The Twilight Zone

Rebooting a beloved genre series like this offered producers the chance to showcase inventive and fresh voices, but sadly, they've chosen to rehash tired old plotlines that even nostalgia can't save. The episodes are just too darn long: Old-school Twilight Zone eps clocked in at 30 minutes, while these are stretched out to an interminable 60 minutes on average, a length the stories just aren't strong enough to withstand. (The original series made a similar misstep in its fourth season, a move that creator Rod Serling fiercely opposed.) The Twilight Zone has historically offered up creepy and memorable little fables that make you think about moral quandaries, about humanity, even about the nature of reality itself. These themes are wasted when padded out with so much repetition and filler, which gives audiences far too long to guess the utterly predictable twists; in one especially eye-rolling case, a character actually speaks the "surprise" ending out loud. The protracted runtime also gives viewers far too many chances to think about how little internal logic the show even has -- stories break down under even the mildest scrutiny here.

Parents looking to kick back and binge-watch the series with their kids may also be confounded by the show's decision to pepper in a ton of F-bombs and other profanities, which seems to be the main thing driving its TV-MA rating. It's a goofy, misguided choice that really serves no purpose other than to remind viewers they're in 2019, that "this isn't your grandma's Twilight Zone!" If that's really the case, why not create some new storylines and offer new perspectives instead of rehashing plots we've seen already? Though Adam Scott does a decent job with what he's given, his episode ("Nightmare at 30,000 Feet") has already been made twice before, with William Shatner in 1963 and John Lithgow in 1983. Should the show move forward, it would do well to work on developing original ideas and finding its own distinctive voice rather than treading in sentimentality and trying to update it with swear words and smartphones.