The Twilight Zone review: Police shootings take center stage

The Twilight Zone episode 3, “Replay,” amplifies the social criticism to discuss some critical commentary about police brutality against black communities.

As per every Twilight Zone episode past and present, this week’s episode, “Replay,” started out as an unassumingly ordinary episode, set in a casual roadside diner no less. A mother (Nina, portrayed by Sanaa Lathan) and her son (Franklin, portrayed by Damson Idris) stop for lunch on the way to Franklin’s college. The Twilight Zone uses the shift between the once-meek atmosphere at the beginning of the episode to the agitated pacing to unravel a critical message about police shootings and brutality against black communities.

Before we delve into the messages, imagery, and the lengthy history of anti-black violence The Twilight Zone includes in “Replay,” we want to admire Lathan and Idris’ acting range in the episode. In just the first few moments, Lathan manages to set the tone of the entire 45-minutes-long episode. Shortly after her déjà vu-induced trance, her shocked expression alone paints the tension for the episode. Regardless of the reset, how the on-screen duo reacts to each other actions (and even their facial expressions) solidifies their familial bond, and it adds to the sense of reality, even in the parallel dimension.

However, the alternate dimension in this episode isn’t very much different from our own. The narrator (Jordan Peele) suggests the theme of the episode is about the past and the implications of ignoring the past. At least, it seems like the prevailing message is about Nina, solely on a personal level, but the message molds to fit a pandemic that primarily impacts the black community, particularly black men. The large scale issue? How police shootings and brutality overwhelming target black people (more than twice as many times as white people).

The sorrowful climax at the middle of the episode when the cop shoots and kills Franklin is uncomfortable to watch because people can predict it, based on our own real-world news. It’s a clear depiction of police brutality, but all the leading moments, regarding the same cop following the family just for existing, build a narrative for how common racial profiling is and how the same methodology is used through authority positions (hence, using the same cop in each scenario).

“Replay” — Pictured (l-r): Damson Idris as Dorian Harrison; Glenn Fleshler as Officer Lasky of THE TWILIGHT ZONE for CBS All Access. Photo Cr: Robert Falconer/CBS © 2018 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved.

There are nearly a dozen examples of how the episode illustrates police violence against black people in the surreal setting of The Twilight Zone, but here a just a few:

• The scene where the cop first pulls Nina and Franklin over, where Nina needs to give Franklin a pep talk to keep him alive and safe because of the unpredictable, and clearly prejudiced, police violence.
• Tension amplifies immediately after the cop makes the roadside stop about race and interjects his own thoughts by questioning them about potentials weapons in the car.
• These repeated scenarios with the cop illustrate the commonality of how police target black people. Thanks to the replays, the repetitiveness shows how normalized this gross abuse of power is.
• The quick intervals between each rewind show how prevalent this harassment is (and yes, it is harassment).
• This racist routine that’s the same just remixed, over and over, again feels inescapable.
• The second time the cop interacts with Nina and Franklin, he ignores Franklin’s concerns for his mom’s health, which shows how people of authority, particularly police, target black people with violations while simultaneously undermining their best interests, safety, and health.

The commentary clearly focuses on the lived experiences of black Americans today, but the themes of the past and repeating the past inherently show how systemic oppression and violence really hasn’t changed in the U.S. — it just changed avenues.

“Replay” — Pictured: Sanaa Lathan as Nina Harrison of THE TWILIGHT ZONE for CBS All Access available to steam on Thursday, April 11th. Photo Cr: Robert Falconer/CBS © 2018 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved.

As the episode progressed, it evolved further into its discourse about police shootings. The United States has a longstanding and complicated past with police brutality and shootings against black people. Given this week’s theme is about the past, the episode shows that our history is continuously repeating itself.

The episode does well making naturally comparisons to the overly cautiously, hidden routes Nina and her family have to take just to get Franklin safely to college. While this shows how the black community is better equipt to protect and defend themselves when they’re together, it more sinisterly shows how police practices are predatory.

Like everything in the episode, things aren’t exactly as they appear. The police-led violence doubles as a way to show this behavior implicates and hinders the future of black youth, from additional obstacles just to get to college without physical harm or worse to Franklin’s shortened lifespan at the end of the episode.

Even with Nina, she’s emotionally drained, but these repeated occurrences of police violence. Because the black community is at a higher likeliness of being victims of police shootings (first hand, or from seeing it happen to friends and family), Twilight Zone episode 3 shows how this mentally exhausting cycle impacts mental health. Because police shooting discriminately harms and targets black people, race-based PTSD and other mental health conditions following this violence also impact the community. (Because adverse mental health is a prejudice side effect of police-inflicted trauma.)

Nonetheless, the ending scene at the black college fortifies the strength of the black communities and how this showcases the revolution black people are bolstering their autonomy in a society that doesn’t always welcome them. And they’re done restarting because they want a future where these fears don’t exist in the community. While the love and respect within the black community can protect everyone within it at times, the dangers are still discriminantly mounting against the community

However, the violence and the demons aren’t easily solved even with community support and a hint of magic (in the form of a recording device or otherwise). As Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, the writer of “Replay,” told CNET, the ending of the episode is based in reality so that it doesn’t appear disingenuous:

"There are some monsters that go from awake to semi-dormant, but we don’t have the power to slay them right now. And we didn’t want to make something that was patently false … There’s no easy magical escape.”"

There’s nothing more horrifying than reality, and The Twilight Zone understands that all too well. The sci-fi aspect might distract us from the overall messages at first. In fact, that’s probably the intention behind the fiction in the episode. Because when there is a critical headline that should be broadcast in the mainstream news — especially when it’s about police violence against black people and other people of color, there’s typically another more trivial news topic splayed online to distract us.

Regardless, we’re glad The Twilight Zone is discussing police brutality because this critical discourse shouldn’t be overlooked.