determined to make her love him.

So basically it's Groundhog Day if Bill Murray was a stalker. Now, this isn't a bad idea on paper. The time loop idea has been done before in a variety of different styles so they could have made this work. Unfortunatley, it does not. You can have the greatest idea in the world but it won't mean anything if you fail the execution which is precisely what this episode does. And it fails for several different reasons. For starters, both our main characters are dull. Despite knowing tons of little details about Claudia I still don't know much about what she's actually like. That might be intentional since one of the main points of the episode is that Marc knows a lot of things about Claudia but little about her actual character. That's great for the message but there's still a problem with that, she's boring. She's lacking in depth and personality which makes it very hard to care what happens to her.

Same thing with Marc but he at least has a personality. Sure he's a creepy weirdo but at least that's something he has going for him, even if he's still a two dimensional character. He's also not the viewpoint character of the episode which is another mistake. Time loop stories tend to keep the central focus on those stuck in the time loop to show the audience how they change through the course of multiple loops. But “Try, Try” doesn't do that. Our viewpoint character is Claudia which not only means we don't see much of the timeloop idea actually in play but it also means we're told of it rather than shown it. The golden rule of storytelling is show don't tell and this episode fails at following it. We only have one scene showing different loops, which also had a genuinely funny moment so I'll give it that, but it needed more of it to sell the idea.

Instead we get nothing but overlong conversations that think they're saying something deep and profound thrown but just comes across as pretentious and vapid. I cannot properly convey how bad the dialogue in this episode is. Characters drone on and on about nothing, none of it is either charming or clever and it never shuts up. The episode is 41 minutes long but I checked out within 6. I couldn't stand it, I was screaming at it to get to the bloody point but it just kept going. It doesn't help that our two leads have no chemistry whatsoever. I get that the romance is one sided so the lack of chemistry might be intentional but even if that is the case these two don't work well together at all. They both felt awkward and not in the way the writer intended. Also Topher Grace can't act.

You know what the sad thing is. The idea of a guy being trapped in a time loop trying to create the perfect date to impress a woman he likes but failing to win her over no matter how hard he tries, that was done in Groundhog Day! There's a scene in Groundhog day where that exact same thing happens except they show you his various attempts and it tied into the bigger theme of the movie. That scene in Groundhog Day was only 10 minutes long and said a lot more than “Try, Try” did in 40. probably because it showed us everything rather than tell us.

But let's talk about themes for a minute. Groundhog Day's main theme was self improvement. When Bill Murray doesn't get the girl at the end of the previously mentioned scene, it's because of him. Because he hasn't truly changed he's only changed superficial aspects of the date he was on. It's only later on when he spends the day with her after opening up about his situation that his feelings become genuine and by the end of the movie, where he has truly changed himself for the better, that he finally gets the girl. In “Try, Try” Marc just acts like a creep, Claudia beats the crap out of him and he decides not to pursue her anymore. Groundhog Day had a deeper message about the betterment of oneself and how it can take several lifetimes to truly become who we are meant to be, “Try Try” just says “stalking is bad, mmkay”. A Bill Murray comedy has deeper philosophical meaning than a Twilight Zone episode. Need I say more?

The whole ending feels like a slap in the face. Instead of exploring the nature of obsession, it just ends with Claudia standing up to her stalker and him leaving her alone. Even though he's obsessed with her and being stuck in a time loop he could easily prevent that from happening. What the Hell?! It devolves the entire story into a victim power fantasy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there were better ways of doing it. They wanted to write about toxic male entitlement and the "nice guy" trope and whatever story they told it through was irrelevant. As a result the story is rendered worthless. It prattles on and on through pseudo-philosophical tripe only to have all of it mean jack shit in the end. There's scenes that are set up early on that make you think it's going to be important, but ultimately mean nothing.

“Try, Try” says so much, and yet says so little. It's dialogue is longwinded, trying to sound interesting but instead sounding dull. It's characters are two dimensional lacking any real development. It's doesn't use it's time loop idea effectively instead telling the audience everything rather than showing them. But worst of all, it takes an idea that was already done and does nothing new or interesting with it. If I got anything out of this episode it was a desire to rewatch Groundhog Day again. And that's what I recommend you do as well because it's one of the best movies ever made. “Try, Try” is such a pretentious plodding bore that I can't recommend it to anyone. I could go on but unlike this episode, I know when to stop talking. We're at the homestretch now guys. Only one more episode to go. Let's hope it's a good one so it can end with some dignity. Until next time, remember to stay safe and have fun.