Twilight Zone 2019 Season 1 Episode 3 Review of “Replay”

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By Adam “The Masked Avenzr” Venzor

Good evening, this is your favorite masked resister “The Masked Avenzr” on Twitter with a review of what I consider the best episode of the rebooted Twilight Zone. Before I begin this article is littered with spoilers so if you have not seen Get Out or Replay you might want to skip.

As a child and even into adulthood I did notice that there was a big difference between more mainstream entertainment and entertainment that was marketed towards People of Color. For instance growing up in a predominately Hispanic high school everyone I knew watched New York Undercover which was not even considered a hit during the time it came out. Another thing that was noticeable was the portrayal of police on TV. More mainstream entertainment generally showed police as neutral if not a force for good. Compare this to Person of Color targeted shows that had a less favorable portrayal of Police. “Roc”, “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”, even “Family Matters” had an episode dealing with police brutality.

I made the mistake of not being able to watch “Get Out” in theaters. If you have not seen it I highly recommend it. It is not only an excellent thriller but also a microcosm of what it’s like to be a Person of Color in this country. Many people in this country have only been on the good side of the police. They have called the police and seen a quick response and had been treated with the utmost respect. Many are not able to comprehend being in the shoes of a Person of Color facing down the police. Many have not had to deal with having the police called on them while passing through a neighborhood or picking up a to-go order.

This is why I feel the last scene of the film is brilliant. The whole movie has followed Chris Washington as he escapes from the basement, kills the family that captured him, and escapes from the home. We are engrossed in his escape as he is then set upon by Rose Armitage, the person who brought him to this trap. At the end of their struggle he is over Rose strangling her. After all he has been through one cannot blame him. And that is when you hear the distant siren. That is when you see the police cruiser come into view. You can see the red and blue lights reflected off Chris and everything around him. The police cruiser stops a few yards away. Immediately Chris and Rose go into their roles. Chris immediately puts his hands up. He knows what to expect. It won’t matter that he escaped from a family that has tried to kill him. All the police will see is that there is a black man and a white woman. Rose also goes into her role and begins screaming for help. The audience’s heart stops. In other horror movies the audience is no longer tense when the police show up. The audience feels safe when the police show up. Now they are seeing the police through the eyes of a Person of Color.

Then there is a close-up of the police car door. The door shows Airport Security on it. It opens and we see a foot hit the floor. Out pops Chris’s friend Rod, a TSA Agent. I had heard that audiences had erupted into cheers when Rod opened that door. The audience’s heart went from the floor to the roof. Rod was Chris’s friend, and TSA Agent, who was the only one trying to find Chris while he was trapped by the Armitage family. Chris was safe now. He would not have been safe if it was a police officer who opened that door.

I mention this movie in the intro because I feel that it has the same themes as Replay. Replay is the third episode of the rebooted Twilight Zone’s first season. Jordan Peele is the producer. It stars Sanaa Lathan as a mother named Nina who is taking her son Dorian, played by Damson Idris, to college. They are stopped at a diner and Sanaa’s character is playing with an old camcorder. She discovers accidentally that pressing rewind on the camcorder can also rewind her life. She can now go back in time to make changes to her immediate past. Sitting in this diner is also a cop, played by Glenn Fleshler.

One of the scariest movie I saw growing up has always been Terminator. It may be science fiction, but it was also straight horror. The Terminator was a deadly creature that could not be stopped. So are the cops in this episode. Time and time again in this episode the family finds themselves in the path of this cop and all the time it ends in tragedy. Nina tries everything. She changes the path she is taking to the college, she pulls over at a motel to stay the night, and she even tries to sit down and have a cup of coffee with the officer and tries to get to know him. However, no matter what she tries the officer always ends up pulling them over and being aggressive with the family. It appears that no matter what she does Nina cannot keep her son safe from this officer. This is probably what a lot of mothers of African American sons and daughters feel when they send their children out into the world. A recent Rutgers study showed that POC have showed symptoms of PTSD after watching videos of UNARMED Black Men being shot by police.

The cop ends up being like the Terminator. He cannot be reasoned with, he cannot be scared away, and he will not stop until he has this family under his control. The audience does not ever learn why the cop was targeting the family and we realize that it was not important. A 2014 Supreme Court Ruling gave police even greater leeway in how they conduct stops, question occupants, and conduct searches. The gist is that you, the citizen, cannot use ignorance of the law as an excuse, but the police can. In regards to police pulling you over, this is very scary.

All of this comes to a head when the cop and his cohorts confront the family and other black college students at the entry to the college Nina is dropping her son off at. We find out that it is a HBCU. After a tense standoff the police leave the family alone and Dorian is free to spend his time in college.

But that is not the end. The end of the episode takes place years later. Dorian is now a father and has his own daughter that he loves very dearly. Nina is over visiting and spending time with her granddaughter. Dorian says he has to step out for a bit. He leaves the frame and the audience hears the door close. Nina then looks up. She has a look of fear on her face. The audience hears the faint sound of a siren. The blue and red lights are reflecting off Nina’s face and the background. The music becomes ominous and Jordan Peele’s closing narration begins. This is the life of a POC. We never know what happens next. We hope for a happy ending, that Dorian was maybe questioned and sent on his way, or that the police were pulling over for someone else. But we never know. The episode ends and your heart is still pounding. You are now in his shoes.